I haven’t been using Firefox for Android because I heard they don’t have a WebView Implementation so the firefox browser has to be used beside the Chromium WebView meaning there’s an attack surface of two browser engines. I also heard that the Firefox sandboxing and site isolation isn’t very good between websites.
I’ve been using Vanadium WebView and browser because of that.
I don’t know what this means
Android System Webview allows apps to display browser windows in the app rather than taking you to your web browser app. On Android, chromium is used for webview. If you use Firefox as a default browser, the remote attack surface increases because they’re two different browsers with different security issues.
Site isolation enforces security boundaries around each site using the sandbox by placing each site into an isolated sandbox. Firefox doesn’t have that feature so they’re vulnerable to attacks like Spectre.
About damn time, they should never have disabled it in the first place.
Let’s just appreciate the fact that basically no other browser has this.
With chrome/ium you can’t even block ads.
I use kiwi browser for the extension support.
That’s a lie sir. Brave blocks ads out of the box. Vivaldi also has ad block filters. You can add custom filters to both browsers. Also edge has shitty ad blocker. Kiwi browser supports almost all chrome extensions. Basically almost all except chrome and still you can block most of the ads using correct dns server.
Firefox already supported ublock origin on mobile and a handful of other extensions. This is just them opening it up to more extensions.
We’re talking about actual web browsers here, not spyware that uses your device to run a botnet
Firefox is as much botnet as others. Full of telemetry, diagnostics, pocket and other shit. That’s why there are secure forks. Firefox in stock form is as much botnet as others. Also firefox is selling out to the same google so don’t pretent it’s better because it’s not.
Take your meds
Accepting a ton of money from Google to make it the default search engine isn’t selling out to them. Any concerned user will know how to change the default.
Sorry but even with all that said, you’ll never lure me to the evil side. I’m sticking with Firefox until it dies an atrocious death
It’s enabled in the beta version, although limited to a small number of extensions.
Permission to shout hurrah in an annoyingly loud voice sir!
Permission granted Private
My goodness that’s awesome. I never understood why they locked it down in the first place about a year ago. What changed?
They wanted to have compatibility with Chrome extensions. But that was all just a n EEE move by Google. More perfidious since they created the open standard in the first place
I use FF on android for a couple months now. Solid browser and sync to desktol and add blocker are nice.
BUT: their page reloading is far too aggressive. You can’t buy anything online, since once 2FA is required and you need to open your bank app, confirm, and switch back, the page reloads and the 2FA didn’t get through. Tickets and such are the only reason I have still chrome installed.
Huh, good to know.
I’ve found edge to be quite aggressive on the reloads as well (at least, on desktop).
Makes it difficult for developing anything that has to deal with tabs going to “sleep” (like websocket reconnects, rehydrations, reauths).I’m a hair away from ditching chrome
I feel this pain. But you try to stop a video that started playing in Firefox. I dare you.
Its in notification with background play lol
Yes but a video should stop if you swipe away the apps card from multitasking view. This action is tantamount to closing the app.
Mine stop maybe because i have background battery restriction/autostart prevention. Not sure tho
Strange. I’ll look into those settings. Thanks
I checked this with youtube now and it pauses the video as soon as its in the background and I can play from notifications. Try updating too btw
The video pauses atm of swiping away from the recent deck something magical is happening with your phone i use lineageos btw
Yeah, I open my 2FA app in split screen when I do this
Hmm, I’m not experiencing that. Could Android (well, the flavour used by your phone) be killing background apps too aggressively or something like that?
Edit: could also be a RAM thing. I have 12GB.
Wow, I’m pretty sure my laptop has less RAM than that. ~Cherri
You can get 32GB of laptop RAM for like $60 to $80 if you find sales, and even one 16GB stick would be an upgrade for you. Modern bloat is so bad that having 8 gigs of RAM is the equivalent of having 4 a few years ago.
My laptop only supports expanding the RAM up to 12 GB IIRC. ~Red
I’m not experiencing that issue either and I have half the amount of RAM that you do. I’ve noticed an unnecessary autorefresh only after closing out of the browser for a long time, never in the middle of switching between apps. But, that does sound like annoying behavior.
This is Android aggressively killing apps, not Firefox.
Possibly, but previously I’ve been able to load a site, open a media-rich page in a new tab, then close that tab to go back to the original page.
On a newer build of FF for Android, that first page is re-loaded from the internet.
This annoyed me too. I use Firefox Nightly with
accessibility.blockautorefreshset inabout:config, and it helps.had that issue since updating my phone to android 13, mozilla really needs to fix it
I also feel RAM too aggressive since A13, but it could be my custom ROM as well.
why it was restricted in the first place?
Maybe they couldn’t guarantee that the mobile version could run well with all of them? That’s what I’ve always assumed.
The mobile version did actually run all addons up to Firefox 68. Quite well, actually! There were some issues with addons that assumed a certain part of the UI existed that wasn’t present on mobile, but those have become irrelevant since Firefox dropped the old XUL addons.
Then they rewrote the entire browser, with only a few functioning addons on a whitelist, and did basically nothing for addon support for four years. I think they added two or three addons to the standard whitelist over the years, but that’s it. The rewrite also introduced some silly bugs (still can’t paste an IPv6 URL into the address bar to visit it, no https://[2000:1234:4566::]/ for you unless you click on a link to it) but development seems to have mostly been focused on themes and design from what I can tell.
I know there was the whole XUL-to-webextension thing going on around that time, but I never found out why the rewrite restricted users so much. The rewrite also included the change to make about:config available only on unstable (beta/nightly) versions. You can install other addons on Firefox (you create a collection on addons.mozilla.org, open the secret settings in the beta, and point the browser at your own whitelist) and most of them work quite well, actually.
Because the addons themselves mostly worked, I always assumed they stopped caring about addons. People would riot if they removed uBlock Origin so there are a few addons in there, but I thought they killed the concept on mobile.
Which I think is kinda weird decision since they could’ve just hidden a setting that unlocks all addons in the options. But maybe they were so incompatible at the time that it wasn’t worth the headache.
If you use Beta or Nightly, you can turn on dev tools and use a custom addon list from a collection in your user account. https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extension-support-in-firefox-for-android-nightly/
There is a hidden way to activate more extensions and most - if not the vast majority - extensions work fine.
There is a hidden setting for essentially that. It might be exclusive to Nightly though, idk since all I need is UBO
Because there were enough incompatibilities to make it a hassle. But when they were sorting out the Web Manifest v3, they designed it with desktop and mobile in mind, so new extensions won’t have problems.
It makes less sense since extensions actually ran on Android, e.g. via Nightly and creating your own list of exceptions. Also if you downgrade and install in an old Fennec version, extension will continue to function if you then update to the latest.
I think the move was an attempt to create a walled garden. But for whatever reason, they have now decided against it. Thank goodness.
It would be nice to have stuff here to break this down
This is great.
God I miss the old Firefox for Android :(
Are you suggesting this is bad? What was better about “old” Firefox for Android?
No, this is similar to the old Firefox for Android, which is why I like it.
When you could just browse AMO and add an add-on at will. It was also much smoother.
I agree with you. This is going to be a huge improvement and hopefully get more people to switch from Chrome.
Hopefully it’s a sign of more good things to come.
It was also much smoother
now that’s just rose-tinted glasses speaking. I remember how absolutely abysmal old Firefox’ scrolling was, and how they’ve claimed multiple times that they’ve improved it but it was still horribly sluggish compared to Chromium browsers. I’ve been using Firefox Preview (and then Nightly after enough performance improvements have landed on it) for about a year just to have acceptable experience on mobile.
Honestly the one thing I don’t like is how pages constantly refresh when you alt tab (or w/e the equivalent is on Android - swipe tab I guess?). I know it’s a small thing but it just gets at me. I also like the old UI as it was more Firefox-y; the new one is too white and plain.
I do miss the tab bar, it would be great to have it on the tablet. I can’t comment on how differently the browser behaves now regarding storing loaded pages in memory though, because most of the time I’d have an underpowered phone that would kick out everything out of memory when switching apps anyway.
just use collections and firefox beta
It had a tab bar.
It had addons without collections.
Huh, I’m still using it.
For those who don’t know yet: Firefox Nightly for Android let you install any extension you desire.
You just need to create a custom collection on the web site and link your ID in nightly.
You can also just use the collections of other users
Like mine, for those who don’t want to curate: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collections/17401236/p1xiekat-Android/
Maybe add PrivacyBadger, Consent-O-Matic, and DarkReader
Noted and added!
Nice, I also added LocalCDN to my own list.
Firefox Beta as well.
Same for Firefox forks, Mull and Fennec.
Yep. I always mention Fennec who may hesitate to use Beta since it’s a stable release with full add-on support.
I’ve never tried Mull.
Not an expert but as I’ve understood it it’s pretty similar to Fennec, less tracking and more private than your regular Firefox. I don’t know anything about either ones development team size or activity either so I can’t recommend one over the other. Hopefully someone with more knowledge can chime in.
Mull’s made by the people at DivestOS
They have a browser comparison of some popular android browsers including Fennec and Mull https://divestos.org/pages/browsers
Can we have tabs when using a tablet please?
And why not phones too if the user prefers it that way. Can we have our user preferences back please?
Let’s tab tablets
No no, that would make way too much sense.
Written on a Fold 4 that’s currently not using Firefox ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)
You don’t have tabs using a tablet?
I think he means tabs along the top like on a PC browser.
Correct.
Yesssss
For every one who want to test it out you can use iceraven browser a Firefox fork that supports way more extensions than stock Firefox mobile https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser
You can also use the Nightly app and load addon collections. It’s an absolute pain in the arse, and a lot of extensions don’t work, but it’s one way to get them.
I didn’t know that this feature is already dort of waring in the nightly build but it makes sence that they will test it out in nightly
Honestly, it’s as if they don’t really want you using it. It’s a legitimate feature but hidden away and quite difficult to use. Here’s a guide on getting it set up. I’ve been using it since it came out and haven’t had too many issues, but a lot of addons just don’t work as intended.
no need for beta anymore or are there still some restrictions in place?
great, now waiting for them to finally fix the supremely janky tab behavior.
Nice. What I need now is the ability to group tabs together
Have you tried sidebery? When I found tree layout for tabs to be a thing I haven’t looked back.
Thank you! I am going to install it right now on my desktop PC. I was referring to the android version btw 😂
Ahh, of course, that should’ve been obvious 😅
