10 ms·

Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change

98 points by nonbirithm 5y ago

PostOnce 5y ago
I'm perfectly happy with Firefox, both desktop and mobile. It works very well and I never have problems with it. It blocks ads on mobile and chrome doesn't. As far as I have seen, it's fast. I don't notice a difference on the rare occasion I open chromium to check and see that some application will look the same for a client as it does for me. But I guess it's always true: people go out of their way to complain, but not to compliment. I should write a "I'm perfectly happy with Firefox, happier than I would be with any other browser" blog post and see if it gets any attention.
- marak830 5y ago
  That's a bit harsh. Every point they raised is valid: the UX changes have been weird and inconsistent, the lack of history searching is frustrating etc I still use ff, I certainly won't be using Chrome as I appreciate my add-ons too much.
  - elliotf 5y ago
    Chrome is also adding bizarre ux choices on mobile. The tipping point for me was nested tabs (tab groups) with no way to disable them. I've been a happy Android Firefox user since then.
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      I use chromium based browsers on mobile primarily and I just want to agree with you wholeheartedly. I don't know why this decision was foisted on us. Two layers of organizational abstraction with minimal benefit. I'm sure some people like it, but that's why you make it optional. The UX with nesting tabs is absolutely abysmal.
    - nonbirithm 5y ago
      As a user of Brave, I completely agree with this. I wish the tab grouping could be disabled instead of forced upon users. And despite the issues with Fenix's project management that I mentioned in my post, I still believe that between Google and Mozilla the latter organization would be more willing to listen to user feedback and not attempt to move forward with features such as those. I can't imagine Google suddenly deciding one day that tab grouping was a mistake and walking back such a feature.
    - beerandt 5y ago
      The fact that open in new tab only gives the option for "in group" did it for me. Kiwi at least gives options for opening new tabs as in-group or standalone.
  - lasc4r 5y ago
    Calling ff a mess is worse, as someone that absolutely hates ads it's a godsend.
    - tomrod 5y ago
      You might like Vivaldi. Basically Chrome w/ adblock without Brave's business model. Built by the team that left after Opera's purchase.
      - LamaOfRuin 5y ago
        Does Vivaldi support add-ons/extensions on android? I don't see it mentioned on the landing page. Granted, ad-block is the primary one and included by default in Vivaldi, but I still like there being a possibility for extensibility even if what's supported on Firefox for Android is limited.
        tomrod 5y ago
        Unfortunately not. This is why I considered FF before last years release to have been _the_ browser for Android.
        betwixthewires 5y ago
        FYI there is a chromium fork called Kiwi Browser that supports extensions. I'm using it to tell you this right now.
        beerandt 5y ago
        Kiwi has become my goto Android browser, and it's not even close. Primary reason being chrome add-on support. But it does have a high number of quirks make it through to release versions. Like tab ordering in the current version is broken, such that swiping tabs are in a different order than browsing tabs.
        betwixthewires 5y ago
  - Reubachi 5y ago
    I don't think it's harsh, as those points to me aren't valid. I'd much rather have the Mozilla foundation focus on security, privacy, ubiquity than UX and less used features like history searching. That said, I can't do any combination of Netflix + Any other application leveraging graphic card drivers. Completely locks up the computer milliseconds after application loads,need to hard restart. Event viewer for system and FF is no help. Submitted bug tickets, no updates. Oh well, it's fast and secure when I'm not on netflix.
    - atatatat 5y ago
      > I'd much rather have the Mozilla foundation focus on security I would, too, but they're not able to keep up on that, either, despite vast funding. Foundations and nonprofits used to do one thing well, not 12 things okay, and 5 things pretty poorly.
- quaintdev 5y ago
  > I should write a "I'm perfectly happy with Firefox, happier than I would be with any other browser" blog post and see if it gets any attention. And here I was thinking the post missed a lot of issues maybe I should create another blog post. Stop defending something that really has issues. This fanboy behaviour ends up hurting the very thing we love.
  - tomrod 5y ago
    Agreed with you. FF was my main mobile browser when I could -block ads -modify default text size (so I could read websites like old.reddit.com without having to zoom in) There were a whole lot of other great features that weren't dealbreakers without. Now? It's just weird.
    - hammyhavoc 5y ago
      What's weird about it? Works how I would expect.
      - tomrod 5y ago
        The article mentions some of the many bugs one can anticipate.
  - II2II 5y ago
    Saying that you're happier with a certain product than the competition is not fanboy behavior and should not be taken to mean a product is without fault, particularly when it relates to the use of other people. It is also less destructive behavior than a laundry list of faults with little acknowledgement of benefits, particularly when those faults will only be encountered by a fraction of the user base. As for my experiences with Fenix, aside from a rocky ride when it was first introduced, it has been positive. This is coming from a person who prefers incremental change and frowns upon massive changes.
  - hammyhavoc 5y ago
    Constructive criticism is important. However, praising things that are working well when everybody else is layering on the negativity with a trowel regarding the "death" of Firefox, and how it is a "mess" is important so that we don't end up with more undesirable changes made.
- danShumway 5y ago
  I'll push back a little bit on this. To preface, I have also been at least reasonably happy with Fenix on Android, although I am frustrated that the add-ons are still limited. I don't feel like I have a lot of friction, the UI works well enough for what I need it to do, and I have pretty much no desire to switch to another browser. And I regularly get annoyed at the level of scrutiny and amount of bad-natured criticism that Mozilla gets. I think it's part human nature, part meme, but I see people throw complaints at Firefox with a level of vigor that they can't seem to muster for browsers that are clearly far, far worse. And I've seen those same people ignore some of the legitimately fantastic stuff that Mozilla has been doing, some of it inside of Firefox. All that being said, I didn't get any of those bad feelings from this article. The criticisms seemed fair, and it felt to me that the author was speaking out of genuine concern and desire for Fenix to be better. I didn't feel like the author was going out of their way to complain. More importantly, as someone who is generally a lot more bullish on Mozilla and Firefox than other people on HN, and as someone who honestly still trusts Mozilla quite a bit, the complaints about closed designs and lack of community involvement in some parts of the browser ring true to me and I empathize. I trust Mozilla a lot, but I do really wish that they didn't make these kinds of design decisions that came so far out of left field with so little community input. They could do better here, and it is a worrying trend. It is weird for a browser to have this many tab switcher redesigns, and to have so many of them received so negatively. I do recommend people use Firefox on Android. I think the average experience is going to be better than the author describes, particularly if users aren't on nightly. And having support for Ublock Origin is a killer feature, and not just for privacy. The mobile web is borderline unusable for me without a good adblocker. But... a lot of the criticism here is valid, and I hope that people at Mozilla look at it, and in the best case scenario, I hope maybe this kind of criticism leads to more open, thoughtful design where community input and involvement happens earlier in the design process.
  - dont__panic 5y ago
    Agreed. I use FF on my Android devices because it's the best browser by a huge margin (uBlock Origin and AMP redirect alone guarantee that; not being made by Google is icing on the cake). However, FireFox mobile could always be better. I really hope that Mozilla keeps listening to the users to figure out how to make the browsers better, especially when they have so many engineers that they seem to constantly shuffle the UI around just to give them work to do. There's plenty of actual improvements to make, and more options to give users with different preferences, and that should be where Mozilla spends engineer time with such a mature product. Instead of rewriting the browser every couple of years because the previous one was a mess.
- dheera 5y ago
  I've found the Firefox tabbing experience much nicer on mobile. Chrome wrecked their UX recently, sometimes new tabs become circles at the bottom (that don't obey the tab button) and sometimes they become big squares at the top that are under the tab button. The two types of tabs are confusing as hell. And sometimes the big square tabs have little squares inside them so you now have tiny circles inside little squares inside big squares and this 3-dimensional tabbing is just nuts. 1 dimension is enough.
  - atatatat 5y ago
    Personally appreciate the grouping (roughly) by time opened, especially since the tabs are movable to other bunches.
- m-p-3 5y ago
  I have two complaints for Firefox Mobile (Android. 1. `about:config` is disabled on Stable branch, if you want to access it you need to use the Beta branch. Why is that the case? You don't see the same arbitrary limitation on desktop. 2. It seems to have issue loading a page randomly from time to time, and even trying to reload or open a different URL doesn't work, kinda like as if the tab itself crashed and became unresponsive. I haven't found a cause yet, and I don't know if I'm the only one.
  - nonbirithm 5y ago
    Just to add another data point, I also experienced the second issue when trying to navigate between links with Fenix on many different occasions, including the period I was writing this post. However, I chose not to mention it because I also wasn't able to reliably reproduce it.
    - commoner 5y ago
      I used to experience this issue when I had manually configured my DNS over HTTPS (DoH) settings on Firefox for Android in about:config, and had set network.trr.mode to 3 (force DoH). Changing it to 2 (prefer DoH, use normal DNS as fallback) fixed the issue for me. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Trusted_Recursive_Resolver#DNS-over-HTTPS_Prefs_in_Firefox https://wiki.mozilla.org/Trusted_Recursive_Resolver#DNS-over...
  - dont__panic 5y ago
    Agreed about point 1 -- it seems silly to disable "advanced" features on the Stable distribution of the browser. Of course, clearly someone at Mozilla thinks this is a good idea because they do the same damn thing on desktop -- you can't disable add-on certificate checks on Stable, but you can on the Beta/Nightly/Developer Edition branches. We all found out the hard way a couple of years ago when all the FireFox add-ons stopped working just because someone forget to renew a certificate.
  - cptskippy 5y ago
    The lack of about:config bugs me as well. I believe this lockout coincided with the introduction of Mobile Friendly Add-Ons. The pages not loading is something that started with-in the last year and it seems to be getting worse. I open a lot of things in new tabs and at least 10% of the time it fails.
- thayne 5y ago
  I'm happier with android firefox than I would be with any other mobile browser, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have issues. The biggest one for me is that bookmarks are almost unusable. You can't search them, you can't see or edit tags, and you can't re-order them.
- wink 5y ago
  I fully agree with you, but I have to admit I am not a mobile "power user", my usage pales in comparison to desktop usage. But my only complaint is what I'd call a bug that I haven't reported. I have a custom search engine on the desktop, where I for example can rewrite e.g. "x leo whatever" to "search for whatever on leo.org", and I can call this via a literal https://example.org/leo%20whatever https://example.org/leo%20whatever - but I can't get firefox to accept that I enter a url with a space, it will never open my own "https://example.org https://example.org" with the params, it will always search google for "example.org" even if I prefix it with https:// https:// - this is maddening and maybe I just haven't found the switch to remove this stupid omnibar trend. Oh, and the url bar at the bottom is weird, but I'm not even complaining.
- bennysomething 5y ago
  My major problem is that the rewrite in 2019 broke nearly all the addons and ones I use haven't been fixed.
- troyvit 5y ago
  I like how the top reply to your comment is two complaints about firefox.
- dmz73 5y ago
  FF on android WAS a great browser. If it never existed before and you tried current version then it would be OK but lacking some important features and you could hope it would gain those features soon. Knowing what features have been removed since the FF was first released, it's hard to call FF great, good or even OK. And maybe you don't need or use those removed features...until you do need them and they are suddenly not there...and other browsers still have them or have gained them. After all that it becomes clear why FF is down to 1% and browser share and still sliding down. With that level of mismanagement it will either disappear or become unusable in not too distant future.
- pmarin 5y ago
  I don't have download notifications neither with its own download manger or the external.
0xFreebie 5y ago
Unfortunately, this is what actual Mozilla developers think about posts like this: https://web.archive.org/web/20200731211652/https://www.twitter.com/EmilyKager/status/1289308930972278789 https://web.archive.org/web/20200731211652/https://www.twitt... It's sad.
- chaircher 5y ago
  Is there any more context to this? Because the tweet is vague and assuming it's about posts like this seems like a bit of a jump unless you've got further info about it
  - 0xFreebie 5y ago
    Here is some context: https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/i8nuyb/firefox_developer_literally_gives_users_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/i8nuyb/firefox_de...
  - phatfish 5y ago
    Some corners of the internet got annoyed a women was working as a programmer for Mozilla and took things a bit too far. Turns out it gets dug up by the same haters under every post about Firefox.
    - tomrod 5y ago
      I'm not in that camp. I simply genuinely dislike FF mobile now, when it used to be the best browser available on Android.
      - chaircher 5y ago
        You might have posted on the wrong comment thread? This one was me asking for context for a bad-faith read of a vague tweet
        tomrod 5y ago
archsurface 5y ago
I have no issue with it at all. As with my desktop Firefox instances I have an embarrassing number of tabs, and have no complaints whatsoever.
- jobigoud 5y ago
  I also don't have complaints but then reading the thread I realized I'm on version 68. Apparently some of the issues are regressions introduced in newer versions.
veritas3241 5y ago
I finally switched from firefox to safari on iOS. The latest redesign was the last straw for me. Very frustrating how the look of the app keeps changing without any useful updates. "telemetry says..."
commoner 5y ago
Mozilla would instantly recover a ton of goodwill by allowing users to install any WebExtension on Firefox for Android without having to go through a strange activation ritual that only works on the Nightly channel.* Considering how stable the extensions have been for me, I'm baffled at how Mozilla is not even letting the Beta channel test them. * https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extension-support-in-firefox-for-android-nightly/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...
- jimmaswell 5y ago
  Everyone's been gradually removing user empowerment features from browsers for years. I wonder if they just want us to get used to no or only a few curated extensions.
  - GravitasFailure 5y ago
    Firefox is odd in this regard, though. Chrome tried to make it so you could only add extensions while signed in to Google, but have since abandoned that policy and currently permits side loading, while Firefox doesn't allow any extensions that haven't been signed by their certificate which means that if they forget to renew that certificate you can't use any extensions...which actually happened. It's bizarre to me that Chrome offers more user agency in this regard than Firefox.
    - commoner 5y ago
      On desktop, Firefox Developer Edition, Nightly, and ESR still allow unsigned extensions after setting xpinstall.signatures.required to false in about:config.[1] Firefox for Android doesn't allow sideloading,[2] and only has an advantage because Chrome for Android doesn't support extensions at all in its official relases. [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#FAQ https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#FAQ [2] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/11308 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/11308 (closed without adequate resolution in https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/14034 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/14034)
bfdm 5y ago
It can't print. It doesn't support printing. If I need to print (to paper or PDF) something like an order receipt for an insurance claim or a shipping label to return something, I need to use another browser. I still use it, but this annoys me ~weekly.
- simcop2387 5y ago
  Not sure how much it might help you, but I'm able to print from mine by "sharing" a page to an app for my printer from firefox mobile, but I'd definitely like a proper printing option instead.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  why not screenshot or save it? It's not like the content is different.
  - kunagi7 5y ago
    Sometimes you must send a proper PDF. And saving a page to PDF (or "printing") is a basic feature of a browser. They shouldn't release a mobile browser without that. Also, sending a low quality screenshot of a mobile screen isn't a professional thing.
    - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
      >Also, sending a low quality screenshot of a mobile screen isn't a professional thing. Cause a pdf is much more professional just because you open it in Adobe vs your photo gallery... This is bar none some of the most business oriented pretentiousness I've ever read on here. There is nothing wrong with image files and screenshots. It's just a file format. The fact that you save one as a pdf doesn't change the fact that, again, the content is the absolute same. Anybody who is that anal about how they receive a file that does the exact same thing is completely out of touch. In my experience, only old people say the things you're saying cause they don't know how to work with various files.
      - 5y ago
post_break 5y ago
The typing in the url bar and not getting website lists from history or bookmarks kills me every time. It's infuriating to have to scroll below the word Android, to get to Androidpolice.com etc.
laurent123456 5y ago
That new Android version when it was released was so bad that it made me switch to Vivaldi on both mobile and desktop, and I've no plan to go back to Firefox. With the constant breaking and removal of features I don't trust Mozilla much anymore.
anonymoose567 5y ago
And yet even with all these complaints the product has tens of millions of happy users and is growing month over month.
- nsonha 5y ago
  nice try
nsonha 5y ago
> The inactive tabs feature was met with significant criticism, because it turned out that if you had a large number of open tabs, it was now impossible to reach the list of "active" tabs without spending several seconds or minutes scrolling past the list of inactive tabs, every single time you opened the tab list Anyone using Firefox on Android knows exactly what this person is talking about. This was my last straw before uninstalling Firefox for good.
nsonha 5y ago
Is there a way to use FF Sync for on Chrome? I'm willing to give firefox on mobile another try but don't want to go all in with desktop just yet
rektide 5y ago
> About the only significant feature in my mind that Fenix has which Chrome for Android does not is WebExtension support, and even though this is indeed a very significant feature, for a user who doesn't particularly care about privacy it is practically the only feature that makes Fenix worthy of consideration over Chrome. 100% on the money. Note the caveat that a number of the key, vital, privacy preserving extensions are available on Firefox for Android, because otherwise, even users who do care about privacy would be shit-out-of-luck. I'm glad to hear that Nightly is in a better spot though[1]! This makes me hope that eventually, improvements are coming. But right now it seems like a number of features seem to get disabled before release, such as about:config. I hope some-day Chrome reconsiders this ancient old policy of providing zero user-agency on the web. Extensions are the system by which users can opt to modify their web experience, and not having extensions available on the most restricted, most constrained, most in-need-of-help modality is cruel. A decade ago there might have been sufficient cause to believe the "mobile devices aren't fast enough," but today it just feels like Google doesn't want to allow users to do good things for themselves. [1] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/19594 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/19594
sorenjan 5y ago
Is it possible to sync desktop Firefox with mobile Chrome, or any other mobile browser? Preferably one with user addons in general, and adblocking and user scripts in particular.
rozab 5y ago
I have an even more infuriating issue with the urlbar suggestions. About 50% of the time I type something in, it will find an url suggestion for the first letter or so but keep that suggestion at the end as I keep typing, unless I press backspace before enter. e.g. "hot tubs for salettps://news.ycombinator.com"
- commoner 5y ago
  I experienced that too, but I wrote it off as a keyboard issue since it stopped happening after I switched from AnySoftKeyboard to FlorisBoard. Which keyboard are you using?
  - franga2000 5y ago
    Same issue for me on SwiftKey (yes, I know, shame on me). Definitely a browser issue.
- Gualdrapo 5y ago
  Another annoying thing with the urlbar is when searching something (at least with Google). Say you have set Google as your default search engine and you type 'giant books' in the urlbar (sans the quote marks). It will show that results page from Google. But say you want to look for giant books _only in your country_. So what I usually do is to add '.co' (or your country's suffix) after the '.com'. You'd tape on the urlbar, scroll until you find the '.com' and add the '.co'. But nope. It won't let you modify the URL. For some weird reason it keeps showing the query string you originally typed, in this case 'giant books'. I haven't been able to find something that lets me modify the URL when searching something. In the example, I need to type 'google.com.co', retype the query string and search again.
yata69420 5y ago
I use https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/ as my preferred firefox android fork. I use the addon collection from account 16201230 named "What-I-want-on-Fenix". This gives me uBlock Origin, Bypass Paywalls Clean, I Don't Care About Cookies, SponsorBlock, ViolentMonkey, etc. The stewardship of Firefox and Fennec are a real concern, but for now, this works.
ljm 5y ago
As an aside, I notice "let me preface this..." introductions more often than I used to. I don't know what to make of it but I've found myself writing it some times, and when I do it, it's because I'm imagining a specific audience and trying to mitigate their backlash. Or I'm being too self-aware in the writing and assuming things readers don't. The article starts off better without the apologetic rationalisation of something I haven't even read yet. See for yourself, copy my post and add "Let me preface this by saying I don't have a problem with what I'm about to mention, but I am going to point out something I find frustrating, I've found it frustrating for a while, and I need to talk about it."
- nonbirithm 5y ago
  My personal reason for beginning the post the way I did is because of the ease of misinterpreting someone's tone when the communication is only textual, and that you lose the extra context you might gain when being able to hear someone's voice. I'm not angry at Mozilla because of the frustration I feel when trying to use Fenix as intended. I only wish that there was some way we could have a stable alternative to Chrome on Android with support for WebExtensions, and there appear to be several issues preventing that wish from coming true. And I do not want to seem like I'm trying to attack anyone by trying to explain why I felt the frustration I did. I personally believe that declaring my intentions in a precise manner upfront is a reasonable step to take for a post like this.
  - ljm 5y ago
    Yeah I get it. Oftentimes I write a reply and it seems perfectly harmless or half-serious, until I go back and read it later on in a different mood. I suppose my bug bear is that sometimes it comes across as beating around the bush. Or setting an expectation about the writing that is only true because you described how you might uncharitably interpret your words. I like it when people take responsibility for their perspectives and interpretations, so it's not up to an author, like you, to lay it all down up front.
option_greek 5y ago
We will continue to see posts like this till enough users are turned off by them and Firefox will no longer be a viable browser to run as a user or support as a dev. You are comparing the last truly free alternative to a browser built by ad grubby organisation. While a vocal minority keeps doing this the rest of us are happily using it without issues. You don't like Firefox? Great! Chrome is just a click away. Feel free to enjoy the 'personalised' ad experiences there. Just don't spoil it for the rest of us happy users whose best outcome at this point is a few more ad free years of Firefox before morons like this who don't have big picture in mind end up killing it for good.
- nonbirithm 5y ago
  Moving away from Fenix does not mean that I no longer believe that advertising is universally harmful for the people who are constantly subjected to it. As I mentioned in my post, I am still a user of Firefox on desktop, and I wouldn't think of browsing the modern web without an adblocker anymore. The problem is that Fenix in its current state is too immature for me to use in a practical, day-to-day manner. That does not mean that Fenix cannot be improved in the future, and I absolutely believe that Mozilla is capable of doing so if they restructure their priorities. I am concerned about the future of Firefox as much as you are, and that is the reason I wrote this post. I wanted more people to know of Fenix's issues so that it can ultimately become a better browser.
- GravitasFailure 5y ago
  >the last truly free alternative to a browser built by ad grubby organisation Is it? Considering Mozilla gets most of their money from Google, I find assertions about their independence on very thin ice. Also, the idea that discussing Firefox's problems is "ruining it for the rest of us" is absurd. People care about Firefox and are being vocal about the problems so that they might get fixed. The people being silent about Firefox's problems are the ones that no longer care and have long since moved on.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  Or, bear with me, use a fork of chromium and get google to give you their labor for free while using a piece of software that serves you first and foremost.
HKH2 5y ago
I used to use Firefox for Android out of principle too, but I got sick of being used as a guinea pig for their UI experiments. They seem oblivious to the existence of muscle memory.
0xdeadb00f 5y ago
Also worth noting is that Tor Browser for android inherits all these issues. The most annoying one is not being able to download images from sites that use cookies, since 90% of the mainstream websites you'll visit via Tor require you to fill out the Cloudflare DDOS protection captcha, and require the use of cookies!
pentagrama 5y ago
I'm so happy with the redesign. All UX improvements and no complains for me. Also I noticed how it gets better. And with Ublock origin installed it rocks. I'm not a power user on mobile, hope more use cases like me exists and adopt Firefox, it will not be the nightmarish future that the OP mention. I think that the major challenge for Firefox is advertising, how to be known and get installs, the product is good, but Google is so big and powerful that takes all the air and suffocates the little fox. Is like those avengers movies taking all the attention of the culture and those challenging and thought provoking movies with five people in the theater and two reviews in YouTube with fifty views. Sad. Sent from Firefox Android.
MattPalmer1086 5y ago
As a long time Firefox user, from when it was still called Phoenix, I reluctantly and recently switched to Opera on Android. Firefox crashed several times a day, text input and rendering was messed up, no page refresh, limited extensions ... The list went on. It's still my main desktop browser which I love. Other than sharing the name Firefox, the Android version has nothing else in common with it sadly.
trixrabbit 5y ago
Desktop : firefox Mobile: moved from firefox to Vivaldi
tlhunter 5y ago
Firefox for Android is my daily driver. I really dig it; once you get used to the address bar being near your thumb there's no going back.
prettyWise 5y ago
It would be great if Firefox for Android supported multiple user profiles for syncing. I use a work and personal profile on my desktop, and in edge mobile.
spacechild1 5y ago
I have always been using Firefox on Android and it's a shame that the UI keeps getting worse. Why do they regularly remove features? I honestly don't understand it. The most egregious example is that with the latest version you can't move tabs anymore. Wtf? Why?
- Yhippa 5y ago
  Resume Driven Development
5pecta70r 5y ago
I'm still on 68.11.0 on my android and android x86 devices. Even though it's outdated, it is by far the most functional as far as usability goes. A lot of addons will work with it (not all), just go to the base firefox addons page and request desktop site. The extensions are what made firefox great for power users, hobbling it was imho the wrong direction to pursue.

98 points by nonbirithm 5y ago

I'm perfectly happy with Firefox, both desktop and mobile. It works very well and I never have problems with it. It blocks ads on mobile and chrome doesn't. As far as I have seen, it's fast. I don't notice a difference on the rare occasion I open chromium to check and see that some application will look the same for a client as it does for me. But I guess it's always true: people go out of their way to complain, but not to compliment. I should write a "I'm perfectly happy with Firefox, happier than I would be with any other browser" blog post and see if it gets any attention.

marak830 5y ago
That's a bit harsh. Every point they raised is valid: the UX changes have been weird and inconsistent, the lack of history searching is frustrating etc I still use ff, I certainly won't be using Chrome as I appreciate my add-ons too much.
- elliotf 5y ago
  Chrome is also adding bizarre ux choices on mobile. The tipping point for me was nested tabs (tab groups) with no way to disable them. I've been a happy Android Firefox user since then.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    I use chromium based browsers on mobile primarily and I just want to agree with you wholeheartedly. I don't know why this decision was foisted on us. Two layers of organizational abstraction with minimal benefit. I'm sure some people like it, but that's why you make it optional. The UX with nesting tabs is absolutely abysmal.
  - nonbirithm 5y ago
    As a user of Brave, I completely agree with this. I wish the tab grouping could be disabled instead of forced upon users. And despite the issues with Fenix's project management that I mentioned in my post, I still believe that between Google and Mozilla the latter organization would be more willing to listen to user feedback and not attempt to move forward with features such as those. I can't imagine Google suddenly deciding one day that tab grouping was a mistake and walking back such a feature.
  - beerandt 5y ago
    The fact that open in new tab only gives the option for "in group" did it for me. Kiwi at least gives options for opening new tabs as in-group or standalone.
- lasc4r 5y ago
  Calling ff a mess is worse, as someone that absolutely hates ads it's a godsend.
  - tomrod 5y ago
    You might like Vivaldi. Basically Chrome w/ adblock without Brave's business model. Built by the team that left after Opera's purchase.
    - LamaOfRuin 5y ago
      Does Vivaldi support add-ons/extensions on android? I don't see it mentioned on the landing page. Granted, ad-block is the primary one and included by default in Vivaldi, but I still like there being a possibility for extensibility even if what's supported on Firefox for Android is limited.
      - tomrod 5y ago
        Unfortunately not. This is why I considered FF before last years release to have been _the_ browser for Android.
      - betwixthewires 5y ago
        FYI there is a chromium fork called Kiwi Browser that supports extensions. I'm using it to tell you this right now.
        beerandt 5y ago
        Kiwi has become my goto Android browser, and it's not even close. Primary reason being chrome add-on support. But it does have a high number of quirks make it through to release versions. Like tab ordering in the current version is broken, such that swiping tabs are in a different order than browsing tabs.
        betwixthewires 5y ago
- Reubachi 5y ago
  I don't think it's harsh, as those points to me aren't valid. I'd much rather have the Mozilla foundation focus on security, privacy, ubiquity than UX and less used features like history searching. That said, I can't do any combination of Netflix + Any other application leveraging graphic card drivers. Completely locks up the computer milliseconds after application loads,need to hard restart. Event viewer for system and FF is no help. Submitted bug tickets, no updates. Oh well, it's fast and secure when I'm not on netflix.
  - atatatat 5y ago
    > I'd much rather have the Mozilla foundation focus on security I would, too, but they're not able to keep up on that, either, despite vast funding. Foundations and nonprofits used to do one thing well, not 12 things okay, and 5 things pretty poorly.
quaintdev 5y ago
> I should write a "I'm perfectly happy with Firefox, happier than I would be with any other browser" blog post and see if it gets any attention. And here I was thinking the post missed a lot of issues maybe I should create another blog post. Stop defending something that really has issues. This fanboy behaviour ends up hurting the very thing we love.
- tomrod 5y ago
  Agreed with you. FF was my main mobile browser when I could -block ads -modify default text size (so I could read websites like old.reddit.com without having to zoom in) There were a whole lot of other great features that weren't dealbreakers without. Now? It's just weird.
  - hammyhavoc 5y ago
    What's weird about it? Works how I would expect.
    - tomrod 5y ago
      The article mentions some of the many bugs one can anticipate.
- II2II 5y ago
  Saying that you're happier with a certain product than the competition is not fanboy behavior and should not be taken to mean a product is without fault, particularly when it relates to the use of other people. It is also less destructive behavior than a laundry list of faults with little acknowledgement of benefits, particularly when those faults will only be encountered by a fraction of the user base. As for my experiences with Fenix, aside from a rocky ride when it was first introduced, it has been positive. This is coming from a person who prefers incremental change and frowns upon massive changes.
- hammyhavoc 5y ago
  Constructive criticism is important. However, praising things that are working well when everybody else is layering on the negativity with a trowel regarding the "death" of Firefox, and how it is a "mess" is important so that we don't end up with more undesirable changes made.
danShumway 5y ago
I'll push back a little bit on this. To preface, I have also been at least reasonably happy with Fenix on Android, although I am frustrated that the add-ons are still limited. I don't feel like I have a lot of friction, the UI works well enough for what I need it to do, and I have pretty much no desire to switch to another browser. And I regularly get annoyed at the level of scrutiny and amount of bad-natured criticism that Mozilla gets. I think it's part human nature, part meme, but I see people throw complaints at Firefox with a level of vigor that they can't seem to muster for browsers that are clearly far, far worse. And I've seen those same people ignore some of the legitimately fantastic stuff that Mozilla has been doing, some of it inside of Firefox. All that being said, I didn't get any of those bad feelings from this article. The criticisms seemed fair, and it felt to me that the author was speaking out of genuine concern and desire for Fenix to be better. I didn't feel like the author was going out of their way to complain. More importantly, as someone who is generally a lot more bullish on Mozilla and Firefox than other people on HN, and as someone who honestly still trusts Mozilla quite a bit, the complaints about closed designs and lack of community involvement in some parts of the browser ring true to me and I empathize. I trust Mozilla a lot, but I do really wish that they didn't make these kinds of design decisions that came so far out of left field with so little community input. They could do better here, and it is a worrying trend. It is weird for a browser to have this many tab switcher redesigns, and to have so many of them received so negatively. I do recommend people use Firefox on Android. I think the average experience is going to be better than the author describes, particularly if users aren't on nightly. And having support for Ublock Origin is a killer feature, and not just for privacy. The mobile web is borderline unusable for me without a good adblocker. But... a lot of the criticism here is valid, and I hope that people at Mozilla look at it, and in the best case scenario, I hope maybe this kind of criticism leads to more open, thoughtful design where community input and involvement happens earlier in the design process.
- dont__panic 5y ago
  Agreed. I use FF on my Android devices because it's the best browser by a huge margin (uBlock Origin and AMP redirect alone guarantee that; not being made by Google is icing on the cake). However, FireFox mobile could always be better. I really hope that Mozilla keeps listening to the users to figure out how to make the browsers better, especially when they have so many engineers that they seem to constantly shuffle the UI around just to give them work to do. There's plenty of actual improvements to make, and more options to give users with different preferences, and that should be where Mozilla spends engineer time with such a mature product. Instead of rewriting the browser every couple of years because the previous one was a mess.
dheera 5y ago
I've found the Firefox tabbing experience much nicer on mobile. Chrome wrecked their UX recently, sometimes new tabs become circles at the bottom (that don't obey the tab button) and sometimes they become big squares at the top that are under the tab button. The two types of tabs are confusing as hell. And sometimes the big square tabs have little squares inside them so you now have tiny circles inside little squares inside big squares and this 3-dimensional tabbing is just nuts. 1 dimension is enough.
- atatatat 5y ago
  Personally appreciate the grouping (roughly) by time opened, especially since the tabs are movable to other bunches.
m-p-3 5y ago
I have two complaints for Firefox Mobile (Android. 1. `about:config` is disabled on Stable branch, if you want to access it you need to use the Beta branch. Why is that the case? You don't see the same arbitrary limitation on desktop. 2. It seems to have issue loading a page randomly from time to time, and even trying to reload or open a different URL doesn't work, kinda like as if the tab itself crashed and became unresponsive. I haven't found a cause yet, and I don't know if I'm the only one.
- nonbirithm 5y ago
  Just to add another data point, I also experienced the second issue when trying to navigate between links with Fenix on many different occasions, including the period I was writing this post. However, I chose not to mention it because I also wasn't able to reliably reproduce it.
  - commoner 5y ago
    I used to experience this issue when I had manually configured my DNS over HTTPS (DoH) settings on Firefox for Android in about:config, and had set network.trr.mode to 3 (force DoH). Changing it to 2 (prefer DoH, use normal DNS as fallback) fixed the issue for me. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Trusted_Recursive_Resolver#DNS-over-HTTPS_Prefs_in_Firefox https://wiki.mozilla.org/Trusted_Recursive_Resolver#DNS-over...
- dont__panic 5y ago
  Agreed about point 1 -- it seems silly to disable "advanced" features on the Stable distribution of the browser. Of course, clearly someone at Mozilla thinks this is a good idea because they do the same damn thing on desktop -- you can't disable add-on certificate checks on Stable, but you can on the Beta/Nightly/Developer Edition branches. We all found out the hard way a couple of years ago when all the FireFox add-ons stopped working just because someone forget to renew a certificate.
- cptskippy 5y ago
  The lack of about:config bugs me as well. I believe this lockout coincided with the introduction of Mobile Friendly Add-Ons. The pages not loading is something that started with-in the last year and it seems to be getting worse. I open a lot of things in new tabs and at least 10% of the time it fails.
thayne 5y ago
I'm happier with android firefox than I would be with any other mobile browser, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have issues. The biggest one for me is that bookmarks are almost unusable. You can't search them, you can't see or edit tags, and you can't re-order them.
wink 5y ago
I fully agree with you, but I have to admit I am not a mobile "power user", my usage pales in comparison to desktop usage. But my only complaint is what I'd call a bug that I haven't reported. I have a custom search engine on the desktop, where I for example can rewrite e.g. "x leo whatever" to "search for whatever on leo.org", and I can call this via a literal https://example.org/leo%20whatever https://example.org/leo%20whatever - but I can't get firefox to accept that I enter a url with a space, it will never open my own "https://example.org https://example.org" with the params, it will always search google for "example.org" even if I prefix it with https:// https:// - this is maddening and maybe I just haven't found the switch to remove this stupid omnibar trend. Oh, and the url bar at the bottom is weird, but I'm not even complaining.
bennysomething 5y ago
My major problem is that the rewrite in 2019 broke nearly all the addons and ones I use haven't been fixed.
troyvit 5y ago
I like how the top reply to your comment is two complaints about firefox.
dmz73 5y ago
FF on android WAS a great browser. If it never existed before and you tried current version then it would be OK but lacking some important features and you could hope it would gain those features soon. Knowing what features have been removed since the FF was first released, it's hard to call FF great, good or even OK. And maybe you don't need or use those removed features...until you do need them and they are suddenly not there...and other browsers still have them or have gained them. After all that it becomes clear why FF is down to 1% and browser share and still sliding down. With that level of mismanagement it will either disappear or become unusable in not too distant future.
pmarin 5y ago
I don't have download notifications neither with its own download manger or the external.

0xFreebie 5y ago

Unfortunately, this is what actual Mozilla developers think about posts like this: https://web.archive.org/web/20200731211652/https://www.twitter.com/EmilyKager/status/1289308930972278789 https://web.archive.org/web/20200731211652/https://www.twitt... It's sad.

chaircher 5y ago
Is there any more context to this? Because the tweet is vague and assuming it's about posts like this seems like a bit of a jump unless you've got further info about it
- 0xFreebie 5y ago
  Here is some context: https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/i8nuyb/firefox_developer_literally_gives_users_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/i8nuyb/firefox_de...
- phatfish 5y ago
  Some corners of the internet got annoyed a women was working as a programmer for Mozilla and took things a bit too far. Turns out it gets dug up by the same haters under every post about Firefox.
  - tomrod 5y ago
    I'm not in that camp. I simply genuinely dislike FF mobile now, when it used to be the best browser available on Android.
    - chaircher 5y ago
      You might have posted on the wrong comment thread? This one was me asking for context for a bad-faith read of a vague tweet
      - tomrod 5y ago

archsurface 5y ago

I have no issue with it at all. As with my desktop Firefox instances I have an embarrassing number of tabs, and have no complaints whatsoever.

jobigoud 5y ago
I also don't have complaints but then reading the thread I realized I'm on version 68. Apparently some of the issues are regressions introduced in newer versions.

veritas3241 5y ago

I finally switched from firefox to safari on iOS. The latest redesign was the last straw for me. Very frustrating how the look of the app keeps changing without any useful updates. "telemetry says..."

commoner 5y ago

Mozilla would instantly recover a ton of goodwill by allowing users to install any WebExtension on Firefox for Android without having to go through a strange activation ritual that only works on the Nightly channel.* Considering how stable the extensions have been for me, I'm baffled at how Mozilla is not even letting the Beta channel test them. * https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extension-support-in-firefox-for-android-nightly/ https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...

jimmaswell 5y ago
Everyone's been gradually removing user empowerment features from browsers for years. I wonder if they just want us to get used to no or only a few curated extensions.
- GravitasFailure 5y ago
  Firefox is odd in this regard, though. Chrome tried to make it so you could only add extensions while signed in to Google, but have since abandoned that policy and currently permits side loading, while Firefox doesn't allow any extensions that haven't been signed by their certificate which means that if they forget to renew that certificate you can't use any extensions...which actually happened. It's bizarre to me that Chrome offers more user agency in this regard than Firefox.
  - commoner 5y ago
    On desktop, Firefox Developer Edition, Nightly, and ESR still allow unsigned extensions after setting xpinstall.signatures.required to false in about:config.[1] Firefox for Android doesn't allow sideloading,[2] and only has an advantage because Chrome for Android doesn't support extensions at all in its official relases. [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#FAQ https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#FAQ [2] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/11308 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/11308 (closed without adequate resolution in https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/14034 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/14034)

bfdm 5y ago

It can't print. It doesn't support printing. If I need to print (to paper or PDF) something like an order receipt for an insurance claim or a shipping label to return something, I need to use another browser. I still use it, but this annoys me ~weekly.

simcop2387 5y ago
Not sure how much it might help you, but I'm able to print from mine by "sharing" a page to an app for my printer from firefox mobile, but I'd definitely like a proper printing option instead.
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
why not screenshot or save it? It's not like the content is different.
- kunagi7 5y ago
  Sometimes you must send a proper PDF. And saving a page to PDF (or "printing") is a basic feature of a browser. They shouldn't release a mobile browser without that. Also, sending a low quality screenshot of a mobile screen isn't a professional thing.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    >Also, sending a low quality screenshot of a mobile screen isn't a professional thing. Cause a pdf is much more professional just because you open it in Adobe vs your photo gallery... This is bar none some of the most business oriented pretentiousness I've ever read on here. There is nothing wrong with image files and screenshots. It's just a file format. The fact that you save one as a pdf doesn't change the fact that, again, the content is the absolute same. Anybody who is that anal about how they receive a file that does the exact same thing is completely out of touch. In my experience, only old people say the things you're saying cause they don't know how to work with various files.
    - 5y ago

post_break 5y ago

The typing in the url bar and not getting website lists from history or bookmarks kills me every time. It's infuriating to have to scroll below the word Android, to get to Androidpolice.com etc.

laurent123456 5y ago

That new Android version when it was released was so bad that it made me switch to Vivaldi on both mobile and desktop, and I've no plan to go back to Firefox. With the constant breaking and removal of features I don't trust Mozilla much anymore.

anonymoose567 5y ago

And yet even with all these complaints the product has tens of millions of happy users and is growing month over month.

nsonha 5y ago
nice try

nsonha 5y ago

> The inactive tabs feature was met with significant criticism, because it turned out that if you had a large number of open tabs, it was now impossible to reach the list of "active" tabs without spending several seconds or minutes scrolling past the list of inactive tabs, every single time you opened the tab list Anyone using Firefox on Android knows exactly what this person is talking about. This was my last straw before uninstalling Firefox for good.

nsonha 5y ago

Is there a way to use FF Sync for on Chrome? I'm willing to give firefox on mobile another try but don't want to go all in with desktop just yet

rektide 5y ago

> About the only significant feature in my mind that Fenix has which Chrome for Android does not is WebExtension support, and even though this is indeed a very significant feature, for a user who doesn't particularly care about privacy it is practically the only feature that makes Fenix worthy of consideration over Chrome. 100% on the money. Note the caveat that a number of the key, vital, privacy preserving extensions are available on Firefox for Android, because otherwise, even users who do care about privacy would be shit-out-of-luck. I'm glad to hear that Nightly is in a better spot though[1]! This makes me hope that eventually, improvements are coming. But right now it seems like a number of features seem to get disabled before release, such as about:config. I hope some-day Chrome reconsiders this ancient old policy of providing zero user-agency on the web. Extensions are the system by which users can opt to modify their web experience, and not having extensions available on the most restricted, most constrained, most in-need-of-help modality is cruel. A decade ago there might have been sufficient cause to believe the "mobile devices aren't fast enough," but today it just feels like Google doesn't want to allow users to do good things for themselves. [1] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/19594 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/19594

sorenjan 5y ago

Is it possible to sync desktop Firefox with mobile Chrome, or any other mobile browser? Preferably one with user addons in general, and adblocking and user scripts in particular.

rozab 5y ago

I have an even more infuriating issue with the urlbar suggestions. About 50% of the time I type something in, it will find an url suggestion for the first letter or so but keep that suggestion at the end as I keep typing, unless I press backspace before enter. e.g. "hot tubs for salettps://news.ycombinator.com"

commoner 5y ago
I experienced that too, but I wrote it off as a keyboard issue since it stopped happening after I switched from AnySoftKeyboard to FlorisBoard. Which keyboard are you using?
- franga2000 5y ago
  Same issue for me on SwiftKey (yes, I know, shame on me). Definitely a browser issue.
Gualdrapo 5y ago
Another annoying thing with the urlbar is when searching something (at least with Google). Say you have set Google as your default search engine and you type 'giant books' in the urlbar (sans the quote marks). It will show that results page from Google. But say you want to look for giant books _only in your country_. So what I usually do is to add '.co' (or your country's suffix) after the '.com'. You'd tape on the urlbar, scroll until you find the '.com' and add the '.co'. But nope. It won't let you modify the URL. For some weird reason it keeps showing the query string you originally typed, in this case 'giant books'. I haven't been able to find something that lets me modify the URL when searching something. In the example, I need to type 'google.com.co', retype the query string and search again.

yata69420 5y ago

I use https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/ as my preferred firefox android fork. I use the addon collection from account 16201230 named "What-I-want-on-Fenix". This gives me uBlock Origin, Bypass Paywalls Clean, I Don't Care About Cookies, SponsorBlock, ViolentMonkey, etc. The stewardship of Firefox and Fennec are a real concern, but for now, this works.

ljm 5y ago

As an aside, I notice "let me preface this..." introductions more often than I used to. I don't know what to make of it but I've found myself writing it some times, and when I do it, it's because I'm imagining a specific audience and trying to mitigate their backlash. Or I'm being too self-aware in the writing and assuming things readers don't. The article starts off better without the apologetic rationalisation of something I haven't even read yet. See for yourself, copy my post and add "Let me preface this by saying I don't have a problem with what I'm about to mention, but I am going to point out something I find frustrating, I've found it frustrating for a while, and I need to talk about it."

nonbirithm 5y ago
My personal reason for beginning the post the way I did is because of the ease of misinterpreting someone's tone when the communication is only textual, and that you lose the extra context you might gain when being able to hear someone's voice. I'm not angry at Mozilla because of the frustration I feel when trying to use Fenix as intended. I only wish that there was some way we could have a stable alternative to Chrome on Android with support for WebExtensions, and there appear to be several issues preventing that wish from coming true. And I do not want to seem like I'm trying to attack anyone by trying to explain why I felt the frustration I did. I personally believe that declaring my intentions in a precise manner upfront is a reasonable step to take for a post like this.
- ljm 5y ago
  Yeah I get it. Oftentimes I write a reply and it seems perfectly harmless or half-serious, until I go back and read it later on in a different mood. I suppose my bug bear is that sometimes it comes across as beating around the bush. Or setting an expectation about the writing that is only true because you described how you might uncharitably interpret your words. I like it when people take responsibility for their perspectives and interpretations, so it's not up to an author, like you, to lay it all down up front.

option_greek 5y ago

We will continue to see posts like this till enough users are turned off by them and Firefox will no longer be a viable browser to run as a user or support as a dev. You are comparing the last truly free alternative to a browser built by ad grubby organisation. While a vocal minority keeps doing this the rest of us are happily using it without issues. You don't like Firefox? Great! Chrome is just a click away. Feel free to enjoy the 'personalised' ad experiences there. Just don't spoil it for the rest of us happy users whose best outcome at this point is a few more ad free years of Firefox before morons like this who don't have big picture in mind end up killing it for good.

nonbirithm 5y ago
Moving away from Fenix does not mean that I no longer believe that advertising is universally harmful for the people who are constantly subjected to it. As I mentioned in my post, I am still a user of Firefox on desktop, and I wouldn't think of browsing the modern web without an adblocker anymore. The problem is that Fenix in its current state is too immature for me to use in a practical, day-to-day manner. That does not mean that Fenix cannot be improved in the future, and I absolutely believe that Mozilla is capable of doing so if they restructure their priorities. I am concerned about the future of Firefox as much as you are, and that is the reason I wrote this post. I wanted more people to know of Fenix's issues so that it can ultimately become a better browser.
GravitasFailure 5y ago
>the last truly free alternative to a browser built by ad grubby organisation Is it? Considering Mozilla gets most of their money from Google, I find assertions about their independence on very thin ice. Also, the idea that discussing Firefox's problems is "ruining it for the rest of us" is absurd. People care about Firefox and are being vocal about the problems so that they might get fixed. The people being silent about Firefox's problems are the ones that no longer care and have long since moved on.
betwixthewires 5y ago
Or, bear with me, use a fork of chromium and get google to give you their labor for free while using a piece of software that serves you first and foremost.

HKH2 5y ago

I used to use Firefox for Android out of principle too, but I got sick of being used as a guinea pig for their UI experiments. They seem oblivious to the existence of muscle memory.

0xdeadb00f 5y ago

Also worth noting is that Tor Browser for android inherits all these issues. The most annoying one is not being able to download images from sites that use cookies, since 90% of the mainstream websites you'll visit via Tor require you to fill out the Cloudflare DDOS protection captcha, and require the use of cookies!

pentagrama 5y ago

I'm so happy with the redesign. All UX improvements and no complains for me. Also I noticed how it gets better. And with Ublock origin installed it rocks. I'm not a power user on mobile, hope more use cases like me exists and adopt Firefox, it will not be the nightmarish future that the OP mention. I think that the major challenge for Firefox is advertising, how to be known and get installs, the product is good, but Google is so big and powerful that takes all the air and suffocates the little fox. Is like those avengers movies taking all the attention of the culture and those challenging and thought provoking movies with five people in the theater and two reviews in YouTube with fifty views. Sad. Sent from Firefox Android.

MattPalmer1086 5y ago

As a long time Firefox user, from when it was still called Phoenix, I reluctantly and recently switched to Opera on Android. Firefox crashed several times a day, text input and rendering was messed up, no page refresh, limited extensions ... The list went on. It's still my main desktop browser which I love. Other than sharing the name Firefox, the Android version has nothing else in common with it sadly.

trixrabbit 5y ago

Desktop : firefox Mobile: moved from firefox to Vivaldi

tlhunter 5y ago

Firefox for Android is my daily driver. I really dig it; once you get used to the address bar being near your thumb there's no going back.

prettyWise 5y ago

It would be great if Firefox for Android supported multiple user profiles for syncing. I use a work and personal profile on my desktop, and in edge mobile.

spacechild1 5y ago

I have always been using Firefox on Android and it's a shame that the UI keeps getting worse. Why do they regularly remove features? I honestly don't understand it. The most egregious example is that with the latest version you can't move tabs anymore. Wtf? Why?

Yhippa 5y ago
Resume Driven Development

5pecta70r 5y ago

I'm still on 68.11.0 on my android and android x86 devices. Even though it's outdated, it is by far the most functional as far as usability goes. A lot of addons will work with it (not all), just go to the base firefox addons page and request desktop site. The extensions are what made firefox great for power users, hobbling it was imho the wrong direction to pursue.