I think most users like having their sync setup automatically with their email, and most Chrome users have Gmail so it’s one simple step to sync.
Firefox has a separate profile process that is cumbersome. And switching profiles is even worse, I think you have to use command line switches to get profile manager?
I think you're talking about the Mozilla Accounts feature (recently renamed from Firefox Accounts). It is not as smooth an experience as Google accounts, but it works reasonably well.
Firefox has a separate profile feature, and it is one of the great things about Firefox. You can access profiles through "about:profiles". You can (at least on Linux, don't think it's possble on MacOS) start firefox with a profile chooser. Each profile is a completely isolated browser instance -- no shared bookmarks, cookies, history, anything.
Go to your "mozilla/firefox" folder, and locate the file "profile.ini". On linux the path is
~/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini
It is a regular text file. And here's a shortcut for you:
$ nano ~/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini
Once you've opened it, find this line:
StartWithLastProfile=1
- edit 1 to become 0 in stead, then save[0]. You only need to do this once.
Added: After this edit you will be able to choose a profile on each launch (forgot that little detail). Also, Thunderbird works the same way if you want a set of alternative profiles for your email.
[0] To save: [ctrl]+[s] or [ctrl]+[o]. To exit [ctrl]+[x] (can't assume everyone knows nano)
Browse to "about:profiles" and you can create/delete/switch profiles (including set which is default) without any command line anything. It's a bit ugly looking though.
Apple's market share is only 8.6%. I can remember the click-bait headlines 20 or 30 years ago lamenting the Mac's demise and portraying it as an irrelevant platform doomed for the Information Age scrap heap. (See
https://apple.slashdot.org/story/02/06/19/218246/dvorak-disc... about a 2002 John C. Dvorak column calling for the Macintosh to be discontinued - Dvorak's column is no longer online but the Mac is still around)
Firefox is still used by millions of people every day. It's not going anywhere.
"Sky is falling" headlines around Firefox, Apple, Linux and a host of other technologies miss the point that these platforms may be small, but have dedicated followings, often with niche use cases that can't be replicated elsewhere.
The fault with that headlines has little to do with a small dedicated following. Apple isn't a "small" PC manufacturer when it's got more than half the shipments of the largest manufacturer. The real fault with that clickbait is it ignores Apple desktops had an enormous boon with people migrating to M* based desktops and they aren't ready to upgrade yet while simultaneously ignoring shipments are still higher than pre M* Apple desktops. Besides that, clickbait articles about other things other companies do don't even say anything about this topic.
Again, focusing on how the usage share is abysmal compared to competitors while consistently shrinking down to where it is over the last decade lets you easily see why this particular headline isn't clickbait. Even with millions of users, Firefox having such low usage share, especially compared to alternative competitors, is a risk to its main funding source. This is a problem for an organization like Mozilla which makes very little from its users vs one like Apple which has become the most valuable in the world through the exact opposite.
Apple charges a premium on its hardware. Firefox is free and Mozilla makes most of its money from the default browser agreement, which is potentially now in jeopardy.
I'm not sure what version of Firefox you are using, but mine has full support for HTTPS, which is about the level of encryption support that I expect from a browser.
While I still make a question to use Firefox, since 2019 I never had to actually care if our projects work on it, as it no longer takes part on browser matrixes for project acceptance guidelines.
I would not trust the statistics, Firefox blocks tracking cookies by default.
The statistics in the article come from companies that use 3rd party tracking cookies.
> By default, Firefox blocks the cookies that track your browsing activity across multiple websites. This includes cross-site tracking cookies set by ad, social media, and analytics companies
You don't need tracking cookies to find out what browser someone is using. Looking at the user agent string is mostly enough. (On the bright side, "Mozilla/5.0" has near 100% market share.)
I don't think this affects these statistics much. Statcounter numbers are based on pageviews for example, and Firefox hasn't given up on having its own UA yet. The numbers also align too well with the internal stats to be blanketly ignored https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity where MAU is 180,000,000/~5,000,000. That's a different approach to calculating usage share than page views from an internal source and external source that come to about the same number.
Whether the numbers from Google Analytics can be assumed accurate on its own is unrelated to the above, as are any of the other tracking protections Firefox currently employs.
How does that keep track? If it's calls to cloudflareinsights.com, I suspect a very large proportion of Firefox users will block it through uBO + tracker lists or other means.
Significant portions of the web are hidden behind Cloudflare's CDN who terminate TLS and therefore have access to plaintext traffic. They can just observe User-Agent headers on every request to any CF-protected website.
> Cloudflare's unique understanding of the Internet comes from it's global network – one of the world's largest, spanning 270+ cities in 100+ countries [...] Cloudflare is used as a reverse proxy by nearly 20% of all websites.
On Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection, note that it’s actually two different things, and the default doesn’t shield you from most of these stat-collection sources. I wrote more about that at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38532931.
Firefox is still going to be chronically undercounted, but unfortunately I don’t think the difference is enough to materially affect the narrative. Maybe a true measurement would boost the US DAP figures as much as from 2.2% to 2.5% (maybe), but it’s very unlikely to be reaching even 3%, in my assessment.
Cloudflare’s stats also put mobile traffic and desktop traffic from the main browsers (assuming Edge and Firefox are for their desktop versions) at roughly equal 46%, causing Firefox to jump to ~9-10% of the desktop browser market.
Unfortunately Firefox has an absolutely dismal mobile usage share to the point it doesn't much matter if the number is for both or just the desktop version since it's still about 4% combined either way. E.g. Statcounter puts Firefox at 7.46% of Desktop browser share and 0.5% on mobile for an overall 3.43% share.
Based on the stats of other browsers on mobile vs desktop it seems there are two drivers for this. One is iOS Safari is extremely popular for users with those devices. On Android Chrom* browsers are extremely popular, even moreso than desktop though. For a long time the Android version of Firefox was held back on a legacy engine vs the desktop version and it'd chew through battery while having bad performance on top of compatibility issues due to the desktop version getting less popular as well. Then when they released the updated version it lacked many of the more niche things like arbitrary extension support for years that would have made it worth switching to. It's better now, but the damage was done and people are happy enough with the other browsers they've installed and been using for years at this point. I'd say Chrome being the default is the main factor and that explains both iOS and Android except it doesn't explain Firefox mobile being lower than so many other non-default browsers as well. Plus Chrome still manages to be decently popular on iOS, even if Safari is king there.
I used Chrome because the devtools were better and they supported the same sorts of extensions.
I've switched back to Firefox 2 years ago and haven't looked back. I've heard from friends that they've also switched back all largely due to the looming manifest v3 ad blocker limitations.
There are no other mainstream browsers that I trust at this point.
Agreed, it seems inevitable that Google will enshitify Chrome by making ad-block tools unreliable. They've already started. That makes FF the "ad-block browser", and anyone who hates ads, scams, and malvertising will flee Chrome. Maybe we will see Chromium forks dominate, but I'm less sure about that.
Why would you think that people burned by Firefox would go back to it instead of switching to different Chromium-based browsers? Firefox market shared declined to a single digit for a reason...
If people were really switching back more than leaving the trends in the article would be positive instead of negative. That's not to say nobody is switching back, obviously people are, but they are also continually either not staying or grossly outnumbered by those choosing to leave for the first time.
It's a shame, I really like Firefox and having the browser decoupled from a big tech company, but it's also what the data is saying and has been for over a decade as people continue to deny it.
Same here. FF is fast, stable, and functional for me.
I'm using the web 50+ hours per week and my usage is something like 80% Firefox 20% Chrome.
So, that is a lot of hours per year comparing them on a level playing field. I don't notice a performance difference. The only thing that "feels faster" on Chrome is creating a new window by dragging a tab out of an existing window.
Never had runaway RAM usage or anything with either browser in apporoximately 50,000 hours of browser usage.
I've always had decent amounts of RAM (16GB since ~2009, 64GB currently) ...maybe people are running into issues with different kinds of machines.
I am suspect of how they measure usage. When many of us use Firefox forks or configurations that leave as little fingerprints as possible through a VPN, we are intentionally not identified as unique visitors. If this is the case, these results are a testament to the advantage of Firefox.
Echo chamber ping. Had some sort stint with Opera but basically FF on all platforms since I stopped using NCSA Mosaic. I would feel unsafe without uBO and Firefox (and NoScript on Desktop Linux).
Everyone in this comment section seems to forget that we are an extremely small minority of the entire population of people who use web browsers. A vast majority of people don't think about their web browser and simply use whatever they're used to, which for most is Chrome or Safari. They have much better brand recognition and unless Chrome gives them an unusable experience, they won't have any reason to consider changing browsers.
Exactly. Thinking "I use, works for me, so whatever" is very shortsighted, if it falls even more on usage, we can expect more and more websites to not even bother to test.
People will use whatever comes by default on Android (which is Chrome or Samsung Internet [which is Chrome]), Safari on iOS and Chrome/Edge on Windows. Plus Windows has been very pushy about Edge.
Back in the day IE, and most other default browsers of the time, were damn near unusable. Firefox was pushed by sites, techies, and even Google (pre-Chrome). There is no such push currently. Chrome works either well enough or even better for the vast majority of people. The ones talking about going back to Firefox for ideological reasons are a niche crowd with reasoning different than the last shifts.
Oh it wasn't just FOSS, it was ideology over everything ( e.g Everything should be Javascript ) and complete lack of understanding on hardware. It is also an observation that to this day most people working on web related technology has similar problems.
I'm using Firefox right now.
i use Firefox on windows, Linux and android.
i only use chrome when i need to awkwardly cast something i can't do otherwise.
the only stupid thing was when they screwed up their extension policy on mobile and required you to use nightly with a special "bundle" to install stuff like RES.
edit: this is a cnet/zdnet article and probably written by chatgpt from a prompt by the editor.
Adding to the anecdotes, I'm using Firefox as my main browser on Windows and macOS and have been for years. Very very rarely do I find websites that don't work and need to switch back to the built-in browser (Edge or Safari).
I hope Firefox doesn't die because the open web will die with it (no, I don't trust Apple to be the hero of anything given the intentionally locked down features on Safari iOS).
100s of millions of users, highly concentrated around the types of user who build and influence software and create new technology startups [1] does not sound like irrelevance to me.
I think it is the slide that gives the wrong impression.
4% of a near-universal product? That's hardly irrelevant. Can anyone name a small non-profit tech company dominating a daily essential consumer-facing product ?
Yes absolutely. It didn't need to be, they could have found another CEO with an engineering background. Now it's too late, Mozilla has been "captured", the board is under the control of the person it is responsible for paying. I don't see any out once that's happened, even if the current CEO leaves the next will be the same.
111 comments
[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 188 ms ] threadFirefox has a separate profile process that is cumbersome. And switching profiles is even worse, I think you have to use command line switches to get profile manager?
Firefox has a separate profile feature, and it is one of the great things about Firefox. You can access profiles through "about:profiles". You can (at least on Linux, don't think it's possble on MacOS) start firefox with a profile chooser. Each profile is a completely isolated browser instance -- no shared bookmarks, cookies, history, anything.
Added: After this edit you will be able to choose a profile on each launch (forgot that little detail). Also, Thunderbird works the same way if you want a set of alternative profiles for your email.
[0] To save: [ctrl]+[s] or [ctrl]+[o]. To exit [ctrl]+[x] (can't assume everyone knows nano)
And yeah the Profiles are not automatically associated with Mozilla accounts, you have to setup each separately per profile I think.
Or use containers — which are amazing but another complex use case for the average user compared to chrome sync experience.
Firefox is still used by millions of people every day. It's not going anywhere.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2023/10/10/apple-p...
"Sky is falling" headlines around Firefox, Apple, Linux and a host of other technologies miss the point that these platforms may be small, but have dedicated followings, often with niche use cases that can't be replicated elsewhere.
Again, focusing on how the usage share is abysmal compared to competitors while consistently shrinking down to where it is over the last decade lets you easily see why this particular headline isn't clickbait. Even with millions of users, Firefox having such low usage share, especially compared to alternative competitors, is a risk to its main funding source. This is a problem for an organization like Mozilla which makes very little from its users vs one like Apple which has become the most valuable in the world through the exact opposite.
Just like for the Android/iOS situation, I think the US is an outlier that skews all global statistics because of their weight.
[0]https://radar.cloudflare.com/adoption-and-usage/fr?dateRange...
> By default, Firefox blocks the cookies that track your browsing activity across multiple websites. This includes cross-site tracking cookies set by ad, social media, and analytics companies
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/trackers-and-scripts-fi...
[1]: https://radar.cloudflare.com/adoption-and-usage
> Cloudflare's unique understanding of the Internet comes from it's global network – one of the world's largest, spanning 270+ cities in 100+ countries [...] Cloudflare is used as a reverse proxy by nearly 20% of all websites.
Firefox share = 4.2 / 39.4 = 10.7%
That's significantly higher than other reported figures.
Firefox is still going to be chronically undercounted, but unfortunately I don’t think the difference is enough to materially affect the narrative. Maybe a true measurement would boost the US DAP figures as much as from 2.2% to 2.5% (maybe), but it’s very unlikely to be reaching even 3%, in my assessment.
(Notwithstanding this, https://radar.cloudflare.com/embed/TopBrowsersWidget?locatio... with its probably-more-reliable methodology does put Firefox at 4.5% for the USA, and https://radar.cloudflare.com/embed/TopBrowsersWidget at 4.1% for the world.)
That really isn’t bad imho.
Based on the stats of other browsers on mobile vs desktop it seems there are two drivers for this. One is iOS Safari is extremely popular for users with those devices. On Android Chrom* browsers are extremely popular, even moreso than desktop though. For a long time the Android version of Firefox was held back on a legacy engine vs the desktop version and it'd chew through battery while having bad performance on top of compatibility issues due to the desktop version getting less popular as well. Then when they released the updated version it lacked many of the more niche things like arbitrary extension support for years that would have made it worth switching to. It's better now, but the damage was done and people are happy enough with the other browsers they've installed and been using for years at this point. I'd say Chrome being the default is the main factor and that explains both iOS and Android except it doesn't explain Firefox mobile being lower than so many other non-default browsers as well. Plus Chrome still manages to be decently popular on iOS, even if Safari is king there.
I used Chrome because the devtools were better and they supported the same sorts of extensions.
I've switched back to Firefox 2 years ago and haven't looked back. I've heard from friends that they've also switched back all largely due to the looming manifest v3 ad blocker limitations.
There are no other mainstream browsers that I trust at this point.
It's a shame, I really like Firefox and having the browser decoupled from a big tech company, but it's also what the data is saying and has been for over a decade as people continue to deny it.
I'm using the web 50+ hours per week and my usage is something like 80% Firefox 20% Chrome.
So, that is a lot of hours per year comparing them on a level playing field. I don't notice a performance difference. The only thing that "feels faster" on Chrome is creating a new window by dragging a tab out of an existing window.
Never had runaway RAM usage or anything with either browser in apporoximately 50,000 hours of browser usage.
I've always had decent amounts of RAM (16GB since ~2009, 64GB currently) ...maybe people are running into issues with different kinds of machines.
People will use whatever comes by default on Android (which is Chrome or Samsung Internet [which is Chrome]), Safari on iOS and Chrome/Edge on Windows. Plus Windows has been very pushy about Edge.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3674858/mozilla-apple-...
No mention of Google's sabotage of its web properties' operation and performance on Firefox:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has...
edit: grammar
i only use chrome when i need to awkwardly cast something i can't do otherwise.
the only stupid thing was when they screwed up their extension policy on mobile and required you to use nightly with a special "bundle" to install stuff like RES.
edit: this is a cnet/zdnet article and probably written by chatgpt from a prompt by the editor.
I hope Firefox doesn't die because the open web will die with it (no, I don't trust Apple to be the hero of anything given the intentionally locked down features on Safari iOS).
[1] exhibit 1: this comment page
4% of a near-universal product? That's hardly irrelevant. Can anyone name a small non-profit tech company dominating a daily essential consumer-facing product ?
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/brendan-eich-steps-down-...