this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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Android

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Includes an incentive for ensuring extension compatibility with Android in the form of a free t-shirt.

all 20 comments
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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (4 children)

It's about time. This has been a much needed feature since Firefox Android was first released. It basically is the only mobile browser that allows extensions.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What's really annoying is that a lot of existing extensions already work. Mozilla just makes it unreasonably difficult to install them.

Change your user agent (using Firefox Nightly and the user agent switcher extension, which is supported) and you can install extensions exactly as on desktop.

Installing directly from an .xpi is still seemingly impossible though, annoyingly.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What’s really annoying is that a lot of existing extensions already work. Mozilla just makes it unreasonably difficult to install them.

Change your user agent (using Firefox Nightly and the user agent switcher extension, which is supported) and you can install extensions exactly as on desktop.

That's only telling half the story because often features silently failed for many extensions because of the great idea to switch from proper Firefox to the GeckoView based one which actually did not implement many APIs used by extensions.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I mean, sure. That's not at all unexpected. But not even allowing the user to try at all, or making it unreasonably difficult to try, is very frustrating.

Place the option behind developer mode, with a disclaimer that features may fail and Mozilla makes no promises or guarantees.

But just flat-out denying the option, or making the user jump through ridiculous custom collection hoops is nonsense. In my case the custom collection method still failed, but the extension I was looking for does in fact work just fine, after installing it with the modified user agent string.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

There is a fork called Smart Cookie Web Preview that lets you sideload extensions with no rigmarole, no Custom Collection nonsense, I have yet to find an extension that does not work. Even things like Behave and Jshelter work fine. I have no idea why Mozilla has been dragging this out for so long, lack of extension support on Android is a very common complaint.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This has been a much needed feature since Firefox Android was first released

Actually, Firefox on Android did originally support desktop extensions when it was first released. But then they did a major rebuild of the app back in 2020 and lost its addons as a result.

https://www.androidpolice.com/firefox-bringing-back-full-extension-support-android/

BTW, Kiwi browser (Chromium based) has had full extension support since 2018.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah. I was horrified when they basically broke extensions on mobile. And had no urgency to fix it. I personally would have said it's not ready to replace the previous revision until it supports extensions..

A 3-year gap in software is awful, it's only forgivable because nobody else supports extensions. Except apparently kiwi browser

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Kiwi browser is also open souce and supoorts extensions. But yeah, it's very rare

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Kiwi browser hasn't been updated in a long time, I wouldn't recommend it to people anymore, security updates and all that.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

That's not the case anymore. Play Store build is updated periodically and the GitHub has auto rebased releases: https://github.com/kiwibrowser/src.next

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I love that Mozilla supports extensions on mobile. But I wish they would provide PWA support on desktop. I end up having to use edge for PWAs.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I think this is the one that installs extra... "Firefoxes" for each to run as their own browser and open the site you set as their homepage.

Honestly I wish it could be better, but this is some pretty amazing thing to code out, so I appreciate it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Will check this out

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Does anyone know if this will finally introduce the storage sync APIs that make NoScript sync across desktop and mobile?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I want the T-shirt but my theme addon only looks good if you use tree style tabs on desktop lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Unlock origin is a must for android and desktop

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Great! Finally Local CDN and other can be available.

I also hope they fix the sync stuff, as uBlock can't seem to download already backed up version of my settings.