iOS/iPad OS is relatively much easier to develop and it’s a completely different branch from Android as it’s a skin on top of Safari Web View. All other platform use their own Quantum/Gecko Engine.
Kiwi is a mobile only browser if I’m not mistaken. This article is about DESKTOP extensions working on mobile. Firefox already supported a limited set of (mobile) extensions for a while.
Edit. Sorry. I stand corrected. Might try kiwi even.
Mobile FF is already awesome with UBlock Origin and YT background playback extensions. I wish to install an auto redirect extension. (Twitter to Nitter) I know it is doable on beta w/ extensions etc. but I want to see them on normal Firefox.
On android I find its also a good idea to have a system wide ad blocker solution because android and all their apps are so inundated by ads, so I recommend dns66 (which can be found on fdroid) which has multiple blocklists you can subscribe to. This will cover some ads thats are built directly into apps and almost all ads that would appear in websites on a browser. This helps a lot since some apps will open a browser window for -reasons- and they sometimes have their own internal browser or they will just use chrome by default, not respecting your default browser choice, and in those cases you cant have ublock installed to protect you and those pages are so ad-overloaded that finding what you are looking for is next to impossible.
I’m using dns.adguard.com as private dns provider in Android s network settings. Am i doing it wrong? I never see ads in any apps or browsers though… they are blocked everywhere
I’ve got a Pihole set up running on my NAS but unfortunately it’s really difficult to find ad tracking lists that both 1) block ads effectively and 2) don’t break a large portion of webpages
That’s nice, maybe they can finally re-enable about:config in the damn thing too. They removed it from mobile Firefox years ago and the lack of it aggravates the hell out of me.
If you have enabled the sync feature in Firefox, it seamlessly works with Fennec; as does the integration between Fennec and Firefox Desktop. Simply log on with your Firefox account in Fennec, and you won’t even feel the difference.
Didn’t know that. I also got some kind of shady vibes from Kiwi, but never run into any issues with it. Firefox was causing all kinds of problems with pages failing to load so I bailed, but would be glad to return if they fix the bugs and add full extension support.
This article was weird for me also I have all my extension already installed like bitwarden for passwords and all kind of adblockers and scriptblockers
I’ve been using Kiwi browser for ages and it’s had extension support the entire time since I quit using Firefox on mobile. I would still be using Firefox if it hadn’t just kept randomly not loading pages anymore and requiring a restart, because it did at least support the one extension I can’t live without; ublock origin, but the bugs were just too much. I might give Firefox mobile another shot when this new version hits stable release.
No, no, no! It was supporting all the desktop extensions. For years. Until the damn buggy rewrite for no good reason. And then we were suddenly left with like 5 of them.
For a year after that I was still running the last stable release. But unfortunately the web evolves too fast.
Yeah I suppose so. I have a BUNCH of extension on my desktop Firefox, but I don’t need much on my mobile version tbh. Especially since I have a few extensions that work for websites that already have apps (like I have sponsorblock and pockettube for YouTube but there’s no point in installing them on my mobile FF since I have the YouTube app so…).
No adblocker, sponsorblock, or return the dislike button.
I also don’t use the app for a website if the mobile website is good enough. Less software on my phone, so a reduced amount of storage used on apps, fewer updates, hopefully reduced CPU and battery consumption, fewer security issues, reduced data collection, and my phone is just a little cleaner to use. Everyone has their own preference, this is just mine :)
spoken like someone who has never tried to use that browser. it definitely supported addons, but tried to implement 2015 features to run on 2002-tier hardware
It still does, experimentally, if you enable developer settings, rather unintuitively through a Firefox Add-Ons account. Developer settings are not available in the official release but the Nightly builds as well as some forks, like 🦊Fennec, include them. Of course the addon settings often look out of place on a small screen and things like uBlock’s Block Element picker do not work as intended.
fennec is just the code name for the rewrite, hence the fdroid built-from-source name
theres a limited number of available addons in fennec unless you go through hoops (used to be you could make a ‘collection’ dunno if thats still the dumbass-workaround-of-choice for the dumbass devs)
Well, the bizarre collection workaround is present in Beta and Nightly releases as well, and is intentionally well hidden. It also allows installing/uninstalling extensions quickly when testing on multiple devices, or sharing extension collections with testers. It is indeed needlessly convoluted for users but I would not describe the workaround as dumbass if it works well for the intended audience. You are correct, plenty of Firefox’s advantages can only be achieved by modifying the settings from defaults, often through developers’ hacky about:config keys. Mozilla thinks that mass adoption and their financial security is only possible if they make a noob-friendly browser with a few big buttons and Google search so tech-savvy people need to jump through hoops (profile importing etc.) to quickly set up the browser to their liking.
Its dumbass because if the addons work on mobile, let people use them. Instead they said “you can use these 5 addons, and you can use any addon you please if you jump through our hoops, like setting compact mode to enabled in about:config because we want to gather usage data that shows nobody misses compact mode”.
I’m *genuinely *shocked the folks at mozilla are even bothering to finish addon support.
Like don’t get me wrong, i love firefox and I support them in general, but holy shit is firefox gunning for its current userbase in an attempt to synthesize users that may or may not exist. And I think the way they manage these contentious choices is poor at best. Where the scale is from how-signal-removed-sms to the-windows-11-taskbar, they get 138.2.
It’s long overdue. I’ve been running Nightly to get around the shockingly limited number of addons available on Firefox for Android. Hopefully Mozzila don’t fumble the bag with this as its a great opportunity to steal users from Chrome.
Best on mobile, yes. The few they allow in FFfA stable is a tiny amount considering how many actually can work, but Mozilla arbitrarily decided they won’t allow.
I didn’t know it was a mass rewrite, I just assumed they ruined the UI and features to “keep” up with mobile chrome, as most of these big tech companies do
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