90
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
90 points (96.9% liked)
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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. :)
use Newpipe, it's free software, unlike revanced.
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.
Doesn't it already support them ?
~~edit: yes it already supports them, but it seems that now there will be more focus on mobile ~~ edit3: as pointed by the comment below, only on nightly and certain forks
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
Cool! So many useful extensions that I couldn't use on android.
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.
I've been using the nightly build, using the desktop extensions for a while now. It's SO worth it. In particular, the YouTube "SponsorBlock" is super convenient.
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.
At least with firefox beta, you can create your own collection of extensions and use those. That's what I do and I can install any extension.
More here: https://www.androidpolice.com/install-add-on-extension-mozilla-firefox-android/
I have it on Firefox Nightly with the dev stuff. It's pretty great tbh
Kiwi Browser
Kiwi broswer already does it, same with the Orion browser for iOS
That's why the article itself adds the "major browser" qualification.
The more extensions you install in your browser, the more easier is to track your behavior on internet.
About time. I'm tempted to switch back to Mull from Bromite, but I'm worried about the security of Firefox compared to Chromium (that's why I switched in the first place), I've heard that particularly Mobile Firefox has awful sandboxing and bad security, I'm pretty sure it was the GrapheneOS team saying this? I'm no security expert though...
Yes it was the GrapheneOS team who said that. See the paragraph just above Camera. I literally just skimmed their guides and saw this yesterday while considering getting a Pixel.
I use Mull and Vanadium on Graphene OS, and the experience on Vanadium is just okay by comparison. It is true that not having extensions does decrease the attack surface, and Vanadium does have a built in ad blocker, but it simply isn't as all encompassing as ublock's list.
I use Mull mainly but don't log into anything with it, and have noscript extension on by default.
I also turn off JS by default in Vanadium. Both browsers have ways of making exceptions for certain sites in this case, but NoScript has more granular control.
I remember reading on reddit a convo that basically the GrapheneOS team was much more concerned with security than privacy. This isn't to say they don't care about privacy at all, just that they will always prioritize security first.
This makes sense considering their decision to only officially support the Pixel line of devices. You still are supporting Google by giving them your money (and a bit of your data in the process of purchase). Additionally, the decision to default to using the Google Play Store and sandbox the apps, rather than use the Aurora Store, also points to these underlying values.
Posted this above, but it might interest you as an alternative to Vanadium:
Bromite hasn't been updated in a while, so you should at least switch to Cromite if you're not switching to Mull. It's a fork by a previous Bromite contributor and includes some improvements, like a bottom toolbar and adblock plus (so normal block lists, not Bromite's less customizable ad blocker.
Is Vanadium just Bromite under the hood? I thought they were separate projects...
They're different, but according to its readme, Cromite includes "security enhancement patches from GrapheneOS project", so I assume it contains Vanadium's changes as well as other improvements.
Thanks for the clarification! I'll investigate.
Any reason to switch from Fennec?
Wont Feddec support mobile extensions in the future?
That's nice,but it would have been great to get certificates into Firefox mobile. Those are exclusive to Chrome browsers and that sucks.
Orion Browser by the team that makes the Kagi search engine makes this possible on ios already
Stop lying, Kiwi has been around for so long
They probably mean official browsers, not random forks.
How is Kiwi less a browser than firefox? Non-sense
Orion supports Firefox and chrome extensions
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.
Now Brave needs to do the same and also create its own extension store
safari has been able to do this for years
~~Vivaldi~~ I meant Kiwi (chromium) also uses the regular chrome web store.
Also, I thought there was a previous version of Firefox Mobile that had access to the desktop add-ons site.
Firefox mobile used to have mobile add-ons but it was separate and naturally therefore more limited.