One more reason to stick with Firefox
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.
It’s available in nightly (and I think dev) builds
If you don’t want to use the potentially unstable Nightly, Dev or Beta, you can use Fennec (stable builds with dev features).
probably in normal Firefox too, it’s just hidden in all of them
Fennec still supports it, just as it supports add-ons from the official Mozilla store. Don’t see any reason why I should go back to the official app.
How do I make use of this? I can’t see a way to install them on my Fennec from F Droid
You have to add a custom addons collection. That’s how.
I haven’t gotten around making them and using them, and it seems every guide online is vastly out of date
Is there an easy way to migrate from the official app to Fennec? Keeping accounts, extensions and settings?
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.
Doesn’t it already support them ?
~~edit: yes it already supports them, but it seems that now there will be more focus on mobile ~~ edit3: as pointed by the comment below, only on nightly and certain forks
edit2: also they forgot about kiwi, but then it’s not a major browser (and is it still maintained ?). still would’ve been cool if they corrected this
Yeah, kiwi is still supported and got an UI update a month ago. But it’s chromium based if remember correctly.
oh I didn’t know, pretty cool
at least both chromium and Firefox get a version with add ons
Nightly versions and Fennec.
Mull too
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
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.
I used to have an app to do the redirection on several sites automically but afair the Nitter thing was just so unstable that I removed the app.
It might have been some time ago, because even the main instance has been consistently working for me as of recent
Yeah this winter and spring
Same, like 30% of the time it worked, the other 70% it would be very slow or not load at all
Have a look at YouTube ReVanced if you want a much better YouTube experience on Android. :)
use Newpipe, it’s free software, unlike revanced.
Everyone forgets Kiwi Browser :(
Have been using it for years.
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.
Well yes, Kiwi supports Chromium extensions, it’s the same concept
Cool! So many useful extensions that I couldn’t use on android.
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.
I’ve been using the nightly build, using the desktop extensions for a while now. It’s SO worth it. In particular, the YouTube “SponsorBlock” is super convenient.
But didn’t it used to support desktop extensions on mobile before the redesign about 3 years ago? Also, hasn’t Kiwi had extensions for like 6 years?
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.
At least with firefox beta, you can create your own collection of extensions and use those. That’s what I do and I can install any extension.
More here: https://www.androidpolice.com/install-add-on-extension-mozilla-firefox-android/
I have it on Firefox Nightly with the dev stuff. It’s pretty great tbh
Not all extensions appear to be compatible at the moment. I know if I add a couple of my favorite desktop extensions to my collection that it breaks.
Hmm… interesting. I’m able to use ublock and two extensions for fanfiction. That’s interesting that it just breaks for you.
Maybe you’re lucky with your extensions of choice.
I’m not saying all extensions I tried adding broke the collection - only a couple did; the other extensions worked as expected.
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…).
I actively don’t use the YouTube app.
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 :)
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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.
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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.
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I would kill for this on iOS. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty happy with my Safari Extensions, but I’d rather have uBlock Origin, Stylish etc.
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They already support uBlock origin and that’s all I need.
On iOS or just Android?
Oh on Android for me.
Dark Reader too
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’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
Yeah I wish I could edit my hosts file for example so it blocks all advertisement websites.
Try Blokada
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
Seems like many people aren’t aware that’s an option
Whoa 🤯. Never realized this somehow. That’s awesome. No ads on mobile.
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I’m trying to make the switch over to FF, but Vivaldi just has so many features I find useful.
Kiwi broswer already does it, same with the Orion browser for iOS
That’s why the article itself adds the “major browser” qualification.
