Submitted 1 year ago by soyagi@yiffit.net to technology@lemmy.world
Source: blog.mozilla.org/…/prepare-your-firefox-desktop-e…
Archived version: archive.ph/x9dHq
As an iOS user and long time Firefox user (never switched to chrome in my life) I feel jealous. But one can only hope that we too in the APPLE walled garden won’t be left behind.
Apple doesn’t allow extensions to be distributed outside of the AppStore and Firefox on Android is based on WebKit anyway because neither do they allow third-party browser engines.
I’ve been running Firefox as my default browser on my phone since 2018 without webkit. Even other apps opens their links with geckoview. It started with FF Focus, shortly after FF Preview, then FF beta and since last year FF for Android.
Apple on the other hand…
Sources:
It’s sad to say, but the current restrictions on iOS are likely to be one of the last things holding Chrome/Blink back from total dominance. It’s already the default on Android, and it’s installed on most computers. So if a real Chrome ever shows up for iOS, web devs won’t have any reason to test on Safari anymore. They’ll tell their visitors to just download Chrome if it doesn’t work on their iPhone or iPad.
If you absolutely want extensions, the Orion browser supports them.
Last time I used it, some bugs kept me away. That was at least a year ago though, it might have gotten better.
Maybe I’ll stop using Brave. Sounds cool af
I use Firefox and on my android tablet but I dont on my iphone since apple doesn’t allow extensions on third party browsers. Its so annoying
I’ll be impressed when they actually allow for the installation of extensions from places other than their addon store like I can on the desktop version.
Yet people will still use Chrome/Chromium based browsers
I’m trying to make the switch over to FF, but Vivaldi just has so many features I find useful.
Are they more helpful than extensions though? I love Vivaldi but their adblocker is so weak that it can’t block youtube ads, I may be wrong on that but thats how it was last time I checked. There are also redirect extensions on Firefox to take you to privacy friendly frontends for popular websites. Dark reader extension also makes the browsing experience better
Oh my goodness that would be amazing. I’ll drop safari in an instant.
Awesome, I won’t need to switch to the desktop version just because I’m missing a few extension.
I remember wanting to try out Firefox on Android but not being able to use it with Tampermonkey which was a real bummer. Better late than never, I guess?
One question on my mind is why it took so long. Is Android a harder platform to make extensions available on or something?
It did support extensions until they basically redesigned the app from the ground up a few years back. They said they’d focus on stability first then move on from there.
You can use tamper monkey now.
Been using Iceraven, although it only supports a handful of extensions such as dark reader and uBlock
Firefox on Android used to do this. I switched to Kiwi when they dropped it.
This sounds huge! This may be a dumb question, but: do extensions on mobile require any special security tools that don’t already exist?
But not on ios…How do we get adblocking in ios?
You don’t lol. Beg Tim Apple for it.
Firefox on iOS is just safari with a Firefox logo
The weird thing is Safari has extensions
you’re buying the wrong phone. this is a limitation imposed only by apple, forcing every browser on iOS to be Safari re-skinned
it does rn, it’s just a little more effort to get them but it’s not hard
i hope mozilla is already working on an iOS version for the EU market ;)
This is the only reason why I keep using Safari on iOS. If Firefox can get extensions working for iOS I’ll switch over the day it’s available.
i miss(ed) exactly two things on iOS: a proper imageboard reader (fixed, there are now chance and janchan) and stand alone firefox, wich is now just a matter of time.
I don’t see how they would, since ios Firefox doesn’t use the same rendering engine it uses on other platforms, Gecko. Instead it has to use Safari, just like any other browser on there.
Duplicating support for all existing extensions would be pretty much impossible if you don’t control the rendering engine.
That’s going to change in EU as Apple will be forced to allow side loading apps.
Not saying it’s a better implementation, but Safari already does this.
Test
Awesome!
I also hope that someday mobile firefox has tagging functionality like on desktop (and tags are synch-able, like bookmarks)
This is awesome!
Now Brave needs to do the same and also create its own extension store
Brave is a rocking clock counting down. They can continue putting off some of the chromium updates that Google is pushing but eve tally they are going to go the way of the rest of the chromium forks.
Any reason to switch from Fennec?
Now Brave needs to do the same and also create its own extension store.
Fennec supports add-ons since forever ago. I’ve been using it for 3+ years with a full set of my desktop add-ons installed.
Don’t think so. Fennec has been doing a great job all through, I’ll stick to it unless there’s any breaking issue in the future.
I mean.. it already does support desktop addons so I'm not exactly sure what's new here. It looks like this just fixes android killing background processes due to battery saving, but you can always just disable battery optimisation for firefox, or put it in "never sleeping apps", though granted even without doing this i've never experienced problems.
It supported them in the Nightly release. This is for the main release
That’s nice,but it would have been great to get certificates into Firefox mobile. Those are exclusive to Chrome browsers and that sucks.
No clue what you mean. Explain.
I mean mainly allowing usage of user installed certificates required by mTLS,or at least that’s my use case. My company requires this in order to get access to company resources or better yet governments also require it for their online services.
The more extensions you install in your browser, the more you will be tracked.
Does this mean that the storage API will finally be available on mobile? At the moment this is probably my biggest annoyance since I have to manually transfer allow lists for various extensions across desktop and mobile.
AlexisFR@jlai.lu 1 year ago
It has been for years, no? Or was it mobile-tagged extensions?
blady_blah@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Limited to mobile add-ons.