In the latest version of Mozilla Firefox, version 114.0, there are many changes and the secure DNS user interface has been redesigned. Now we can change how these secure DNS settings are going to be used. We can change the level of protection provided by the secure DNS in Mozilla Firefox.
We can turn off the secure DNS protection, make it low level protection or increase the secure DNS protection level to the maximum possible of its settings. Here is how:
- Launch the Firefox web browser. Click on the menu icon (hamburger icon) and select Settings from there.
- On the settings screen, switch to the Privacy & Security section.
- Scroll down to find the DNS over HTTPS section. You have four options available:
- Default Protection: At this level of protection, Firefox decides when to enable secure DNS and when to disable it. It will turn it off when a VPN is active or when network tells it to turn it off.
- Increased Protection: At this level, the user controls everything. You can choose the secure DNS provider (e.g., Cloudflare or NextDNS). You can manually use the local DNS if desired.
- Max Protection: At this level of the protection Firefox will always use the secure DNS. You can choose a secure DNS provider of your choice. If secure DNS is not working, the websites will fail to load.
- Off: As anyone can guess, this option turns off the secure DNS altogether.
- After selecting any of these four options, you can check whether the selected secure DNS options are working or not by visiting about:networking and checking the DNS section.
Which of these levels should one use? It depends entirely on the individual users. If you want to completely shield your DNS queries from your local ISP, then you can go for the maximum protection level otherwise the default protection level works the best.