Source: blog.mozilla.org/…/prepare-your-firefox-desktop-e…
Archived version: archive.ph/x9dHq
Cool! So many useful extensions that I couldn’t use on android.
Firefox to become first mobile browser to support desktop extensions later this year
Submitted 1 year ago by soyagi@yiffit.net to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
RedIce25@lemmy.world 1 year ago
mrvictory1@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Mobile FF is already awesome with UBlock Origin and YT background playback extensions. I wish to install an auto redirect extension (Twitter to Nitter) soon. I know it is doable on beta w/ extensions etc. but I want to see them on normal Firefox.
Lord_Boffum@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Have a look at YouTube ReVanced if you want a much better YouTube experience on Android. :)
sir_reginald@lemmy.world 1 year ago
use Newpipe, it’s free software, unlike revanced.
Thisisforfun@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
fernandorincon@reddthat.com 1 year ago
Same, like 30% of the time it worked, the other 70% it would be very slow or not load at all
QuazarOmega@lemy.lol 1 year ago
It might have been some time ago, because even the main instance has been consistently working for me as of recent
1ird@notyour.rodeo 1 year ago
You can install tamper monkey and use a userscript to redirect. That’s what I do.
rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
SneakyThunder@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
It’s available in nightly (and I think dev) builds
notasandwich1948@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
probably in normal Firefox too, it’s just hidden in all of them
viking@infosec.pub 1 year ago
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.
kubj31196@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Is there an easy way to migrate from the official app to Fennec? Keeping accounts, extensions and settings?
balance_sheet@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Fennec is awesome. I’m never going back to anything else.
kenbw2@lemmy.world 1 year ago
How do I make use of this? I can’t see a way to install them on my Fennec from F Droid
Mininux@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Doesn’t it already support them ?
Wild_Mastic@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yeah, kiwi is still supported and got an UI update a month ago. But it’s chromium based if remember correctly.
noodlejetski@geddit.social 1 year ago
it also whitelists ad blockers from working on some, presumably “partnered”, websites.
Mininux@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
oh I didn’t know, pretty cool
at least both chromium and Firefox get a version with add ons
XEAL@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Nightly versions and Fennec.
Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
Mull too
dansity@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
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
where_am_i@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
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.
Blimp7990@reddthat.com 1 year ago
“no good reason”
spoken like someone who has never tried to use that browser. it definitely supported addons, but tried to implement 2015 features to run on 2002-tier hardware
Racle@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
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: androidpolice.com/install-add-on-extension-mozill…
landsharkkidd@aussie.zone 1 year ago
I have it on Firefox Nightly with the dev stuff. It’s pretty great tbh
hotwarioinyourarea@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
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?
ladel@feddit.uk 1 year ago
Yeah, it definitely did. Then they all broke suddenly. I even ditched firefox for a while because of that.
radix@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That was definitely the most infuriating thing they’d done with the browser. The whole project started decades ago with a simple plan: make the most bare-bones browser, and let people customize it with any extensions they wanted. Then all of a sudden, it turned into having <10 approved extensions, and fuck your customization.
It’s gotten much better over time since then, but damn if there weren’t a few really bad years.
notasandwich1948@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
you still can get them, they are just hidden
cyborganism@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
They already support uBlock origin and that’s all I need.
KneeTitts@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
cyborganism@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Yeah I wish I could edit my hosts file for example so it blocks all advertisement websites.
time_fo_that@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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
hellishharlot@programming.dev 1 year ago
Dark Reader too
fne8w2ah@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Didn’t their pre-version 79 app already support extensions?
Gestrid@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
I don’t know about pre-79, but their current version supports a very, very limited selection of extensions, many of which are to specifically improve the mobile version of Firefox. Currently, only a total of 22 extensions are supported, many of which share the same purposes.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 1 year ago
I mean, ad blocking is like 95% of the reason why I want extensions.
And the other 5% is blocking all those stupid consent popups.
nimitz1156@lemmy.world 1 year ago
yeah I’m actually disappointed when they stop doing that
Slopz@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Lol what? I remember using Kiwi browser like 7 years ago and it had extension support…
ilmagico@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I use kiwi browser now. It’s still there and getting updates.
Clusterfck@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
So did Dolphin…
NatoBoram@lemm.ee 1 year ago
So did Firefox, oddly enough
MakeItCount@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Wow I haven’t seen this name for a long time
eeltech@lemmy.world 1 year ago
And yet they’ve turned their back on tablet users and refuse to support the tab bar.
github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/2344
Ridiculous. Only reason I switched to Vivaldi
CifrareVerba@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Which is odd considering it’s been a “first class citizen” on iPadOS by supporting features: lowyat.net/…/the-new-firefox-for-ipad-now-support…
Vivaldi is great though, I hope you’ve enjoyed it thus far!
Goodtoknow@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
iOS/iPad OS is relatively much easier to develop and it’s a completely different branch from Android as it’s a skin on top of Safari Web View. All other platform use their own Quantum/Gecko Engine.
sir_reginald@lemmy.world 1 year ago
if you want to get things done, use a real OS and not an artificially limited mobile OS.
Ktheone@lemmy.world 1 year ago
They’re finally starting to recover from that crappy firefox 79 update 😮💨
EmperorHenry@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It supported desktop extensions before, then they got rid of that and now they’re going to do it again?
Colorcodedresistor@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Holy Fuck. Call me Ramsay, Finally some delicious fucking tech. the separation gap between mobile and pc has been going on for far too long. anything to help merge the pair. yes. all the yes.
clearedtoland@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Just when Google thought it could kill adblocking…
jpj007@kbin.social 1 year ago
Well as far as adblocking goes, mobile FireFox already supports uBlock Origin.
nix@merv.news 1 year ago
Orion Browser by the team that makes the Kagi search engine makes this possible on ios
just_another_person@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Nah. They use hacks. This is native.
scytale@lemm.ee 1 year ago
It’s the next best thing on IOS because you can’t install extensions on FF.
EyesEyesBaby@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I don’t care what others are saying, but I’ve never heard of this browser and I’m definitely going to give it a try. Wish I knew about this one sooner.
GyozaPower@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
Kiwi broswer already does it, same with the Orion browser for iOS
Vincent@feddit.nl 1 year ago
That’s why the article itself adds the “major browser” qualification.
CifrareVerba@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I wish Mozilla listened to its users like it used to.
Vivaldi has been great on Android, desktop and iOS/iPadOS and even keeps the customization built in that Firefox used to have.
SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org 1 year ago
Vivaldi would be kind of cool if not for the chromium thing being a huge downer… but I gotta say, their featureset is slightly weird.
Firefox on android though? Is great.
CifrareVerba@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I know it’s a big issue for many given the bad news and crap Google does, but Mozilla is actively taking away features from Gecko whereas Vivaldi, Microsoft, Google and Samsung are improving chromium. I find it hard to make Firefox behave how I want it to when browsers like Vivaldi or even Edge make it easy.
I know a common sentiment I hear (at least on Reddit) is “Why didn’t so and so’s browser use Gecko?” but when a company or person does, a lot of /r/Firefox and /r/Linux users will get upset that they are forking Firefox instead of adding to Firefox/Gecko.
noodle@feddit.uk 1 year ago
It’s long overdue. I’ve been running Nightly to get around the shockingly limited number of addons available on Firefox for Android. Hopefully Mozzila don’t fumble the bag with this as its a great opportunity to steal users from Chrome.
raptir@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I do find it funny when people talk about how few extensions are supported, when it has the best extension support of any mobile browser.
noodle@feddit.uk 1 year ago
Relative to desktop, it is comparatively few.
Best on mobile, yes. But the few they allow in FFfA stable is a tiny amount considering how many actually can work.
NickNak@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It used to be able to support all desktop addons but they for some reason took that away a while back
Prethoryn@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I think I read that it previously supported full blown extension and they removed it due to some under the hood changes.
Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It did, legacy versions of it had almost full extension support and also even allowed you to install them from storage as xpi files and poke around about:config, then they took away both of those things completely in fenix (only allowing about:config in debug versions and blocking XPI install altogether).
DacoTaco@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Nothing to do with this thread just saying hello o7
cpressland@celeb.pizza 1 year ago
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.
crowsby@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Kudos to them for rolling out support more widely, but it’s a bit misleading as Firefox nightly/Fennec has supported extensions for years (albeit via a cumbersome process), and Kiwi Browser is also a thing.
I can’t understand how folks out there are just rawdogging the Internet out there without ublock or at least a DNS ad filter. Admittedly, Chrome runs a hair more smoothly, but the ability to use extensions like uBlock / DarkReader / Consent-O-Matic make the Firefox experience a tier above.
I just hope this makes it possible to install the Bypass Paywalls extension again so I don’t have to hop over to Kiwi for that.
darth_helmet@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Orion supports Firefox and chrome extensions
ch1cken@kbin.social 1 year ago
Only a very small set of them though, and their functionality would likely be limited. Hopefully non-webkit browsers will come to ios soon, with proper desktop addons, following the eu pressuring them into allowing sideloading.
Wyrryel@pawb.social 1 year ago
Thanks for cross-posting instead of re-posting!
Mubelotix@jlai.lu 1 year ago
Stop lying, Kiwi has been around for so long
DarkThoughts@kbin.social 1 year ago
They probably mean official browsers, not random forks.
Mubelotix@jlai.lu 1 year ago
How is Kiwi less a browser than firefox? Non-sense
Siliconic@discuss.online 1 year ago
About time. I’m tempted to switch back to Mull from Bromite, but I’m worried about the security of Firefox compared to Chromium (why I switched in the first place), I’ve heard that particularly Mobile Firefox has awful sandboxing and bad security, I’m pretty sure it was the GrapheneOS team saying this? I’m no security expert
spikespaz@programming.dev 1 year ago
Kiwi Browser
callyral@kbin.social 1 year ago
What about Kiwi and Iceraven (Iceraven is a Firefox fork which has more extensions)
dantheclamman@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I wish they’d add a tablet UI. Doesn’t seem to be prioritized whatsoever. Pre-Fenix they had it and have been patiently waiting for tabs to return on large screens ever since, but have lost hope.
popemichael@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
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.
ugjka@lemmy.world 1 year ago
One more reason to stick with Firefox
synceDD@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Other browsers already do, firefox users just cant stop licking mozillas balls
randint@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Firefox has always had been the most attractive to many people. Why don’t you lick mine?
lennster@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
On mobile? Very few do
XpeeN@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
ADs enjoyer spotted