Stupid iPhones… I want extensions!
this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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I'd have bought an iPhone a long time ago if it had Firefox. Unfortunate.
It does have Firefox but it’s a Safari reskin.
It’s still better than chrome or safari on iOS. It has a built in ad blocker. Honestly, I just want that Reddit extension that automatically replaces www with old.
What's Reddit?
It's like Digg.
It’s called Sink it for Reddit
Thanks! I will try this out. Safari only, but I avoid Reddit as much as I can now.
So it's not Firefox
Because crApple only allows WebKit-based browsers on iOS.
Firefox focus is pretty good, at least for what I use it for. I just need something I can quickly search with on mobile, the rest is in apps.
Hoping that when sideloading becomes a thing (thanks to the EU) firefox will develop a full iOS version
I was hopeful too until I found out that Apple is geofencing it to Europe only.
Orion is the next best thing. You can install extensions like uBO and other FF extensions.
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Orion browser by Kagi. Closest we have to a Firefox like browsing experience on the iPhone. 🙏
Is it chromium based or ff based?
Literally the only option on iOS is WebKit, unless you’re sideloading.
Webkit! It's currently only available on MacOS and iOS/iPadOS.
Isn't every browser on iOS webkit?
Yes but the browser engine isn't really the main selling point. Kagi is building with zero telemetry, native ad blocking, and support for Firefox and Chrome extensions. It's privacy respecting, fast, and extensible.
Thank you all for explaining!
I will note that it does have its issues, and that you may not want to use it as your daily driver if you’re worried about some website breakage. To me, having most of the little extensions I use on Firefox work correctly makes me like it more. I just don’t recommend going in without warnings of some kind. 🙏
If Google is investing in creating a non-WebKit browser for iOS and given all the heat they are getting for Safari and WebKit, we might see this sooner than later.
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/02/04/google-working-on-browser-that-would-break-rules/
Maybe also try making Firefox tablet compatible like almost every other browser.
Currently it's just a bloated phone UI on tablet, it's the one thing stopping me from using as my daily browser on mobile devices.
I installed Firefox (Android version) on a Chromebook to see if I could keep 2 browsers with separate profiles and setups.
The Firefox browser on a Laptop computer looked awful. A narrow phone UI, but stretched really, really wide. It made no attempt at utilizing a wide tablet layout.
It's weird, this is presented as new, but I had adblock on Firefox on Android from the start.
That and flash support were two of the major reasons for using Firefox on Android in the first place. This was back around 2010, when most porn sites still used flash players for video. Then flash died, that was fine. Then at some point Mozilla reduced the available extensions a lot, but at least some adblocker was still available.
They only allow a handful of curated extensions on mobile. You'll have to use the nightly build and jump through some hoops to install arbitrary extensions on mobile (mostly to allow devs to test their extension). Looks like they'll finally lift the restriction soon.
It's also worked on beta builds for some time now as well. Which is nice since you only get prompted to update every now and then instead of daily.
They rebuilt the mobile browser, if I'm not mistaken. It's why the extensions stopped for a long time.
I would say they didn't finish rebuilding it, for 5 years. They just broke the old browser. Not a cool thing to do honestly.
Android + Firefox & adblock is the only way to browse.
Sometimes I have to open something in Android + chrome.
Why tf can a mobile news site allowed to embed a video ad, a video in the bottom corner, and a sticky banner?!
I've had ublock origin on Firefox Android for at least a year... And my old Samsung S7 had Firefox with plugins for even longer.
So confused.
Firefox nightly on android supported desktop extensions for quite some time. It wasn't that easy to install them, but once I did they worked fine. Maybe a bit more slugish than on pc, but that's expected given the resources limitations on mobile.
Not all extensions though. I want to be able to use the User Agent switcher that I use on desktop and when I add that to the extension collection it causes none of the extensions to appear in Firefox mobile.
I don't understand why we can't use about:config in the default version.
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I think you can set a custom user agent in about:config, but obviously isn't as conveniant as a quick toggle from an extension.
And Fennec!
Wtf?? Thanks! Now I wonder what other features are hidden here
Awesome. As a recent convert after Google's acceleration of bullshit this year, I was surprised at the gap between mobile app and browser and frankly had difficulty understanding it. Glad to hear there will be an alignment coming.
I'm confused. What the hell am I using on my ff if not extensions? (add ons)
I'm a little confused now.
There are only 22 add-ons for the mobile version (2 of which come pre-installed: uBlock and night mode), and they were all hand-picked or made by the devs to be ported. It doesn't have support for the whole system like on desktop, where there are thousands of add-ons with new ones being added every day.
Desktop Firefox has waaaaay more extension options than mobile currently
Took long enough. What the hell was the holdup?
Article says they were paranoid about security issues.
Sadly, some APIs are still not implemented, so extensions interacting with bookmarks for example still won't work...
Now if I could only reorder my Firefox bookmarks on my homepage.
At freaking last!
Just Mozilla being Mozilla... Taking forever to get impactful stuff like this released or to fix bugs that have been sitting around for years. Yet quick to add features to the browser most of us don't need.
I like what Mozilla is doing. But they seem to struggle with their priorities.
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