2516
Firefox to become first mobile browser to support desktop extensions later this year
(blog.mozilla.org)
One more reason to stick with Firefox
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
2516 points (98.2% liked)
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Cool! So many useful extensions that I couldn't use on android.
Mobile FF is already awesome with UBlock Origin and YT background playback extensions. I wish to install an auto redirect extension. (Twitter to Nitter) I know it is doable on beta w/ extensions etc. but I want to see them on normal Firefox.
Have a look at YouTube ReVanced if you want a much better YouTube experience on Android. :)
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That's nice, maybe they can finally re-enable about:config in the damn thing too. They removed it from mobile Firefox years ago and the lack of it aggravates the hell out of me.
Fennec still supports it, just as it supports add-ons from the official Mozilla store. Don't see any reason why I should go back to the official app.
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Doesn't it already support them ?
edit: yes it already supports them, but it seems that now there will be more focus on mobile
edit2: also they forgot about kiwi, but then it's not a major browser (and is it still maintained ?). still would've been cool if they corrected this
Yeah, kiwi is still supported and got an UI update a month ago. But it's chromium based if remember correctly.
it also whitelists ad blockers from working on some, presumably "partnered", websites.
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They already support uBlock origin and that's all I need.
On android I find its also a good idea to have a system wide ad blocker solution because android and all their apps are so inundated by ads, so I recommend dns66 (which can be found on fdroid) which has multiple blocklists you can subscribe to. This will cover some ads thats are built directly into apps and almost all ads that would appear in websites on a browser. This helps a lot since some apps will open a browser window for -reasons- and they sometimes have their own internal browser or they will just use chrome by default, not respecting your default browser choice, and in those cases you cant have ublock installed to protect you and those pages are so ad-overloaded that finding what you are looking for is next to impossible.
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No, no, no! It was supporting all the desktop extensions. For years. Until the damn buggy rewrite for no good reason. And then we were suddenly left with like 5 of them.
For a year after that I was still running the last stable release. But unfortunately the web evolves too fast.
"no good reason"
spoken like someone who has never tried to use that browser. it definitely supported addons, but tried to implement 2015 features to run on 2002-tier hardware
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But didn't it used to support desktop extensions on mobile before the redesign about 3 years ago? Also, hasn't Kiwi had extensions for like 6 years?
Didn't their pre-version 79 app already support extensions?
I don't know about pre-79, but their current version supports a very, very limited selection of extensions, many of which are to specifically improve the mobile version of Firefox. Currently, only a total of 22 extensions are supported, many of which share the same purposes.
I mean, ad blocking is like 95% of the reason why I want extensions.
And the other 5% is blocking all those stupid consent popups.
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yeah I'm actually disappointed when they stop doing that
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Lol what? I remember using Kiwi browser like 7 years ago and it had extension support...
I use kiwi browser now. It's still there and getting updates.
They're finally starting to recover from that crappy firefox 79 update 😮💨
It supported desktop extensions before, then they got rid of that and now they're going to do it again?
Just when Google thought it could kill adblocking…
Well as far as adblocking goes, mobile FireFox already supports uBlock Origin.
Holy Fuck. Call me Ramsay, Finally some delicious fucking tech. the separation gap between mobile and pc has been going on for far too long. anything to help merge the pair. yes. all the yes.
It's long overdue. I've been running Nightly to get around the shockingly limited number of addons available on Firefox for Android. Hopefully Mozzila don't fumble the bag with this as its a great opportunity to steal users from Chrome.
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First? What about Kiwi browser? Edit: I just remembered even old firefox supported most desktop addons...
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And yet they've turned their back on *Android tablet users and refuse to support the tab bar.
https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/2344
Ridiculous. Only reason I switched to Vivaldi
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Orion Browser by the team that makes the Kagi search engine makes this possible on ios already
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I would kill for this on iOS. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty happy with my Safari Extensions, but I’d rather have uBlock Origin, Stylish etc.
I think I read that it previously supported full blown extension and they removed it due to some under the hood changes.
It did, legacy versions of it had almost full extension support and also even allowed you to install them from storage as xpi files and poke around about:config, then they took away both of those things completely in fenix (only allowing about:config in debug versions and blocking XPI install altogether).
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Thanks for cross-posting instead of re-posting!
Kudos to them for rolling out support more widely, but it's a bit misleading as Firefox nightly/Fennec has supported extensions for years (albeit via a cumbersome process), and Kiwi Browser is also a thing.
I can't understand how folks out there are just rawdogging the Internet out there without ublock or at least a DNS ad filter. Admittedly, Chrome runs a hair more smoothly, but the ability to use extensions like uBlock / DarkReader / Consent-O-Matic make the Firefox experience a tier above.
I just hope this makes it possible to install the Bypass Paywalls extension again so I don't have to hop over to Kiwi for that.
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