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Firefox is the best mobile browser

297 points by kelvinjps10 1y ago

26thCreator 1y ago
Yeah, I have been a firefox user for more than 7 years now and It has everything I need and has a nice community of developer who make useful addons!
ramon156 1y ago
Ad block + a good browser experience, on top of that I've been using the "send to device" a lot more. Wonderful stuff! I sometimes have to help my mother out with her chrome and I can't fathom how she can navigate anything
mrbonner 1y ago
This is not applicable on iOS. The Firefox app remains a wrapper built on Apple’s WebKit engine rather than a fully native implementation. However, with the recent release of uBlock for iOS, Safari has become significantly more tolerable. I’ve tried many so‑called “browsers” (acknowledging they’re all essentially WebKit wrappers), but none match Safari’s energy efficiency or the seamlessness of its sync features.
- raw_anon_1111 1y ago
  Ad blocking has been available an effective since 2015 with iOS 8.
  - hu3 1y ago
    Certainly not uBlock Origin of Firefox or anything close to it because of API limitations on Safari. I can see the Lite one available. Which is gimped.
    - raw_anon_1111 1y ago
      I’m not talking about “content blockers” that have been available since iOS 8 where an extension gives the Safari browser a list of urls to block that works well and has been around since iOS 8. I mean real web extensions https://support.apple.com/en-sg/guide/iphone/iphab0432bf6/ios https://support.apple.com/en-sg/guide/iphone/iphab0432bf6/io...
      - hu3 1y ago
        Cool so where is uBlock origin non-Lite for iOS?
        raw_anon_1111 1y ago
        Well, what do you think you can do with uBlock origin that you can’t do with 1Blocker with web extensions https://support.1blocker.com/en/articles/9313586-1blocker-scripts-overview https://support.1blocker.com/en/articles/9313586-1blocker-sc...
        eipi10_hn 1y ago
        Custom scriptlet.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
        raw_anon_1111 1y ago
        So instead of just throwing out random words - what end result do you want that you can’t do? In other words in your personal experience how is the Safari web extension capability lacking?
        hu3 1y ago
        The point here is, there's no full uBlock Origin in Safari like there's in Firefox because of Apple's limitations. See this post with 400+ comments from 67 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44795825 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44795825 Top comment explains it all: > People should be way more upset at the fact that Safari adblocking today is still inferior to even MV3 Google Chrome. Apple's implementation of declarativeNetRequest was semi-broken until the very latest iOS 18.6. Apple can do the bare minimum, years after everyone else, and barely get called out. The Reality Distortion Field is the enemy.
- _yvnd 1y ago
  TIL about UBlock on IOS. Is it good? I've just switched to IOS and have been trying the free version of 1Blocker but it wasn't removing stuff like pop ups.
  - mrbonner 1y ago
    It is as good as the desktop version from my experience.
- comprev 1y ago
  NextDNS has proven effective for me on iOS. On mobile devices I have the app and my home router is configured to force all DNS requests to use NextDNS servers.
fny 1y ago
The only equivalent to this for iOS is Orion by Kagi. I'm not sure how, but they've managed to avoid drawing apples ire while providing access to both Chrome and Firefox's plugin ecosystems.
- Nursie 1y ago
  From last I read, Kagi allows installing of all manner of plugins, but very few actually work.
  - darreninthenet 1y ago
    I use Orion for my daily mobile web browser and it works fine, the plugin support is generally very good in my experience and you can always post any bugs and they do get looked at. It's worth a shot anyway.
    - mgrandl 1y ago
      I keep trying Orion from time to time, but my experience is basically the opposite. Plugins rarely work, websites break and reported bugs just get ignored for years while the only activity in the forum posts are a bunch of +1. Basically at this point I don’t ever see myself switching to Orion. I do pay for Kagi, which has been a wonderful service.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
SilverElfin 1y ago
The one issue is that on iOS Apple forces all browsers to use Safari behind the scenes. And you can’t do extensions.
- Macha 1y ago
  Yeah, the extension thing is the real killer on my iPad, I need to decide between adblock or syncing to my Windows, Android, Linux, etc. devices.
- N0RMAN 1y ago
  I think that’s not true for EU devices? Not sure if there are any browsers with an alternative engine are actually available though. https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engines/ https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engi...
  - jeroenhd 1y ago
    As long as you pass Apple's arbitrary rules, you can make your own browser for iOS. Ladybug uses Apple's test suite as an arbitrary measure of completeness. However, no browser engine has bothered so far because they'd need to upload a separate app to the app store specifically for EU users, and non-EU developers cannot debug the application on a real device so manpower is region-restricted unless you hack around the limitations.
    - JimDabell 1y ago
      > As long as you pass Apple's arbitrary rules, you can make your own browser for iOS. Ladybug uses Apple's test suite as an arbitrary measure of completeness. The browser is called Ladybird and it isn’t Apple’s test suite, web-platform-tests is a collective effort all the major players contribute to. Almost two thousand people have contributed to it: https://github.com/web-platform-tests/wpt/graphs/contributors https://github.com/web-platform-tests/wpt/graphs/contributor...
  - thayne 1y ago
    Kind of. But Apple makes it so hard to develop an engine for EU devices, that no browser makers are currently willing to do it.
arunc 1y ago
I used Firefox focus on Android until last month. It drained the battery far quicker than Brave. Brave has been nice on the battery so far.
- tombert 1y ago
  I think it doesn't background tabs at all. I noticed that the battery got considerably better if I actively always closed all my tabs.
- bikelang 1y ago
  Brave is hands down the best ad blocking experience on iOS as well.
  - EasyMark 1y ago
    kagi with ublock origin extension is just as good
    - bikelang 1y ago
      Orion was my daily driver on iOS/macOS for a fair bit ~8 months ago. It wasn’t the most stable and didn’t block ads reliably in YouTube videos either. Planning to give it another shot next year. I certainly like the Kagi ethos better than Brave - the product functionality just wasn’t there yet.
      - EasyMark 1y ago
        I have youtube premium so I guess I hadn't noticed. it seems perfectly stable and usable to me though so maybe you're more of a power user than me. I do most of my browser on a laptop to be honest
- glimshe 1y ago
  I also use Brave on Android. The performance is better based on my use cases. I hardly see ads.
- 1y ago
7839284023 1y ago
I would hope that Firefox on mobile got finally better/usable. I still remember this blog post, which at the the time (late 2021), was 100% accurate: https://web.archive.org/web/20230221123127/https://blog.nori.moe/firefox-for-android-is-a-mess/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230221123127/https://blog.nori...
mmmpetrichor 1y ago
Firefox mobile was basically the only option I considered for a long time just because it lets you install Ublock origin . Not sure if other mobile browsers have that now too or not. I'm a firefox user on desktop anyway so I love having tab sharing between my phone and all my pcs. They also added a nice feature recently that optionally requires an additional login (fingerprint) to access private tabs. I have found no reason to switch.
- randomNumber7 1y ago
  The adblock is it. Even if it would be a lot slower and worse than other browsers I would still use it. Who is voluntarily browsing the internet without adblock?
  - comprev 1y ago
    Probably 99.9% of daily users because they know no different.
    - naldb 1y ago
      I was curious and obviously there is no single exact source but it seems like ~30% of web users have an ad blocker of some kind. Remember that some quite popular browsers include a built-in ad blocker.
  - 0xCMP 1y ago
    Ads pay for everything and Google/Meta are making huge profits (minus AI spending)... so probably most people.
  - agiacalone 1y ago
    I teach CS at a state university, specifically computer security. At the beginning of this semester, I did a poll of my students and asked if they use any form of ad-blocking. Less than a third of my students did, and not many more even knew about browsers other than Chrome or Safari. This was out of a class of ~110. Granted, it's anecdotal, but if 66% of my upper-division CS students don't even know about Firefox and ad-blocking, than I seriously doubt many non-tech people do. Similarly, after that lecture, I had a student come to my office hours and ask for more info about ad-blockers. I had them open up msn.com and showed them the large banner ad on the page. It took a few seconds for them to even realize they were being advertised to! I then showed them my browser, nice and ad-free. I get the impression that people have gotten so used to ads flashing in their face that they gloss over them. But the damage is still done.
baal80spam 1y ago
Well, for me Brave is.
mmastrac 1y ago
I've been using it for years and it is really great. I haven't had to open Chrome for a non-working website in quite a while. Adblock is really something -- you _really_ notice it if you have the misfortune of using a different browser.
cubefox 1y ago
Other recommended Firefox extensions: - Dark Reader (force dark mode on websites that don't have it, like Hacker News) - Unhook (remove various addictive or annoying elements from YouTube.com)
moelf 1y ago
missed one amazing add-on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bypass_Paywalls_Clean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bypass_Paywalls_Clean
kreativ_py 1y ago
the problem i have is i use google to manage all my passwords. i think i lose that if i switch to non chrome mobile
- ilogik 1y ago
  I think you can import them easily
- zipping1549 1y ago
  You should export them to a proper password manager.
- binarysneaker 1y ago
  And what will you do if Google decides to disable your account? Bitwarden is free, has clients and browser extensions for every platform, and it's easy to export your passwords and import them. Plus it supports SSH keys.
- EasyMark 1y ago
  they don't have an export function? I did that with lastpass -> bitwarden and it was a little bit of a hassle it wasn't too bad, just need to makes sure the exported cvs looked correct, no issues and didn't find anything wrong. I imagine it can go as smooth with chrome -> whatever
LucasOe 1y ago
I wish the article would talk a bit more about security. Here's what the GrapheneOS project has to say about Firefox [1]: > Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they're currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn't have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox's sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux) and lacks full support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn't happening for their Android browser yet. [1]: https://grapheneos.org/usage https://grapheneos.org/usage
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  If you're someone who's taking GrapheneOS' thread model into account, a locked down native browser is definitely better. Chrome has a whole bunch of cool security tricks that definitely outshine many other browsers, but I find it all rather inconsequential when the using Chrome leads to such a terrible, privacy-hostile experience.
  - 9029 1y ago
    While I still use Firefox on desktop, on Android I recently switched from Firefox mobile to Brave out of security concerns and frustrations with performance. It has built-in tracker, query param and ad blocking, and is recommended by the GrapheneOS people as a decent alternative to their Vanadium browser [0]. Additionally, I have a gut feeling a Brave user blends in a bit better with its default ad blocking vs say a Firefox user with extensions and filter lists of their choice, but this might be negligible. On the other hand the affiliate, crypto and AI shit in Brave are quite disgusting tbh, but at least they can be disabled. I also miss Firefox sync a bit. [0] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/111966258971400137 https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/111966258971400137
roschdal 1y ago
Firefox is the best web browser
tombert 1y ago
I don't run Android anymore, but when I did (about two years ago) I uninstalled Firefox because, as far as I could tell, it didn't properly background tabs when the app was closed. I didn't realize this initially, so I was unsure why my battery life was terrible and my phone as always hot. Being able to install extensions was neat, but not worth it for killing my battery. Suffice to say, I do not agree that it's the "best mobile browser" on Android.
- rf15 1y ago
  I'm sorry, but I don't think you understand what "the app was closed" means. A lot of people think that all processing goes to the visible foreground app, but that hasn't been true since the late DOS era. Please learn what's what in the system you're using. Clearly it was running in the background because you onlly had another app or the home acreen open.
  - tombert 1y ago
    I'm saying that when I would go back to the home screen, I still think it was using the same amount of power as if it were in the foreground. I think it was using the full amount of processing for each tab the entire time. This is not the behavior that anyone wants for any mobile app ever. I think the app is poorly made, or at least it was in 2023 when I last used it. I know that kernels are preemptive and have multiple processes running. Feel free to look at my post history if you don't believe me. Sorry I said the word "closed" when I meant "backgrounded" if that upsets you, but it was pretty obvious what I meant and I am pretty sure you knew that, so I think you're being needlessly pedantic.
    - seba_dos1 1y ago
      > This is not the behavior that anyone wants for any mobile app ever. [citation needed] > but it was pretty obvious what I meant It wasn't. It was possible to work the intended meaning out, but not without initial confusion, which is far from "pretty obvious".
      - 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
3eb7988a1663 1y ago
Maybe the plugin ecosystem can paper over some of the deficiencies, but Firefox is slowly taking away user agency and privacy in the name of simplification / whatever Chrome does. The recent windmill against which I am tilting: Firefox no longer shows you the complete URL. Either in the address bar or long pressing a link. This is incredibly hostile to those of us with technical proficiency which can inspect a URL to see if it is a bad domain or embedding tracking information we would like to strip. My other long standing annoyance is that on mobile, I can no longer protect cookies. Always keep the cookie to say my HN login, but allow me to bulk delete everything else. Instead, I am forced to manually go through the cookie page (like 10 at a time) and delete everything I do not want.
- Brian_K_White 1y ago
  FF is like democracy. It's the worst except for everything else.
brtv 1y ago
I've been using Firefox on desktop for decades and really want to like it on mobile, but I just can't get used to the behavior of new tabs . After just a bit of browsing, it opens 10+ new tabs and there's no way to configure this differently. It's such a shame.
miroljub 1y ago
Firefox lost its momentum a while ago. I lost trust in Firefox after Brendan Eich scandal and the way they treated him.
- Larrikin 1y ago
  You lost trust when a guy Mozilla reluctantly hired had his hate for gay marriage become public knowledge?
  - miroljub 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - array_key_first 1y ago
      To be clear, he didn't just hate gay marriage. He literally donated money to campaigns and laws against gay marriage. It's one thing to just have an opinion. It's another to use your money to try to actively make the world a worse place. Also, he was CEO. YES your speech matters if you're CEO. He's not just some dude. He was THE FACE of Mozilla. Obviously, perception matters.
      - miroljub 1y ago
        Donating, being against was at the time, and still is, a legitimate political action. It falls under free speech and free association. And it was his private stance, he never promoted his personal political views as a Mozilla CEO. But it was obviously too much for a woke politically correctness extremists at Mozilla. They prioritised politics and their own view of morality over technical excellence and vision. They showed their priorities and I lost trust they would prioritise building technically best browser. And the time showed I was right, since Firefox slowly lost ist magic and is currently just a shadow of what it was.
        array_key_first 1y ago
        You don't understand how free speech works. You're allowed to say whatever, that doesn't mean I'm forced to employ you. If you call your boss an asshole, that is free speech. And you will be fired. Welcome to the real world. And, if you favor free market dynamics instead, consider: as CEO, you are the face of the company. Perception is a form of advertising. You don't want negative advertising. Ultimately his views and donations were costing Mozilla actual money. People were upset, and that matters when you sell stuff and ask for donations. Him being fired was the free labor market at play.
lordofgibbons 1y ago
Firefox mobile was unusable slow for most sites I visited and had rendering issues - probably not FF's fault, but webdevs only testing on Chrome. Brave has been very fast with all the spyware and ad blocking features I was looking for in FF. I just had to disable all the crypto stuff first.
wiseowise 1y ago
On Android, maybe it is. Nothing beats Safari UX on iOS, nothing. You can hate the engine and lack of extensions, but Safari is the only thing that I can use with both hands seamlessly without breaking my fingers.
- anonym29 1y ago
  >Nothing beats Safari UX on iOS, nothing. Nothing except for the ads you're forced to see that mobile firefox users don't even know exist, thanks to the full fat uBlock Origin.
  - mediumsmart 1y ago
    Orion to the rescue
  - wiseowise 1y ago
    I use Firefox Focus as a content blocker within Safari.
  - xvv 1y ago
    There are numerous extensions for Safari in the app store that block ads the way uBlock does. You can also pair it with plain old DNS ad blocking too.
    - celsoazevedo 1y ago
      Not exactly in the same way, as Apple nerfed adblocking a few years ago. Works fine for most sites, but good luck blocking the more aggressive methods.
FlamingMoe 1y ago
i prefer the Brave mobile app. I previously used firefox focus, but I basically just made brave into a focus app by turning on Private Browsing Only, but can also disable the functionality when needed.
dogman123 1y ago
I’m often surprised how little people talk about the iOS Orion browser on here and it’s ability to let you use both Firefox and chrome extensions. I’ve been using it for a while now and it’s been great. It’s a little bit buggy sometimes, but nothing that would make me switch.
terminalbraid 1y ago
It is in fact Waterfox for all the same reasons less unnecessary Mozilla trash
- EasyMark 1y ago
  without that "mozilla trash" waterfox wouldn't exist
  - terminalbraid 1y ago
    I'd posit that Google's large infusions of cash are what is keeping Mozilla afloat right now rather than including things like AI features.
hagbard_c 1y ago
The browser with the best content blocking options is the best browser and at this moment that means Firefox ends up on top. Now that Mozilla is slow-walking towards doing ad-related things themselves I'm no longer running the branded versions but choose F-Droid's Fennec instead. If ever a browser with better content blocking shows up I'll give it a good look and might switch if it turns out to be at least on the same level as Firefox/Fennec. That's telling for the state of the web but alas, that's where we are. You give them an inch (-high banner ad) and they'll take a mile (-wide page-covering all-encompassing data-slurping javascript monstrosity).
isodev 1y ago
I wish we could get it on iOS too. Unfortunately, Apple is still difficult about alternative engines. Oh well.
chrisweekly 1y ago
Orion (from Kagi) is a strong contender. It's not (yet) fully open-source, but Kagi has bona fides when it comes to privacy. Orion blocks trackers and ads by default, has no telemetry, and is designed to avoid sending any user data to its servers. Lower memory footprint and battery consumption (reportedly; citation needed). And it can run FF extensions.
linuxhansl 1y ago
FWIW, I have disabled Chrome on my Android phones a whole ago and Firefox is the default browser - of course with uBlock origin.
IshKebab 1y ago
Yeah unfortunately I found it was noticeably slower and laggier than Chrome. Does anyone make a Blink-based mobile browser that also blocks ads?
- EasyMark 1y ago
  edge? brave? vivaldi? dolphin?
  - IshKebab 1y ago
    Which one of those has the least objectionable money-making conceit?
christophilus 1y ago
Brave is my favorite, though I prefer Firefox on my laptops. Brave mobile: excellent ad-blocking, download videos for offline viewing. No tinkering needed to make it excellent. It’s excellent out of the box.
- EbNar 1y ago
  I migrated from FF to Brave some 4 years ago and never looked back.
charcircuit 1y ago
Mobile Firefox constantly gets bugged and stops rendering pages until you restart it. It also has issues with scrolling on some pages where it won't let you scroll sometimes. Github is notoriously bad, you can't read code if you can't scroll through the file. As a developer not being able to use Github is a deal breaker. The browser itself is also missing features like webgpu. While extentions are nice, the browser engine itself being this broken for years makes it a painful choice.
neilv 1y ago
This is one time it's important to get names right. The article says simply "Ublock", but the screens show "uBlock Origin". "uBlock" and "uBlock Origin" are two different projects. "uBlock Origin" is the good one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin#uBlock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin#uBlock
- kelvinjps10 1y ago
  Thanks for letting me know
eth0up 1y ago
I am eccentric. Perhaps consequently, I am unable to understand how a conversation on the subject of Firefox as a mobile browser can exclude the inexplicable removal of about:config. Yes, Nightly. But I fear an example of incrementalism here, where it is brightly illustrated how the aperture into which we have the dongle of creeping suckage repeatedly inserted, lubricated by the existence (deterrent) of Chrome, continues to widen. At the rate which options are disappearing (I think of gnome/gtk), when we excoriate the final and last one, a consummate advertisement platform will have been coded into our DNA, where we not just watch and listen to the perpetual groping of avarice, but feel it existentially.
- pastage 1y ago
  About:config works great. You have to run a developer build. One could try to solve the issues with it. Honestly I think Firefox saying you could brick Firefox mobile with the wrong options is a a sign of what you call suckage. The problem is that about:config is basically useless to me on Firefox mobile so why should I bother fixing it. The real reasons is why we do not care.
a022311 1y ago
Firefox for Android is missing a bunch of privacy options available on desktop. Right now, I'm forced to always use private browsing mode (sorry, I've forgotten the reason but I do remember that I tried again recently without it and something broke) and I still have no option to allow persistent cookies for specific domains. Other than that it's a really solid mobile browser.
- alextingle 1y ago
  Have you tried the "Cookie AutoDelete" extension?
wetpaws 1y ago
[dead]
childintime 1y ago
Firefox on Android could maybe be the best, and I use it exclusively, but it's certainly not without its flaws: - the confusing home screen comes up all the time after i leave the browser, while i just want to get back to the last tab - try closing all private tabs, it then goes on to show the now empty list of private tabs, wtf? The point of closing the tabs was to get back to the regular tabs. - for all i care a private tab can just be listed next to a normal tab, the grouping in private tabs serves no purpose, except for surfacing implementation details - filtering bookmarks on tags doesn't work in any version AFAIK - but it's the only way to listen to youtube, with ublock origin and Youtube audio_only
- jayknight 1y ago
  I have it set to open in private mode by default, and there's no easy way to then open that site in a new regular tab. Like if I get to a reddit link that I want to comment on, I have to copy the URL, then open a new public tab and open that URL (five touches). Why is there no "Open in normal tab" option? Also, if I use "Add to home screen" to be able to get to a site quickly, there's no way to open that in a normal tab, making it useless for many things.
- kelvinjps10 1y ago
  The "confusing home screen" comes up every 4h you can set it up to always show the last tab, I should have explained it on the last part of the post.
anal_reactor 1y ago
The killer feature of Opera Mobile is that it displays desktop website with desktop-sized text, and when I zoom in, it adjusts the width of the text, so that text is legible no matter how much I zoom in. Do other browsers have something like that?
ishanjain28 1y ago
My experience with fenix has been complete opposite. 1. For the last 6 months, there is a bug which causes ff to read incorrect display resolution information on Samsung devices. This breaks all elements positioned with absolute property and you can't see them or access them. The only fix is to restart firefox. Over time, it has literally gotten so much worse that now I have to do it atleast 10 times in a 30 minute session. 2. Have a site open, click on the nav bar to do a search or open another site and it just reloads the same site again! Redo the action and then it loads. 3. The networking stack is so so so bad I don't even know where to begin with that. It gets stuck randomly, slow loading pages, infinite loading animations just so many problems. There are also similar problems with graphics performance where sometimes, it literally runs at less than 60fps(you can feel it), consumes a lot more battery and heats up the processor. All these issues along side some of the design decisions they have made that they refuse to revert. I do not feel good about Firefox fenix anymore
- never_inline 1y ago
  You're using the F-Droid version?
  - ishanjain28 1y ago
    No, the one from play store.
subsection1h 1y ago
This article includes 894 words and this discussion currently includes 153 comments. Neither one includes the terms "site isolation" or "Fission". WTF.
matteocontrini 1y ago
What the article says is true, but Firefox mobile doesn't get the basics right. From weird decisions like the new tab page not actually being a tab like in every other browser on Earth, to consistent bugs and lack of polish in basics functions like scroll direction locking or scrolling to hide the top bar.

297 points by kelvinjps10 1y ago

Yeah, I have been a firefox user for more than 7 years now and It has everything I need and has a nice community of developer who make useful addons!

ramon156 1y ago

Ad block + a good browser experience, on top of that I've been using the "send to device" a lot more. Wonderful stuff! I sometimes have to help my mother out with her chrome and I can't fathom how she can navigate anything

mrbonner 1y ago

This is not applicable on iOS. The Firefox app remains a wrapper built on Apple’s WebKit engine rather than a fully native implementation. However, with the recent release of uBlock for iOS, Safari has become significantly more tolerable. I’ve tried many so‑called “browsers” (acknowledging they’re all essentially WebKit wrappers), but none match Safari’s energy efficiency or the seamlessness of its sync features.

raw_anon_1111 1y ago
Ad blocking has been available an effective since 2015 with iOS 8.
- hu3 1y ago
  Certainly not uBlock Origin of Firefox or anything close to it because of API limitations on Safari. I can see the Lite one available. Which is gimped.
  - raw_anon_1111 1y ago
    I’m not talking about “content blockers” that have been available since iOS 8 where an extension gives the Safari browser a list of urls to block that works well and has been around since iOS 8. I mean real web extensions https://support.apple.com/en-sg/guide/iphone/iphab0432bf6/ios https://support.apple.com/en-sg/guide/iphone/iphab0432bf6/io...
    - hu3 1y ago
      Cool so where is uBlock origin non-Lite for iOS?
      - raw_anon_1111 1y ago
        Well, what do you think you can do with uBlock origin that you can’t do with 1Blocker with web extensions https://support.1blocker.com/en/articles/9313586-1blocker-scripts-overview https://support.1blocker.com/en/articles/9313586-1blocker-sc...
        eipi10_hn 1y ago
        Custom scriptlet.
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
        raw_anon_1111 1y ago
        So instead of just throwing out random words - what end result do you want that you can’t do? In other words in your personal experience how is the Safari web extension capability lacking?
        hu3 1y ago
        The point here is, there's no full uBlock Origin in Safari like there's in Firefox because of Apple's limitations. See this post with 400+ comments from 67 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44795825 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44795825 Top comment explains it all: > People should be way more upset at the fact that Safari adblocking today is still inferior to even MV3 Google Chrome. Apple's implementation of declarativeNetRequest was semi-broken until the very latest iOS 18.6. Apple can do the bare minimum, years after everyone else, and barely get called out. The Reality Distortion Field is the enemy.
_yvnd 1y ago
TIL about UBlock on IOS. Is it good? I've just switched to IOS and have been trying the free version of 1Blocker but it wasn't removing stuff like pop ups.
- mrbonner 1y ago
  It is as good as the desktop version from my experience.
comprev 1y ago
NextDNS has proven effective for me on iOS. On mobile devices I have the app and my home router is configured to force all DNS requests to use NextDNS servers.

fny 1y ago

The only equivalent to this for iOS is Orion by Kagi. I'm not sure how, but they've managed to avoid drawing apples ire while providing access to both Chrome and Firefox's plugin ecosystems.

Nursie 1y ago
From last I read, Kagi allows installing of all manner of plugins, but very few actually work.
- darreninthenet 1y ago
  I use Orion for my daily mobile web browser and it works fine, the plugin support is generally very good in my experience and you can always post any bugs and they do get looked at. It's worth a shot anyway.
  - mgrandl 1y ago
    I keep trying Orion from time to time, but my experience is basically the opposite. Plugins rarely work, websites break and reported bugs just get ignored for years while the only activity in the forum posts are a bunch of +1. Basically at this point I don’t ever see myself switching to Orion. I do pay for Kagi, which has been a wonderful service.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

SilverElfin 1y ago

The one issue is that on iOS Apple forces all browsers to use Safari behind the scenes. And you can’t do extensions.

Macha 1y ago
Yeah, the extension thing is the real killer on my iPad, I need to decide between adblock or syncing to my Windows, Android, Linux, etc. devices.
N0RMAN 1y ago
I think that’s not true for EU devices? Not sure if there are any browsers with an alternative engine are actually available though. https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engines/ https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engi...
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  As long as you pass Apple's arbitrary rules, you can make your own browser for iOS. Ladybug uses Apple's test suite as an arbitrary measure of completeness. However, no browser engine has bothered so far because they'd need to upload a separate app to the app store specifically for EU users, and non-EU developers cannot debug the application on a real device so manpower is region-restricted unless you hack around the limitations.
  - JimDabell 1y ago
    > As long as you pass Apple's arbitrary rules, you can make your own browser for iOS. Ladybug uses Apple's test suite as an arbitrary measure of completeness. The browser is called Ladybird and it isn’t Apple’s test suite, web-platform-tests is a collective effort all the major players contribute to. Almost two thousand people have contributed to it: https://github.com/web-platform-tests/wpt/graphs/contributors https://github.com/web-platform-tests/wpt/graphs/contributor...
- thayne 1y ago
  Kind of. But Apple makes it so hard to develop an engine for EU devices, that no browser makers are currently willing to do it.

arunc 1y ago

I used Firefox focus on Android until last month. It drained the battery far quicker than Brave. Brave has been nice on the battery so far.

tombert 1y ago
I think it doesn't background tabs at all. I noticed that the battery got considerably better if I actively always closed all my tabs.
bikelang 1y ago
Brave is hands down the best ad blocking experience on iOS as well.
- EasyMark 1y ago
  kagi with ublock origin extension is just as good
  - bikelang 1y ago
    Orion was my daily driver on iOS/macOS for a fair bit ~8 months ago. It wasn’t the most stable and didn’t block ads reliably in YouTube videos either. Planning to give it another shot next year. I certainly like the Kagi ethos better than Brave - the product functionality just wasn’t there yet.
    - EasyMark 1y ago
      I have youtube premium so I guess I hadn't noticed. it seems perfectly stable and usable to me though so maybe you're more of a power user than me. I do most of my browser on a laptop to be honest
glimshe 1y ago
I also use Brave on Android. The performance is better based on my use cases. I hardly see ads.
1y ago

7839284023 1y ago

I would hope that Firefox on mobile got finally better/usable. I still remember this blog post, which at the the time (late 2021), was 100% accurate: https://web.archive.org/web/20230221123127/https://blog.nori.moe/firefox-for-android-is-a-mess/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230221123127/https://blog.nori...

mmmpetrichor 1y ago

Firefox mobile was basically the only option I considered for a long time just because it lets you install Ublock origin . Not sure if other mobile browsers have that now too or not. I'm a firefox user on desktop anyway so I love having tab sharing between my phone and all my pcs. They also added a nice feature recently that optionally requires an additional login (fingerprint) to access private tabs. I have found no reason to switch.

randomNumber7 1y ago
The adblock is it. Even if it would be a lot slower and worse than other browsers I would still use it. Who is voluntarily browsing the internet without adblock?
- comprev 1y ago
  Probably 99.9% of daily users because they know no different.
  - naldb 1y ago
    I was curious and obviously there is no single exact source but it seems like ~30% of web users have an ad blocker of some kind. Remember that some quite popular browsers include a built-in ad blocker.
- 0xCMP 1y ago
  Ads pay for everything and Google/Meta are making huge profits (minus AI spending)... so probably most people.
- agiacalone 1y ago
  I teach CS at a state university, specifically computer security. At the beginning of this semester, I did a poll of my students and asked if they use any form of ad-blocking. Less than a third of my students did, and not many more even knew about browsers other than Chrome or Safari. This was out of a class of ~110. Granted, it's anecdotal, but if 66% of my upper-division CS students don't even know about Firefox and ad-blocking, than I seriously doubt many non-tech people do. Similarly, after that lecture, I had a student come to my office hours and ask for more info about ad-blockers. I had them open up msn.com and showed them the large banner ad on the page. It took a few seconds for them to even realize they were being advertised to! I then showed them my browser, nice and ad-free. I get the impression that people have gotten so used to ads flashing in their face that they gloss over them. But the damage is still done.

baal80spam 1y ago

Well, for me Brave is.

mmastrac 1y ago

I've been using it for years and it is really great. I haven't had to open Chrome for a non-working website in quite a while. Adblock is really something -- you _really_ notice it if you have the misfortune of using a different browser.

cubefox 1y ago

Other recommended Firefox extensions: - Dark Reader (force dark mode on websites that don't have it, like Hacker News) - Unhook (remove various addictive or annoying elements from YouTube.com)

moelf 1y ago

missed one amazing add-on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bypass_Paywalls_Clean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bypass_Paywalls_Clean

kreativ_py 1y ago

the problem i have is i use google to manage all my passwords. i think i lose that if i switch to non chrome mobile

ilogik 1y ago
I think you can import them easily
zipping1549 1y ago
You should export them to a proper password manager.
binarysneaker 1y ago
And what will you do if Google decides to disable your account? Bitwarden is free, has clients and browser extensions for every platform, and it's easy to export your passwords and import them. Plus it supports SSH keys.
EasyMark 1y ago
they don't have an export function? I did that with lastpass -> bitwarden and it was a little bit of a hassle it wasn't too bad, just need to makes sure the exported cvs looked correct, no issues and didn't find anything wrong. I imagine it can go as smooth with chrome -> whatever

LucasOe 1y ago

I wish the article would talk a bit more about security. Here's what the GrapheneOS project has to say about Firefox [1]: > Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they're currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn't have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox's sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux) and lacks full support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn't happening for their Android browser yet. [1]: https://grapheneos.org/usage https://grapheneos.org/usage

jeroenhd 1y ago
If you're someone who's taking GrapheneOS' thread model into account, a locked down native browser is definitely better. Chrome has a whole bunch of cool security tricks that definitely outshine many other browsers, but I find it all rather inconsequential when the using Chrome leads to such a terrible, privacy-hostile experience.
- 9029 1y ago
  While I still use Firefox on desktop, on Android I recently switched from Firefox mobile to Brave out of security concerns and frustrations with performance. It has built-in tracker, query param and ad blocking, and is recommended by the GrapheneOS people as a decent alternative to their Vanadium browser [0]. Additionally, I have a gut feeling a Brave user blends in a bit better with its default ad blocking vs say a Firefox user with extensions and filter lists of their choice, but this might be negligible. On the other hand the affiliate, crypto and AI shit in Brave are quite disgusting tbh, but at least they can be disabled. I also miss Firefox sync a bit. [0] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/111966258971400137 https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/111966258971400137

roschdal 1y ago

Firefox is the best web browser

tombert 1y ago

I don't run Android anymore, but when I did (about two years ago) I uninstalled Firefox because, as far as I could tell, it didn't properly background tabs when the app was closed. I didn't realize this initially, so I was unsure why my battery life was terrible and my phone as always hot. Being able to install extensions was neat, but not worth it for killing my battery. Suffice to say, I do not agree that it's the "best mobile browser" on Android.

rf15 1y ago
I'm sorry, but I don't think you understand what "the app was closed" means. A lot of people think that all processing goes to the visible foreground app, but that hasn't been true since the late DOS era. Please learn what's what in the system you're using. Clearly it was running in the background because you onlly had another app or the home acreen open.
- tombert 1y ago
  I'm saying that when I would go back to the home screen, I still think it was using the same amount of power as if it were in the foreground. I think it was using the full amount of processing for each tab the entire time. This is not the behavior that anyone wants for any mobile app ever. I think the app is poorly made, or at least it was in 2023 when I last used it. I know that kernels are preemptive and have multiple processes running. Feel free to look at my post history if you don't believe me. Sorry I said the word "closed" when I meant "backgrounded" if that upsets you, but it was pretty obvious what I meant and I am pretty sure you knew that, so I think you're being needlessly pedantic.
  - seba_dos1 1y ago
    > This is not the behavior that anyone wants for any mobile app ever. [citation needed] > but it was pretty obvious what I meant It wasn't. It was possible to work the intended meaning out, but not without initial confusion, which is far from "pretty obvious".
    - 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

3eb7988a1663 1y ago

Maybe the plugin ecosystem can paper over some of the deficiencies, but Firefox is slowly taking away user agency and privacy in the name of simplification / whatever Chrome does. The recent windmill against which I am tilting: Firefox no longer shows you the complete URL. Either in the address bar or long pressing a link. This is incredibly hostile to those of us with technical proficiency which can inspect a URL to see if it is a bad domain or embedding tracking information we would like to strip. My other long standing annoyance is that on mobile, I can no longer protect cookies. Always keep the cookie to say my HN login, but allow me to bulk delete everything else. Instead, I am forced to manually go through the cookie page (like 10 at a time) and delete everything I do not want.

Brian_K_White 1y ago
FF is like democracy. It's the worst except for everything else.

brtv 1y ago

I've been using Firefox on desktop for decades and really want to like it on mobile, but I just can't get used to the behavior of new tabs . After just a bit of browsing, it opens 10+ new tabs and there's no way to configure this differently. It's such a shame.

miroljub 1y ago

Firefox lost its momentum a while ago. I lost trust in Firefox after Brendan Eich scandal and the way they treated him.

Larrikin 1y ago
You lost trust when a guy Mozilla reluctantly hired had his hate for gay marriage become public knowledge?
- miroljub 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - array_key_first 1y ago
    To be clear, he didn't just hate gay marriage. He literally donated money to campaigns and laws against gay marriage. It's one thing to just have an opinion. It's another to use your money to try to actively make the world a worse place. Also, he was CEO. YES your speech matters if you're CEO. He's not just some dude. He was THE FACE of Mozilla. Obviously, perception matters.
    - miroljub 1y ago
      Donating, being against was at the time, and still is, a legitimate political action. It falls under free speech and free association. And it was his private stance, he never promoted his personal political views as a Mozilla CEO. But it was obviously too much for a woke politically correctness extremists at Mozilla. They prioritised politics and their own view of morality over technical excellence and vision. They showed their priorities and I lost trust they would prioritise building technically best browser. And the time showed I was right, since Firefox slowly lost ist magic and is currently just a shadow of what it was.
      - array_key_first 1y ago
        You don't understand how free speech works. You're allowed to say whatever, that doesn't mean I'm forced to employ you. If you call your boss an asshole, that is free speech. And you will be fired. Welcome to the real world. And, if you favor free market dynamics instead, consider: as CEO, you are the face of the company. Perception is a form of advertising. You don't want negative advertising. Ultimately his views and donations were costing Mozilla actual money. People were upset, and that matters when you sell stuff and ask for donations. Him being fired was the free labor market at play.

lordofgibbons 1y ago

Firefox mobile was unusable slow for most sites I visited and had rendering issues - probably not FF's fault, but webdevs only testing on Chrome. Brave has been very fast with all the spyware and ad blocking features I was looking for in FF. I just had to disable all the crypto stuff first.

wiseowise 1y ago

On Android, maybe it is. Nothing beats Safari UX on iOS, nothing. You can hate the engine and lack of extensions, but Safari is the only thing that I can use with both hands seamlessly without breaking my fingers.

anonym29 1y ago
>Nothing beats Safari UX on iOS, nothing. Nothing except for the ads you're forced to see that mobile firefox users don't even know exist, thanks to the full fat uBlock Origin.
- mediumsmart 1y ago
  Orion to the rescue
- wiseowise 1y ago
  I use Firefox Focus as a content blocker within Safari.
- xvv 1y ago
  There are numerous extensions for Safari in the app store that block ads the way uBlock does. You can also pair it with plain old DNS ad blocking too.
  - celsoazevedo 1y ago
    Not exactly in the same way, as Apple nerfed adblocking a few years ago. Works fine for most sites, but good luck blocking the more aggressive methods.

FlamingMoe 1y ago

i prefer the Brave mobile app. I previously used firefox focus, but I basically just made brave into a focus app by turning on Private Browsing Only, but can also disable the functionality when needed.

dogman123 1y ago

I’m often surprised how little people talk about the iOS Orion browser on here and it’s ability to let you use both Firefox and chrome extensions. I’ve been using it for a while now and it’s been great. It’s a little bit buggy sometimes, but nothing that would make me switch.

terminalbraid 1y ago

It is in fact Waterfox for all the same reasons less unnecessary Mozilla trash

EasyMark 1y ago
without that "mozilla trash" waterfox wouldn't exist
- terminalbraid 1y ago
  I'd posit that Google's large infusions of cash are what is keeping Mozilla afloat right now rather than including things like AI features.

hagbard_c 1y ago

The browser with the best content blocking options is the best browser and at this moment that means Firefox ends up on top. Now that Mozilla is slow-walking towards doing ad-related things themselves I'm no longer running the branded versions but choose F-Droid's Fennec instead. If ever a browser with better content blocking shows up I'll give it a good look and might switch if it turns out to be at least on the same level as Firefox/Fennec. That's telling for the state of the web but alas, that's where we are. You give them an inch (-high banner ad) and they'll take a mile (-wide page-covering all-encompassing data-slurping javascript monstrosity).

isodev 1y ago

I wish we could get it on iOS too. Unfortunately, Apple is still difficult about alternative engines. Oh well.

chrisweekly 1y ago

Orion (from Kagi) is a strong contender. It's not (yet) fully open-source, but Kagi has bona fides when it comes to privacy. Orion blocks trackers and ads by default, has no telemetry, and is designed to avoid sending any user data to its servers. Lower memory footprint and battery consumption (reportedly; citation needed). And it can run FF extensions.

linuxhansl 1y ago

FWIW, I have disabled Chrome on my Android phones a whole ago and Firefox is the default browser - of course with uBlock origin.

IshKebab 1y ago

Yeah unfortunately I found it was noticeably slower and laggier than Chrome. Does anyone make a Blink-based mobile browser that also blocks ads?

EasyMark 1y ago
edge? brave? vivaldi? dolphin?
- IshKebab 1y ago
  Which one of those has the least objectionable money-making conceit?

christophilus 1y ago

Brave is my favorite, though I prefer Firefox on my laptops. Brave mobile: excellent ad-blocking, download videos for offline viewing. No tinkering needed to make it excellent. It’s excellent out of the box.

EbNar 1y ago
I migrated from FF to Brave some 4 years ago and never looked back.

charcircuit 1y ago

Mobile Firefox constantly gets bugged and stops rendering pages until you restart it. It also has issues with scrolling on some pages where it won't let you scroll sometimes. Github is notoriously bad, you can't read code if you can't scroll through the file. As a developer not being able to use Github is a deal breaker. The browser itself is also missing features like webgpu. While extentions are nice, the browser engine itself being this broken for years makes it a painful choice.

neilv 1y ago

This is one time it's important to get names right. The article says simply "Ublock", but the screens show "uBlock Origin". "uBlock" and "uBlock Origin" are two different projects. "uBlock Origin" is the good one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin#uBlock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin#uBlock

kelvinjps10 1y ago
Thanks for letting me know

eth0up 1y ago

I am eccentric. Perhaps consequently, I am unable to understand how a conversation on the subject of Firefox as a mobile browser can exclude the inexplicable removal of about:config. Yes, Nightly. But I fear an example of incrementalism here, where it is brightly illustrated how the aperture into which we have the dongle of creeping suckage repeatedly inserted, lubricated by the existence (deterrent) of Chrome, continues to widen. At the rate which options are disappearing (I think of gnome/gtk), when we excoriate the final and last one, a consummate advertisement platform will have been coded into our DNA, where we not just watch and listen to the perpetual groping of avarice, but feel it existentially.

pastage 1y ago
About:config works great. You have to run a developer build. One could try to solve the issues with it. Honestly I think Firefox saying you could brick Firefox mobile with the wrong options is a a sign of what you call suckage. The problem is that about:config is basically useless to me on Firefox mobile so why should I bother fixing it. The real reasons is why we do not care.

a022311 1y ago

Firefox for Android is missing a bunch of privacy options available on desktop. Right now, I'm forced to always use private browsing mode (sorry, I've forgotten the reason but I do remember that I tried again recently without it and something broke) and I still have no option to allow persistent cookies for specific domains. Other than that it's a really solid mobile browser.

alextingle 1y ago
Have you tried the "Cookie AutoDelete" extension?

wetpaws 1y ago

[dead]

childintime 1y ago

Firefox on Android could maybe be the best, and I use it exclusively, but it's certainly not without its flaws: - the confusing home screen comes up all the time after i leave the browser, while i just want to get back to the last tab - try closing all private tabs, it then goes on to show the now empty list of private tabs, wtf? The point of closing the tabs was to get back to the regular tabs. - for all i care a private tab can just be listed next to a normal tab, the grouping in private tabs serves no purpose, except for surfacing implementation details - filtering bookmarks on tags doesn't work in any version AFAIK - but it's the only way to listen to youtube, with ublock origin and Youtube audio_only

jayknight 1y ago
I have it set to open in private mode by default, and there's no easy way to then open that site in a new regular tab. Like if I get to a reddit link that I want to comment on, I have to copy the URL, then open a new public tab and open that URL (five touches). Why is there no "Open in normal tab" option? Also, if I use "Add to home screen" to be able to get to a site quickly, there's no way to open that in a normal tab, making it useless for many things.
kelvinjps10 1y ago
The "confusing home screen" comes up every 4h you can set it up to always show the last tab, I should have explained it on the last part of the post.

anal_reactor 1y ago

The killer feature of Opera Mobile is that it displays desktop website with desktop-sized text, and when I zoom in, it adjusts the width of the text, so that text is legible no matter how much I zoom in. Do other browsers have something like that?

ishanjain28 1y ago

My experience with fenix has been complete opposite. 1. For the last 6 months, there is a bug which causes ff to read incorrect display resolution information on Samsung devices. This breaks all elements positioned with absolute property and you can't see them or access them. The only fix is to restart firefox. Over time, it has literally gotten so much worse that now I have to do it atleast 10 times in a 30 minute session. 2. Have a site open, click on the nav bar to do a search or open another site and it just reloads the same site again! Redo the action and then it loads. 3. The networking stack is so so so bad I don't even know where to begin with that. It gets stuck randomly, slow loading pages, infinite loading animations just so many problems. There are also similar problems with graphics performance where sometimes, it literally runs at less than 60fps(you can feel it), consumes a lot more battery and heats up the processor. All these issues along side some of the design decisions they have made that they refuse to revert. I do not feel good about Firefox fenix anymore

never_inline 1y ago
You're using the F-Droid version?
- ishanjain28 1y ago
  No, the one from play store.

subsection1h 1y ago

This article includes 894 words and this discussion currently includes 153 comments. Neither one includes the terms "site isolation" or "Fission". WTF.

matteocontrini 1y ago

What the article says is true, but Firefox mobile doesn't get the basics right. From weird decisions like the new tab page not actually being a tab like in every other browser on Earth, to consistent bugs and lack of polish in basics functions like scroll direction locking or scrolling to hide the top bar.