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Niceee, Firefox Android needs more attention. It’s such an underrated browser. It’s non chromium, search bar on bottom by default, uBlock Origin, https-only mode, cookie banner reduction (soon), the best reader mode of all browsers, and addon support.
For me it’s the ability to install extensions. I can’t browser without the dark reader extension. If I look at bright screens for long time, I get a headache and won’t get sleep
Wish it were as easy to use as Samsung Internet browser dark mode. You can enable/disable with just 2 taps: settings > enable/disable.
I don’t even have to do that. Dark Reader on Firefox is synced to my system settings. So my dark mode is set to a timer, which automatically turns it on, including Dark Reader.
Also Samsung Internet buttons & layout can be customised, you can have the search bar on top or bottom and most importantly? There is a “tap to go up” feature. It’s one feature I sorely miss switching from IPhone :(
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Cookie banner reduction already exists usint uBlock. You just need to enable some additional lists
uBlock settings > filter list > annoyance > AdGuard/uBO - Cookie Notices
Oh yeah I went crazy and enabled all the annoyance filters, including every other filter lol. Browsers will never be able to keep up with the uBlock Origin extension. It’s probably the single most privacy preserving software out there.
I also used this list as a custom adlist to bypass seemingly all paywalls
Saving this one, thanks!
I really did not like the search bar at the bottom. Thankfully, you can move it back up!
I found it unexpectedly appealing on the bottom, but good to know you can move it up! Extra point for Firefox.
Can I log in to my Google account though, in the actual browser? Firefox is fantastic,l and those features are amazing, but I keep all my browsing, bookmarks, and so on in one place, my Google account.
I need to be able to look something up on my pc or tablet etc which all run chrome, and be able to find that quickly on my phone by typing into the address bar, etc.
I don’t usually care much about integrations but this one is too convenient to give up.
And I suppose, thinking about it, it would have to support multiple profiles too, because I have my personal Google account profile in Chrome, then my work Google profile, etc. Different sets of bookmarks and settings and so on for the different needs.
No, you won’t get Google profile sync built into Firefox. They have their own Firefox profile sync.
Firefox has its own syncing system via a Firefox account that’ll sync your bookmarks, open tabs, history, logins, etc…
Firefox on desktop does support multiple profiles, but they are nowhere near as convenient as Chrome’s which is just a few clicks.
That’s the reason why I use Firefox on Android.
That’s the reason why I might start to use FF again (tbh at this point I don’t see why to use anything else).
I am using Firefox as well and I don’t think I’d go back to Chrome, but I wish it supported progressive web apps a bit better!
Is there even an adblocker for chrome on mobile?
Not for chrome, but there are forks that have adblocking capabilities.
Kiwi is a browser that lets you install extensions, so you can install an ad blocker
Or Brave, that includes it as a browser feature. But Brave has had many weird features and taken many weird decisions, so people recommend just moving to Firefox
They said PWA. Chrome and Chrome like browsers can install pwa as native apps, aka webapks on your android. Firefox can only add a shortcut where sites can run full screen.
Well, on a second thought I guess they don’t have much tabs control, so that is a bit of a bummer.
Fr. Chrome on android is much more stable in my experience. But Firefox still wins due to adblock + sweet sweet dark mode.
Can someone TLDR please ?
Are you a developer? If not then the only thing you need to know is that Mozilla is essentially announcing enabling desktop extensions to be able to work on mobile
Oh cookies auto delete here I come
Sick! I just switched to Firefox nightly so I can use ublacklist on mobile.
I’ve used Firefox Nightly for ages, and admittedly, it sometimes lets a crashing bug through. But it was worth it for stuff like old.reddit redirect on tablet, lol. I just don’t want the stupid “USE OUR APP” banners while searching.
That’s awesome. I wish I knew about that years ago.
What’s that?
It’s an extension that allows you to blacklist certain websites from appearing in search results. So if you wanna prevent for instance facebook links from showing up in search results, uBlacklist can make that possible.
Oh good, now I can do an image search without completely useless Pinterest results
Ah thanks.
Oh, finally!
They were only disabled… five? years ago?
So how have we gotten mobile extensions over the last year? Were those pre-selected by Mozilla, perhaps?
finally
Firefox Mobile supported add-ons for many years, but due to having to change some things under the hood a few years ago, add-ons got restricted a bit (though you could still use them).
They’re basically announcing they finally fixed the issue and they’re coming back.
More than just a bit, they only approved a few at all as far as I could tell fron the years of using the browser but yea.
They don’t spell this out, but my interpretation is that extension devs will be able to publish extensions for use on Android, without Mozilla explicitly approving each one of them.
Many desktop extensions work as-is on Android, so when this goes live, we’ll likely see dozens, if not hundreds, of extensions becoming available in the following weeks.
Firefox for Android previously only supported a limited number of select extensions. They’re finally opening it up so you can use any extension.
*opening it up again!
Fuck yeaahh
Does it mean I can install any desktop extension which was not available on android?
Glad I made the switch back to FireFox a year or two ago. As a Dev, I was entrenched in Chrome and it wasn’t an easy move but with the path Google are currently treading around ad serving, blocking the ad blocks etc. I feel I made the right choice…
I use Firefox on Android and it’s great. Ad blocking is the big one but it’s just a good browser. I deleted the Twitter and Reddit apps recently and Firefox lets me bookmark the sites on the launcher so it’s like a separate “app” but not taking up 100s MB of space and I can block ads on these sites. I’m hoping that I’ll be to use the Twitter desktop extension that prunes even more junk out of the experience - recommendations, what’s trending and other clickbait garbage
Do you have anything installed to make them stop bugging you about using their awful apps?
I think the ublock annoyances list should help with those.
The site formerly known as Twitter has full PWA support. At least it had the last time I checked.
It should work exactly the same as a normal app.
Reads like they are finally returning to full addon support. I’ve been using Firefox for Android long enough to remember that, before the grand redesign, they supported all addons and let you access about:config.
Back then, I was using uMatrix on FfA, now I am forced to use NoScript, which is more fickle to use and less stable.
Finally. You’ve been able to use desktop addons this whole time, but you have to do a whole runaround:
- Create Firefox account
- Sign in on desktop
- Install the add-ons you want
- Create an app collection and publish it
- Sign in on mobile
- Enable developer mode
- Download your custom app collection
- (Optional: sign out on both devices)
Yeah, and it only worked on some add-ons, for some reason.
Fortunately IceRaven supports pretty much all extensions. Only few of them actually work however.
Hopefully it won’t break too many forks.
this is huge!
Woah that’s awesome. So ublock origin on android Firefox? Freaking nice!
uBlock on Firefox mobile has been out for a while now
From the beginning. Even when Firefox had to restrict the mobile add-ons a few years ago, uBlock was one of the few that remained.
uBlock, Dark Reader, Privacy Badger, ClearURLs, DecentralEyes. They have all been there the whole time
Even tapermonkey!
Or violentmonkey for a FOSS tampermonkey compatible alternative.
Huh, I thought it was FOSS… I’ll check that out.
I can’t get any tamper monkey scripts to actually work except for YouTube scripts.
Had to use the nightly build version, thoughI suck and I’ve been off platform too longIt’s the thing I miss most after intentionally going to ‘that other platform’ for dev reasons, though Brave Browser is a decent stand-in for FF+uBlock on this side of the walled garden.
uBlock has been available on stable for a long time now.
Really!? Well, shit, I hate life more, then.
What is new, it seems, is the general availability of a lot more extensions. Right now it’s just a handful of curated ones. You can’t just go to addons and expect to install anything at the moment.
That said… RES on mobile? I’m intrigued to find out how well that works.
You can find out right now. I’ve been using it along with old.reddit redirect for years on mobile.
The truth is Firefox mobile has been able to run desktop add-ons this whole time. All that happened was they had to restrict availability of add-ons from the addon store to only the handful that they had verified work without issues. All the other add-ons could still work if they were maintained, but Mozilla couldn’t guarantee they’d work yet, so they wouldn’t let you install them directly like the other add-ons.
Yeah, that’s where nightly was when I still had it, with only a few, if important, extensions available.
But RES and old.reddit were no-go and made me sad. At least I had RIF (RIP IN PEACE).
Either way, glad to see it’s getting wider support for all. I wish it worked that way in fruitymobileland, but at least there is a browser (Orion) that actually supports both FF and Chrome extensions that tries to make up for things.
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/1be51ad3-b406-41a2-89f9-e03c17d06070.jpeg
It’s really sad after all these years people still don’t know about the addon work around.
You could have been using desktop add-ons on mobile this whole time. It wasn’t a secret, either, Mozilla told you how.
It’s crazy that it’s been 3 years and this isn’t common knowledge among Firefox users.
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I’m not on nightly and have been using ublock and a few other extensions. It’s nothing new afaik.
you can use ublock origin on android firefox right now… been using it for years.
I use it since maybe a year now on Android and it’s amazing. The toggeling of the overlay and weird zap objects/overlays function takes some getting used too but otherwise its just like on the Desktop.
Yeah, the way Firefox manages addon interfaces on mobile makes it really unintuitive to use ublock’s tools, but you can absolutely use them with some practice and patience. Personal filters makes so many websites usable.
Hopefully whatever this update is will make using the element zapper/filter easier.
Is there an extension for hiding the annoying attempts of reddit web app trying to get you to install their app, then login through Google? Still find myself there when it’s from a Google search.
This might not be a proper solution but having old reddit redirect extebsion seems to almost all attempt by reddit to get me to use the app.
Yeah, just an addon to automatically redirect all Reddit links to the old.reddit.com version would already make Firefox addon support on Android super useful for me!
Since Reddit threads are still sometimes the only results when searching for questions to uncommon issues.
I use that addon currently on my firefox, its compatible with the android version, but to install it you must create a addon collection with that extension in it and add it to your brwser, detailed instruction are available online. Or you could try Iceraven which is a fork of android firefox, it has this extension in its collection.
The comment by user unverifiedApk down in this thread has instruction on using custom collection if you decide to go down path.
Thanks for the tip, I’ll have a look!
Possibly some of the non-default lists in ublock origin? Worth having a look!
Stylus and creating a userstyle
Element hiding filter of uBlock/css rules for uBlock
Huh, I thought it was just doing url based blocking and not hooking into the UI side, will have to take a look. Kinda treat browser plug-ins as a set and forget it thing.
Same. But there are list which make excessive use of this feature. I hope gorhill manages to keep the codebase organized despite the featureset.
This is great news, I’ve just switched to Firefox & Firefox Focus on Android as a longtime user of Mobile Chrome and Desktop Firefox. It always felt weak on mobile, but things have changed. Still hating the purple though, and the placement of the new tab button but that’s a small price to pay.
So we finally get some major functionality back? I never cared about that redisgn but removing proper extension support was a really shitty part of it that I did care about!
Nice, no more nightly and beta for me…
Fennec from F-Droid is a way to go. It lets you enable extensions and is based on stable release
If this comes through, I might no longer need Iceraven (andoid firefox with full addon support, like before they tore it out; I use it for Singlefile)
You know, I always thought Android Firefox always had full addon support. I’ve got uBlock Origin now, and I remember having Stylus/TamperMonkey.
I also use Iceraven but mobile Firefox has support for some popular extensions
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It did, then came the big rewrite, and nearly all extensions went away. Some eventually came back, but Singlefile never did; there’s no longer any way to save the html of a site you visit. So I keep Iceraven, which still supports the addons that firefox used to.
I’m already using extensions on Android with Firefox Nightly but yeah I guess that’s nice
Yeah it’s been nice but it has come with a bit of a learning curve. The process now is much more straightforward. Maybe devs will be more inclined to build since the userbase has future.
This is seriously cool. I’ve been waiting for this for a while.
Well that’s nice. But how many developers will care to make Android extensions at this point? Also will the current unsupported extensions in custom collections stop working?
