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Predirect: A manifest v3 web extension with minimal permissions to automatically redirect popular sites to privacy friendly frontends (github.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It supports both links and embeds and is available on firefox for android. List of sites is on github. I'm the main developer so you can ask questions.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

Thank you very much. This seems like it is in the same vein of the Android app, UntrackMe, which is unfortunately no longer maintained.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Ah cool. I only just learned about LibRedirect and was hoping for a solution for Firefox on my phone. Thanks for sharing!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Wait, does FF on Android only support Manifest v3 extensions?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

No, both manifest v2 and v3, but in earlier versions add-ons had to be vetted by reviewers or manually added to their account collections by users, but from v121,all extensions marked by their devs as compatible are available to everyone https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2023/11/28/open-extensions-on-firefox-for-android-debut-december-14-but-you-can-get-a-sneak-peek-today/

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Is it a fork of LibRedirect?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No, written from scratch in manifest v3 with minimal permissions

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Nice. What are the benefits over LibRedirect?

Does PreDirect also have instance discovery built in along with the ability to ping services?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Libredirect is a manifest v2 extension (can't be published on chrome store) and has permissions for all_urls, predirect is a manifest v3 extension and only has permissions for necessary domains

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

So basically tighter permissions and using newer APIs. As for the Chrome stuff, as a Firefox user posting in a Firefox community, it's of little consequence to me. But I look forward to trying out this extension.

Edit: Tried it and it kinda falls over at the first hurdle. I installed it and then tried to follow links to Tiktok and Instagram only to end up on the official sites.

Also the UI is kinda unstyled. It feels like when you first learn Java.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There is an onboarding step for permissions in firefox version(due to more restrictions in manifest v3 than even chrome),so you need to grant permissions, unstyled UI is intended but I will add style with a minimal ui css framework in near future

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The only permission it asks for is blocking.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

"only has permissions for necessary domains"

any page

ò_ô

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

This permission doesn't mean I can access your data for every site, this is an advantage of manifest v3

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Firefox is stricter than chrome in manifest v3 that it provides no way to request host permissions at install time, there is a onboarding page after installation of addon where you can grant permissions to hosts

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

That never happened for me. Once installed, nothing much happened.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Jackpot!