6 ms·

Firefox for Android is adding support for 400 add-ons

142 points by nfriedly 3y ago

nfriedly 3y ago
I've been running Iceraven for a while, which is just Firefox for Android with more addons enabled and some other annoyances fixed. I'll probably switch back to the official Firefox after this ships.
- chikenf00t 3y ago
  I also use Iceraven and Mull as well. Both have served me great over the years. They're much better than Vanadium that comes by default with GrapheneOS.
- nfriedly 3y ago
  Too late to edit, but it looks like I'll be sticking with Iceraven for a while longer after all, as over half of my current addons are not on the offical allowed list.
DoingIsLearning 3y ago
The title is rather diplomatic. I guess: "Firefox for Android voluntary broke add-on support in 2020 and has now fixed it after 3 years of users and developers complaining about it" Doesn't quite have the same ring to it. I mean as a user I get the rationale for the rewrite and one step back two steps forward but it genuinely feels like Mozilla has prioritized just about everything else instead of this.
- cedilla 3y ago
  You should really ask for your money back.
  - IshKebab 3y ago
    You mean switch to Chrome? Yeah lots of people have so Mozilla isn't doing too well.
    - AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
      That'll teach them! Show your contempt for the browser vendor who is staggering add-on support by switching to a browser with no add-on support.
      - Zuiii 3y ago
        I've switched to kiwi on android ever since mozila dropped the ball. It's chrome with all addons. No complaints whatsoever :-) It's not about teaching anyone anything. All I want is a browser that supports any addons I want. Mozilla decided they didn't want to provide what I want when they blacklisted most addons and required their wierd signing requirements, so I simply switched to a browser that does.
        joak 3y ago
        I moved to kiwi as well. Same reasons.
        starttoaster 3y ago
        > Mozilla decided they didn't want to provide what I want when they blacklisted most addons and required their wierd signing requirements, so I simply switched to a browser that does. You're free, of course, to be a patron of whatever software you want. However, they only instituted "weird" signing requirements to help dramatically slow down or stop the influx of addons that were maliciously changing browser settings among other hazards. If that doesn't sound like some good utility to you, then I think we'll just have to agree to disagree. Online security has never been a priority for a large subset of internet users.
        Zuiii 3y ago
        I don't see chrome having that problem and it doesn't enforce similar signing requirements. Mozilla's decision was either ill thought out or was not motivated by "online security". In any case, most people tend choose functionality over security if they have to choose and, in this case, it seems like we did. Cheers.
  - switch007 3y ago
    You know they’ve accepted donations for quite a while now? For all you know they could have donated considerable amounts
    - jdiff 3y ago
      Sure, they could also secretly be the Mozilla CEO.
      - SpaceManNabs 3y ago
        Your comment is incredibly dismissive, especially given that the "OP" is in fact a donor.
    - DoingIsLearning 3y ago
      I actually was a donor until 2020. Not because of add-ons obviously but because of the Mozilla foundation mass layoffs with the MDN, Servo, Rust team, etc. The contrast of C-levels (of an open-source _foundation_) like Mitchell raking in +3M a year and the layoffs felt too hypocritical. The suits have taken over and they lost their mission. I will not be donating to them until there is a clear way to make donations specifically for Developer payroll only.
- dugite-code 3y ago
  In fairness Firefox for android got essentially a full re-write so it wasn't JUST add-on support that was changing
  - k8svet 3y ago
    Huh? Firefox for Android's big rewrite landed like 1, 2 years ago.
    - DoingIsLearning 3y ago
      No, the change to Phoenix happened with the 2020 stable release which is what intentionally broke add ons.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
arsome 3y ago
How about all add-ons as specified by developers instead of this trashfire? Restricting add-ons in this way seems more like a Google move than a Mozilla one.
- Sakos 3y ago
  > Not all Firefox add-ons available from addons.mozilla.org will work with the mobile browser. But any extension marked as Android compatible should work, and if you want to browse a subset of compatible extensions, there’s a new page for that. If a developer marks their addon as compatible with the mobile version, you can install it. Mozilla isn't adding any of these addons themselves, it's all up to the devs now.
  - Zuiii 3y ago
    So if I take the source code and change the manifest to indicate that it is compatible, then it should work out of the box? I still don't understand why they don't do what kiwi does. It supports all the chrome addons without modification.
    - joak 3y ago
      I'm sticking with kiwi: Firefox is still missing the must needed "I don't mind about cookies" extension. In Europe, by law, each time you open a page you get a weird and annoying popup saying something like: "the website uses cookies, are you ok with that?". The extension just nix the nonsense popup.
shitlord 3y ago
Hopefully, SponsorBlock is included. The official YouTube app and the website are both plagued with sponsored segments. FOSS alternatives don't seem to support personalized feeds (although I may be mistaken).
- joelthelion 3y ago
  I've been using Firefox for Android with ublock and sponsor block for a few months. Works great!
- rey0927 3y ago
  use Youtube Revanced
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  I wish content creators would just briefly mention that sponsor links are in the video info and not spend minutes talking about it. I just double-tap-right/skip over that and it only serves to make me annoyed. I would actually be much more likely to at least glance at a written list of sponsors and info for a video that I liked.
  - frfl 3y ago
    Lex Fridman does that basically, in the first 30 seconds, and mentions video info has full list. I mention Lex because that's the only example I can think of right now. Other's seem to go out of their way to embed sponsor reads within the video at random times.
- nfriedly 3y ago
  ReVanced patches the official YouTube app to remove ads, add SponsorBlock, enable background playback, and about a million other improvements. It can optionally hide shorts, comments, watermarks, and other stuff. It can remember the playback speed and enable speeds higher than 2X. It basically fixes everything but the recommendation algorithm. https://revanced.app/ https://revanced.app/ See also: https://www.reddit.com/r/revancedapp/comments/xlcny9/revanced_manager_guide_for_dummies/ https://www.reddit.com/r/revancedapp/comments/xlcny9/revance...
boringuser2 3y ago
Unfortunately, the "browser", for lack of a better term... sucks. It was released as a preview in 2019 and has barely made appreciable strides since. The team is so semi-competent that they have added and broken and disabled pull to refresh more than once now. Add-ons have been on life support ever since they were introduced. If I fullscreen a video, my browser minimizes. Battery usage is abysmal. Speed is noticably worse than any chromium fork. Of course, I don't think I could do any better, but I'm not producing a browser, nor have I fired any engineers despite not having particularly reknown engineering chops as a company in recent memory. This software is just terrible, especially because this failure isn't in a vacuum, it actually cements chromium as a monopoly of engineering competence.
- tpm 3y ago
  I'm using Firefox on Android daily as my only mobile browser since Google tried to force tab groups on me. It could be faster, but other than that I don't really have any issues.
- anonymousab 3y ago
  One thing I've noticed is that sticky divs of most kinds (e.g. the bar at the bottom of Twitter.com, sidebars on news sites, etc.) horrendously crush the performance. But if you kill them, by zapping with ublock or using another extension or bookmarklet, the performance is instantly a lot closer to something like the Chrome or Brave apps It has been like this since Fenix launched, so at this point it makes me need to assume that it's some sort of fundamental limitation of their architecture. It is rather unfortunate.
- OneDonOne 3y ago
  There was no need for that "redesign". None. There is a distinct possibility that older Firefox could be in use today without issue. People must learn when to just leave certaon features alone.
  - dblohm7 3y ago
    As somebody who worked on the Gecko side on this, there absolutely was a need for a rewrite.
akomtu 3y ago
Still no support for side-loading?
- xrd 3y ago
  I did some side loading using a crazy wireguard, adb and CLI OCR hack: https://blog.plzat.me/2023-05-23-android-in-wireguardland-pushing-extensions-down-the-firefox-hole-using-ocr https://blog.plzat.me/2023-05-23-android-in-wireguardland-pu... It worked great! But, I'm glad I don't need to use it anymore.
  - c6401 3y ago
    Interesting. Have you tried using sshd in termux to connect to android through ssh instead of some of your steps? I think am works in termux but I haven't tried it there.
- von_lohengramm 3y ago
  Can you not create an add-on collection to install arbitrary extensions anymore?
- cherryteastain 3y ago
  No need for sideloading, you can download the Nightly version and use this trick: https://www.androidpolice.com/install-add-on-extension-mozilla-firefox-android/ https://www.androidpolice.com/install-add-on-extension-mozil...
  - akomtu 3y ago
    "go to addons.mozilla.org and log in to your Firefox account" Is this the trick you're talking about?
sebtron 3y ago
Good to hear, unfortunately my favorite add-on Multi-Account Containers is not in the list :/ I guess it is one of the more complex to port from a technical point of view. Hopefully soon!
- Obscurity4340 3y ago
  Hermit's pretty good for creating this kind of context if I understand you correctly
beebeepka 3y ago
Firefox mobile is the only reason I barely use my laptop for browsing anymore. I only need noscript and ublock origin keeping the modern web bearable. Now, if only there was a powerful computer device with the physical dimensions of my Kobo Libra 2. Almost got a Lenovo Legion Go but it's 3x the weight of my reader - more than 600 grams without the joypads
z0mghii 3y ago
Anyone have issues with first page load for a unique domain taking a long time for ff mobile? Seems like it takes a while to establish ssl connection
- Vorh 3y ago
  Might be a DNS lookup issue.
rplatimer 3y ago
I'm the creator of the Repibox recipe extension and it looks like it's working on Firefox mobile without me having to do anything. Pretty cool! Shameless plug, Repibox is a recipe extension that immediately pulls the recipe into a modal on top of the page. You can add it to Firefox by going to Repibox.com
- kyorochan 3y ago
  Seems like a cool extension, but how come your website and legal documents are open source, but the actual add-on is not?
antifa 3y ago
Looking forward to support for keyboard shortcuts and middle/right click support on Android.

142 points by nfriedly 3y ago

I've been running Iceraven for a while, which is just Firefox for Android with more addons enabled and some other annoyances fixed. I'll probably switch back to the official Firefox after this ships.

chikenf00t 3y ago
I also use Iceraven and Mull as well. Both have served me great over the years. They're much better than Vanadium that comes by default with GrapheneOS.
nfriedly 3y ago
Too late to edit, but it looks like I'll be sticking with Iceraven for a while longer after all, as over half of my current addons are not on the offical allowed list.

DoingIsLearning 3y ago

The title is rather diplomatic. I guess: "Firefox for Android voluntary broke add-on support in 2020 and has now fixed it after 3 years of users and developers complaining about it" Doesn't quite have the same ring to it. I mean as a user I get the rationale for the rewrite and one step back two steps forward but it genuinely feels like Mozilla has prioritized just about everything else instead of this.

cedilla 3y ago
You should really ask for your money back.
- IshKebab 3y ago
  You mean switch to Chrome? Yeah lots of people have so Mozilla isn't doing too well.
  - AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
    That'll teach them! Show your contempt for the browser vendor who is staggering add-on support by switching to a browser with no add-on support.
    - Zuiii 3y ago
      I've switched to kiwi on android ever since mozila dropped the ball. It's chrome with all addons. No complaints whatsoever :-) It's not about teaching anyone anything. All I want is a browser that supports any addons I want. Mozilla decided they didn't want to provide what I want when they blacklisted most addons and required their wierd signing requirements, so I simply switched to a browser that does.
      - joak 3y ago
        I moved to kiwi as well. Same reasons.
      - starttoaster 3y ago
        > Mozilla decided they didn't want to provide what I want when they blacklisted most addons and required their wierd signing requirements, so I simply switched to a browser that does. You're free, of course, to be a patron of whatever software you want. However, they only instituted "weird" signing requirements to help dramatically slow down or stop the influx of addons that were maliciously changing browser settings among other hazards. If that doesn't sound like some good utility to you, then I think we'll just have to agree to disagree. Online security has never been a priority for a large subset of internet users.
        Zuiii 3y ago
        I don't see chrome having that problem and it doesn't enforce similar signing requirements. Mozilla's decision was either ill thought out or was not motivated by "online security". In any case, most people tend choose functionality over security if they have to choose and, in this case, it seems like we did. Cheers.
- switch007 3y ago
  You know they’ve accepted donations for quite a while now? For all you know they could have donated considerable amounts
  - jdiff 3y ago
    Sure, they could also secretly be the Mozilla CEO.
    - SpaceManNabs 3y ago
      Your comment is incredibly dismissive, especially given that the "OP" is in fact a donor.
  - DoingIsLearning 3y ago
    I actually was a donor until 2020. Not because of add-ons obviously but because of the Mozilla foundation mass layoffs with the MDN, Servo, Rust team, etc. The contrast of C-levels (of an open-source _foundation_) like Mitchell raking in +3M a year and the layoffs felt too hypocritical. The suits have taken over and they lost their mission. I will not be donating to them until there is a clear way to make donations specifically for Developer payroll only.
dugite-code 3y ago
In fairness Firefox for android got essentially a full re-write so it wasn't JUST add-on support that was changing
- k8svet 3y ago
  Huh? Firefox for Android's big rewrite landed like 1, 2 years ago.
  - DoingIsLearning 3y ago
    No, the change to Phoenix happened with the 2020 stable release which is what intentionally broke add ons.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

arsome 3y ago

How about all add-ons as specified by developers instead of this trashfire? Restricting add-ons in this way seems more like a Google move than a Mozilla one.

Sakos 3y ago
> Not all Firefox add-ons available from addons.mozilla.org will work with the mobile browser. But any extension marked as Android compatible should work, and if you want to browse a subset of compatible extensions, there’s a new page for that. If a developer marks their addon as compatible with the mobile version, you can install it. Mozilla isn't adding any of these addons themselves, it's all up to the devs now.
- Zuiii 3y ago
  So if I take the source code and change the manifest to indicate that it is compatible, then it should work out of the box? I still don't understand why they don't do what kiwi does. It supports all the chrome addons without modification.
  - joak 3y ago
    I'm sticking with kiwi: Firefox is still missing the must needed "I don't mind about cookies" extension. In Europe, by law, each time you open a page you get a weird and annoying popup saying something like: "the website uses cookies, are you ok with that?". The extension just nix the nonsense popup.

shitlord 3y ago

Hopefully, SponsorBlock is included. The official YouTube app and the website are both plagued with sponsored segments. FOSS alternatives don't seem to support personalized feeds (although I may be mistaken).

joelthelion 3y ago
I've been using Firefox for Android with ublock and sponsor block for a few months. Works great!
rey0927 3y ago
use Youtube Revanced
SoftTalker 3y ago
I wish content creators would just briefly mention that sponsor links are in the video info and not spend minutes talking about it. I just double-tap-right/skip over that and it only serves to make me annoyed. I would actually be much more likely to at least glance at a written list of sponsors and info for a video that I liked.
- frfl 3y ago
  Lex Fridman does that basically, in the first 30 seconds, and mentions video info has full list. I mention Lex because that's the only example I can think of right now. Other's seem to go out of their way to embed sponsor reads within the video at random times.
nfriedly 3y ago
ReVanced patches the official YouTube app to remove ads, add SponsorBlock, enable background playback, and about a million other improvements. It can optionally hide shorts, comments, watermarks, and other stuff. It can remember the playback speed and enable speeds higher than 2X. It basically fixes everything but the recommendation algorithm. https://revanced.app/ https://revanced.app/ See also: https://www.reddit.com/r/revancedapp/comments/xlcny9/revanced_manager_guide_for_dummies/ https://www.reddit.com/r/revancedapp/comments/xlcny9/revance...

boringuser2 3y ago

Unfortunately, the "browser", for lack of a better term... sucks. It was released as a preview in 2019 and has barely made appreciable strides since. The team is so semi-competent that they have added and broken and disabled pull to refresh more than once now. Add-ons have been on life support ever since they were introduced. If I fullscreen a video, my browser minimizes. Battery usage is abysmal. Speed is noticably worse than any chromium fork. Of course, I don't think I could do any better, but I'm not producing a browser, nor have I fired any engineers despite not having particularly reknown engineering chops as a company in recent memory. This software is just terrible, especially because this failure isn't in a vacuum, it actually cements chromium as a monopoly of engineering competence.

tpm 3y ago
I'm using Firefox on Android daily as my only mobile browser since Google tried to force tab groups on me. It could be faster, but other than that I don't really have any issues.
anonymousab 3y ago
One thing I've noticed is that sticky divs of most kinds (e.g. the bar at the bottom of Twitter.com, sidebars on news sites, etc.) horrendously crush the performance. But if you kill them, by zapping with ublock or using another extension or bookmarklet, the performance is instantly a lot closer to something like the Chrome or Brave apps It has been like this since Fenix launched, so at this point it makes me need to assume that it's some sort of fundamental limitation of their architecture. It is rather unfortunate.
OneDonOne 3y ago
There was no need for that "redesign". None. There is a distinct possibility that older Firefox could be in use today without issue. People must learn when to just leave certaon features alone.
- dblohm7 3y ago
  As somebody who worked on the Gecko side on this, there absolutely was a need for a rewrite.

akomtu 3y ago

Still no support for side-loading?

xrd 3y ago
I did some side loading using a crazy wireguard, adb and CLI OCR hack: https://blog.plzat.me/2023-05-23-android-in-wireguardland-pushing-extensions-down-the-firefox-hole-using-ocr https://blog.plzat.me/2023-05-23-android-in-wireguardland-pu... It worked great! But, I'm glad I don't need to use it anymore.
- c6401 3y ago
  Interesting. Have you tried using sshd in termux to connect to android through ssh instead of some of your steps? I think am works in termux but I haven't tried it there.
von_lohengramm 3y ago
Can you not create an add-on collection to install arbitrary extensions anymore?
cherryteastain 3y ago
No need for sideloading, you can download the Nightly version and use this trick: https://www.androidpolice.com/install-add-on-extension-mozilla-firefox-android/ https://www.androidpolice.com/install-add-on-extension-mozil...
- akomtu 3y ago
  "go to addons.mozilla.org and log in to your Firefox account" Is this the trick you're talking about?

sebtron 3y ago

Good to hear, unfortunately my favorite add-on Multi-Account Containers is not in the list :/ I guess it is one of the more complex to port from a technical point of view. Hopefully soon!

Obscurity4340 3y ago
Hermit's pretty good for creating this kind of context if I understand you correctly

beebeepka 3y ago

Firefox mobile is the only reason I barely use my laptop for browsing anymore. I only need noscript and ublock origin keeping the modern web bearable. Now, if only there was a powerful computer device with the physical dimensions of my Kobo Libra 2. Almost got a Lenovo Legion Go but it's 3x the weight of my reader - more than 600 grams without the joypads

z0mghii 3y ago

Anyone have issues with first page load for a unique domain taking a long time for ff mobile? Seems like it takes a while to establish ssl connection

Vorh 3y ago
Might be a DNS lookup issue.

rplatimer 3y ago

I'm the creator of the Repibox recipe extension and it looks like it's working on Firefox mobile without me having to do anything. Pretty cool! Shameless plug, Repibox is a recipe extension that immediately pulls the recipe into a modal on top of the page. You can add it to Firefox by going to Repibox.com

kyorochan 3y ago
Seems like a cool extension, but how come your website and legal documents are open source, but the actual add-on is not?

antifa 3y ago

Looking forward to support for keyboard shortcuts and middle/right click support on Android.