I've been running Iceraven for a while, which is just Firefox for Android with more addons enabled and some other annoyances fixed. I'll probably switch back to the official Firefox after this ships.
I also use Iceraven and Mull as well. Both have served me great over the years. They're much better than Vanadium that comes by default with GrapheneOS.
Too late to edit, but it looks like I'll be sticking with Iceraven for a while longer after all, as over half of my current addons are not on the offical allowed list.
"Firefox for Android voluntary broke add-on support in 2020 and has now fixed it after 3 years of users and developers complaining about it"
Doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
I mean as a user I get the rationale for the rewrite and one step back two steps forward but it genuinely feels like Mozilla has prioritized just about everything else instead of this.
I've switched to kiwi on android ever since mozila dropped the ball. It's chrome with all addons. No complaints whatsoever :-)
It's not about teaching anyone anything. All I want is a browser that supports any addons I want. Mozilla decided they didn't want to provide what I want when they blacklisted most addons and required their wierd signing requirements, so I simply switched to a browser that does.
> Mozilla decided they didn't want to provide what I want when they blacklisted most addons and required their wierd signing requirements, so I simply switched to a browser that does.
You're free, of course, to be a patron of whatever software you want. However, they only instituted "weird" signing requirements to help dramatically slow down or stop the influx of addons that were maliciously changing browser settings among other hazards. If that doesn't sound like some good utility to you, then I think we'll just have to agree to disagree. Online security has never been a priority for a large subset of internet users.
I don't see chrome having that problem and it doesn't enforce similar signing requirements. Mozilla's decision was either ill thought out or was not motivated by "online security".
In any case, most people tend choose functionality over security if they have to choose and, in this case, it seems like we did.
Security researchers literally wrote a PoC extension for Chrome, which was in tech news just a few months ago, where the extension was able to steal passwords and form data. So Chrome definitely has a problem with malicious browser extensions, because I can guarantee you that malicious internet users haven't just overlooked that avenue into your computer, and it just goes unaddressed or under-addressed.
Assuming no other chrome-specific vulnerabilities, the same PoC can also be implemented for Firefox because it allows temporary installation of unsigned addons. Besides, I'm not arguing that extensions can't be malicious.
Also, I fail to see how the existence of a malicious extension PoC translates "Chrome definitely has a problem with malicious browser extensions". I'm sure you're right about malicious actors not overlooking extensions, yet here we are with virtually everyone using chrome and no wide-spread security issues to speak of. Proofs and pudding.
Not because of add-ons obviously but because of the Mozilla foundation mass layoffs with the MDN, Servo, Rust team, etc. The contrast of C-levels (of an open-source _foundation_) like Mitchell raking in +3M a year and the layoffs felt too hypocritical. The suits have taken over and they lost their mission.
I will not be donating to them until there is a clear way to make donations specifically for Developer payroll only.
> Not all Firefox add-ons available from addons.mozilla.org will work with the mobile browser. But any extension marked as Android compatible should work, and if you want to browse a subset of compatible extensions, there’s a new page for that.
If a developer marks their addon as compatible with the mobile version, you can install it. Mozilla isn't adding any of these addons themselves, it's all up to the devs now.
I'm sticking with kiwi: Firefox is still missing the must needed "I don't mind about cookies" extension.
In Europe, by law, each time you open a page you get a weird and annoying popup saying something like: "the website uses cookies, are you ok with that?". The extension just nix the nonsense popup.
Hopefully, SponsorBlock is included. The official YouTube app and the website are both plagued with sponsored segments. FOSS alternatives don't seem to support personalized feeds (although I may be mistaken).
I wish content creators would just briefly mention that sponsor links are in the video info and not spend minutes talking about it. I just double-tap-right/skip over that and it only serves to make me annoyed. I would actually be much more likely to at least glance at a written list of sponsors and info for a video that I liked.
Lex Fridman does that basically, in the first 30 seconds, and mentions video info has full list. I mention Lex because that's the only example I can think of right now.
Other's seem to go out of their way to embed sponsor reads within the video at random times.
ReVanced patches the official YouTube app to remove ads, add SponsorBlock, enable background playback, and about a million other improvements.
It can optionally hide shorts, comments, watermarks, and other stuff. It can remember the playback speed and enable speeds higher than 2X. It basically fixes everything but the recommendation algorithm.
Why is greater-than-2x playback such a popular feature? Seems kind of useless compared to audio boosting (to make YouTube videos play at the same volume as all other apps for Android) and 1.1x/1.2x/1.3x playback. 1.25x and 1.5x are often too fast for some videos.
1.5~2x is my normal speed, but sometimes someone just talks slow and I'll go up to 2.25 or even 2.5x.
Other times it's a video I've seen before and I'm just trying to find a particular spot - then I might go as high to 3x.
I'm not sure about audio boosting, but I know it does let you customize the speeds in the playback list. I got rid of everything below 1x, and you could add your 1.1/1.2/1.3 options.
NewPipe (the Sponsorblock fork) is open source with better UX than Revanced anyway. I cannot get over people seriously recommending using a hacked up, closed source app with access to your Google account. Beyond bananas.
Still feels hacky to me, but I definitely rescind my earlier comments then. To be sure though, you're saying ReVanced patches out/around the builtin Google auth and uses GmsCore? So the user is presumably authing through microG? That actually seems... really reasonable, and makes me feel bad about the way I portrayed it.
Unfortunately, the "browser", for lack of a better term... sucks.
It was released as a preview in 2019 and has barely made appreciable strides since.
The team is so semi-competent that they have added and broken and disabled pull to refresh more than once now.
Add-ons have been on life support ever since they were introduced.
If I fullscreen a video, my browser minimizes.
Battery usage is abysmal.
Speed is noticably worse than any chromium fork.
Of course, I don't think I could do any better, but I'm not producing a browser, nor have I fired any engineers despite not having particularly reknown engineering chops as a company in recent memory.
This software is just terrible, especially because this failure isn't in a vacuum, it actually cements chromium as a monopoly of engineering competence.
One thing I've noticed is that sticky divs of most kinds (e.g. the bar at the bottom of Twitter.com, sidebars on news sites, etc.) horrendously crush the performance.
But if you kill them, by zapping with ublock or using another extension or bookmarklet, the performance is instantly a lot closer to something like the Chrome or Brave apps
It has been like this since Fenix launched, so at this point it makes me need to assume that it's some sort of fundamental limitation of their architecture. It is rather unfortunate.
There was no need for that "redesign". None. There is a distinct possibility that older Firefox could be in use today without issue. People must learn when to just leave certaon features alone.
Not to sound like some sort of Pale Moon absolutist, but, I feel like the frontend changes were too much. And 3 years without Firefox biggest selling point is painful. It hurts. It really hurts. The only reason I haven't sold my soul and dignity to Chromium is that Iceraven lets me use μMatrix.
It had to be rewritten. Essentially there was no formal interface between the frontend and Gecko, and it had turned into a sluggish hairball of a monolith. We redesigned Gecko on Android to be embeddable (GeckoView[1]) and so a new frontend had to be written. That part was absolutely necessary.
The rest of the debate is just about the UX, really.
It wasn't just a "redesign", they replaced a significant chunk of the internals. And the new version is much faster and more responsive than the old version.
That has not been my experience. I was trying Firefox and their various preview products on my Android once in a while for years. Every time I would bounce because of painful performance and bad scrolling.
The latest incarnation... well it can choke on YouTube videos once in a while and you have to force kill it. And it does eat more battery than Chromium browsers.
But the current state is the first time I've found Firefox mobile version usable as a daily driver.
Maybe it's just phones have caught up - I'm on a Pixel 7.
But the point stands: vanilla FF mobile is now good-enough-for-me, and extensions make it wonderful.
When I read comments like this, it really blows me away. I don't have anything near the experience you are describing. I've used Firefox on Android for a while now with UBlock origin doing it's job as it should. It doesn't kill my battery or run sluggishly. I use it for YouTube and browser-based YouTube is missing some live stream features, but that is by Google's design.
I haven't used chrome in years, because while all those things are partially true, ublock origin makes them pale into insignificance compared to the eye sore I am otherwise subjected to.
What I really want is to use chrome for PWAs and something that is essentially Firefox reader mode for actual web documents.
I love Firefox reader mode! It's genuinely really helpful, especially on sites that 'optimise' for mobile by making it nearly unusable with their fancy font scaling that, without fail, always overflows off the page.
I'm using Firefox on Android daily as my only mobile browser since Google tried to force tab groups on me. It could be faster, but other than that I don't really have any issues.
I have not tested battery life, but it is acceptable to me, as is most of the performance.
I can confirm the full-screen video bug - I just tried watching a video on the New York Times site, and full-screening with Firefox is completely hosed, where Chrome works fine. I have Decentraleyes and uBlock installed as addons.
My experience is decidedly the opposite, and the single reason for that is uBlock Origin. The principal way to make websites load fast is to make them load less garbage. Fast browser engine is nice but not even close to proper content blocking (e.g. uBlock's JS defusers or DOM rules).
But extension capability is great overall. For example, you don't like how HN styles downvoted comments in unreadable light grey on light grey? Just add a user CSS extension and use this filter:
> Unfortunately, the "browser", for lack of a better term... sucks.
I have no idea what you are talking about. I've been using Firefox and Firefox Focus for years and if anything it's always been fast and ultra reliable.
I've used Firefox on Android for many years, and while I don't agree that it's terrible I do think it's worse than it used to be.
Around the same time as the extensions support was disabled, they removed a lot of features I liked and added some features and UI changes that still annoy me. It's a bit sad.
Interesting.
Have you tried using sshd in termux to connect to android through ssh instead of some of your steps? I think am works in termux but I haven't tried it there.
Firefox mobile is the only reason I barely use my laptop for browsing anymore. I only need noscript and ublock origin keeping the modern web bearable.
Now, if only there was a powerful computer device with the physical dimensions of my Kobo Libra 2. Almost got a Lenovo Legion Go but it's 3x the weight of my reader - more than 600 grams without the joypads
I'm the creator of the Repibox recipe extension and it looks like it's working on Firefox mobile without me having to do anything. Pretty cool!
Shameless plug, Repibox is a recipe extension that immediately pulls the recipe into a modal on top of the page. You can add it to Firefox by going to Repibox.com
75 comments
[ 6.2 ms ] story [ 209 ms ] threadI guess:
"Firefox for Android voluntary broke add-on support in 2020 and has now fixed it after 3 years of users and developers complaining about it"
Doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
I mean as a user I get the rationale for the rewrite and one step back two steps forward but it genuinely feels like Mozilla has prioritized just about everything else instead of this.
It's not about teaching anyone anything. All I want is a browser that supports any addons I want. Mozilla decided they didn't want to provide what I want when they blacklisted most addons and required their wierd signing requirements, so I simply switched to a browser that does.
You're free, of course, to be a patron of whatever software you want. However, they only instituted "weird" signing requirements to help dramatically slow down or stop the influx of addons that were maliciously changing browser settings among other hazards. If that doesn't sound like some good utility to you, then I think we'll just have to agree to disagree. Online security has never been a priority for a large subset of internet users.
In any case, most people tend choose functionality over security if they have to choose and, in this case, it seems like we did.
Cheers.
Also, I fail to see how the existence of a malicious extension PoC translates "Chrome definitely has a problem with malicious browser extensions". I'm sure you're right about malicious actors not overlooking extensions, yet here we are with virtually everyone using chrome and no wide-spread security issues to speak of. Proofs and pudding.
Not because of add-ons obviously but because of the Mozilla foundation mass layoffs with the MDN, Servo, Rust team, etc. The contrast of C-levels (of an open-source _foundation_) like Mitchell raking in +3M a year and the layoffs felt too hypocritical. The suits have taken over and they lost their mission.
I will not be donating to them until there is a clear way to make donations specifically for Developer payroll only.
Restricting add-ons in this way seems more like a Google move than a Mozilla one.
If a developer marks their addon as compatible with the mobile version, you can install it. Mozilla isn't adding any of these addons themselves, it's all up to the devs now.
I still don't understand why they don't do what kiwi does. It supports all the chrome addons without modification.
In Europe, by law, each time you open a page you get a weird and annoying popup saying something like: "the website uses cookies, are you ok with that?". The extension just nix the nonsense popup.
Other's seem to go out of their way to embed sponsor reads within the video at random times.
It can optionally hide shorts, comments, watermarks, and other stuff. It can remember the playback speed and enable speeds higher than 2X. It basically fixes everything but the recommendation algorithm.
https://revanced.app/
See also: https://www.reddit.com/r/revancedapp/comments/xlcny9/revance...
Other times it's a video I've seen before and I'm just trying to find a particular spot - then I might go as high to 3x.
I'm not sure about audio boosting, but I know it does let you customize the speeds in the playback list. I got rid of everything below 1x, and you could add your 1.1/1.2/1.3 options.
https://github.com/ReVanced
https://github.com/microg/GmsCore
It is, however, in Iceraven's list: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collections/1620123...
(And, of course, it works great in ReVanced or NewPipe x SponsorBlock.)
It was released as a preview in 2019 and has barely made appreciable strides since.
The team is so semi-competent that they have added and broken and disabled pull to refresh more than once now.
Add-ons have been on life support ever since they were introduced.
If I fullscreen a video, my browser minimizes.
Battery usage is abysmal.
Speed is noticably worse than any chromium fork.
Of course, I don't think I could do any better, but I'm not producing a browser, nor have I fired any engineers despite not having particularly reknown engineering chops as a company in recent memory.
This software is just terrible, especially because this failure isn't in a vacuum, it actually cements chromium as a monopoly of engineering competence.
But if you kill them, by zapping with ublock or using another extension or bookmarklet, the performance is instantly a lot closer to something like the Chrome or Brave apps
It has been like this since Fenix launched, so at this point it makes me need to assume that it's some sort of fundamental limitation of their architecture. It is rather unfortunate.
The rest of the debate is just about the UX, really.
[1] https://geckoview.dev
The latest incarnation... well it can choke on YouTube videos once in a while and you have to force kill it. And it does eat more battery than Chromium browsers.
But the current state is the first time I've found Firefox mobile version usable as a daily driver.
Maybe it's just phones have caught up - I'm on a Pixel 7.
But the point stands: vanilla FF mobile is now good-enough-for-me, and extensions make it wonderful.
Nothing else is really relevant to me on mobile.
What I really want is to use chrome for PWAs and something that is essentially Firefox reader mode for actual web documents.
It was the easiest browser option with adblock, which pretty much sealed the deal for me
I have not tested battery life, but it is acceptable to me, as is most of the performance.
I can confirm the full-screen video bug - I just tried watching a video on the New York Times site, and full-screening with Firefox is completely hosed, where Chrome works fine. I have Decentraleyes and uBlock installed as addons.
I have used add-ons with it for the past years. The ones you really need, like uBlock Origin, have always been there.
My experience is decidedly the opposite, and the single reason for that is uBlock Origin. The principal way to make websites load fast is to make them load less garbage. Fast browser engine is nice but not even close to proper content blocking (e.g. uBlock's JS defusers or DOM rules).
But extension capability is great overall. For example, you don't like how HN styles downvoted comments in unreadable light grey on light grey? Just add a user CSS extension and use this filter:
I have no idea what you are talking about. I've been using Firefox and Firefox Focus for years and if anything it's always been fast and ultra reliable.
Around the same time as the extensions support was disabled, they removed a lot of features I liked and added some features and UI changes that still annoy me. It's a bit sad.
Man I have this, I have a very popular phone model, how can this not be fixed in years.
https://blog.plzat.me/2023-05-23-android-in-wireguardland-pu...
It worked great! But, I'm glad I don't need to use it anymore.
Is this the trick you're talking about?
I guess it is one of the more complex to port from a technical point of view. Hopefully soon!
Now, if only there was a powerful computer device with the physical dimensions of my Kobo Libra 2. Almost got a Lenovo Legion Go but it's 3x the weight of my reader - more than 600 grams without the joypads
Shameless plug, Repibox is a recipe extension that immediately pulls the recipe into a modal on top of the page. You can add it to Firefox by going to Repibox.com