I remember wanting to try out Firefox on Android but not being able to use it with Tampermonkey which was a real bummer. Better late than never, I guess?
One question on my mind is why it took so long. Is Android a harder platform to make extensions available on or something?
It did support extensions until they basically redesigned the app from the ground up a few years back. They said they’d focus on stability first then move on from there.
It did, legacy versions of it had almost full extension support and also even allowed you to install them from storage as xpi files and poke around about:config, then they took away both of those things completely in fenix (only allowing about:config in debug versions and blocking XPI install altogether).
Does this mean that the storage API will finally be available on mobile? At the moment this is probably my biggest annoyance since I have to manually transfer allow lists for various extensions across desktop and mobile.
As an iOS user and long time Firefox user (never switched to chrome in my life) I feel jealous. But one can only hope that we too in the APPLE walled garden won’t be left behind. Though I understand that it would be a long shot. :(
Apple doesn’t allow extensions to be distributed outside of the AppStore and Firefox on Android is based on WebKit anyway because neither do they allow third-party browser engines. So I wouldn’t hold my breath.
I’ve been running Firefox as my default browser on my phone since 2018 without webkit. Even other apps opens their links with geckoview. It started with FF Focus, shortly after FF Preview, then FF beta and since last year FF for Android.
It’s sad to say, but the current restrictions on iOS are likely to be one of the last things holding Chrome/Blink back from total dominance. It’s already the default on Android, and it’s installed on most computers. So if a real Chrome ever shows up for iOS, web devs won’t have any reason to test on Safari anymore. They’ll tell their visitors to just download Chrome if it doesn’t work on their iPhone or iPad.
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.
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.
Is 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.
I don’t know about pre-79, but their current version supports a very, very limited selection of extensions, many of which are to specifically improve the mobile version of Firefox. Currently, only a total of 22 extensions are supported, many of which share the same purposes.
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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