In the coming months Mozilla will launch support for an open ecosystem of extensions on Firefox for Android on addons.mozilla.org (AMO). We’ll announce a definite ...
  • Addison@lemmy.worldEnglish
    88·
    1 year ago

    This sounds like great news!

    Firefox is already at the top of my list of preferred browsers on Android, but more extension support has always been on my feature wishlist.

    • Zak@lemmy.worldEnglish
      144·
      1 year ago

      Its current poor extension support is the reason I’ve been using Kiwi Browser, which is a basic Chromium build with full extension support, including loading from local storage.

      • ijeff@lemdro.idMEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        Same here. I use custom collections on Fennec F-Droid but the inability to properly sideload keeps me on the auto rebased builds of Kiwi Browser. That and support for the black OLED theme and night mode website retheming built in.

        Very glad to see this come to Firefox though! Hopefully they can also get those other bits added in.

        • woelkchen@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          At least when using Kiwi in desktop mode (via Samsung DeX), Kiwi doesn’t fill out passwords for me. There also is no interest in supporting Firefox Sync.

        • Super Grizzly Bear@pawb.socialEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          So you can! That’s awesome, thanks. For anyone who wants to know:

          You can create a custom addon collection on addons.mozilla.org

          Then to add your custom collection in mull (or ff nightly, I guess) enable debug mode by going to settings > about mull and tapping the logo 5 times. Then go back and under the advanced section you can find “custom add-on collection”

          • crowsby@lemmy.mlEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            Yep, after I found this out I ditched Chrome immediately once they started rolling out Google Search ads that couldn’t be blocked via DNS. Firefox mobile feels a little less smooth than Chrome admittedly, but the ability to add extensions like ublock/darkreader/consent-o-matic make is a no contest in terms of overall user experience.

            The one knock is that they took bypass paywalls out of their extension store and the workaround to install it is somewhat cumbersome, so now I’m annoyingly using Kiwi browser for paywalled content and Firefox for everything else. Hopefully this update will make it so I only need one browser again.

    • atocci@kbin.social
      10·
      1 year ago

      It used to be a thing, didn’t it? I remember using any PC browser extension I wanted on my phone at some point and I think it was in Firefox.

      • Molecular0079@lemmy.worldEnglish
        111·
        1 year ago

        Yeah it was removed when they rebuilt Firefox Android on a new engine and they deemed the extension system too unreliable at the time.

      • Square Singer@feddit.deEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        It was until FF68, when Mozilla decided that it would improve their market share if they rewrote the whole browser and kicked all their advantages down the drain.

      • Zak@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        Yes, if you run beta/nightly, create an account on their system, and add the extension to a collection there. That’s a lot of hoops to jump through, and it reduces the possible audience for an extension developer to a tiny fraction, so nobody has put any effort into building extensions for Firefox on Android.

        • Square Singer@feddit.deEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          The last point is the biggest one. What’s the point in unlocking additional extensions if about all of them don’t work?

    • rush@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      They had issues with battery optimization and parity for a while now, but with both those issues being fixed (see: latest nightly) they can finally begin the preparations to rolling out support for ALL extensions :D

      • EddieTee77@lemdro.idEnglish
        10·
        1 year ago

        Nope. Every browser is basically Safari with a different coat of paint on it. It’s very anti competitive and monopolistic if you ask me

        • Matt@lemdro.idEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          It’s very anti competitive and monopolistic if you ask me

          I don’t disagree, but while I would love having full Firefox on iOS, the one positive of the current situation is that it is the only thing keeping Google from a complete browser monopoly. Firefox marketshare is insignificant, and without WebKit on iOS devices, Chromium browsers would make up 95% of the browser market. I think that would be worse overall in the long-term than iPhone users being stuck with Safari skins.

    • rush@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      They didn’t disable it, they rebuilt the entire browser from scratch to re-base on their current desktop-grade rendering engine, and as a result had to port a lot of things and optimize in regards to android’s battery optimization.

      They’ve finally finished doing that and can now begin the preperation for releasing this to the public.

  • b1tstrem1st0@lemmy.worldEnglish
    71·
    1 year ago

    I’m just hoping for theming to come back to Firefox on Android. Really not into the new UI design either. (T_T)

  • mawp@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    Heck yeah, have about 5 or 6 extensions I use on the desktop version I wanna use on the mobile version!

  • miniu@beehaw.orgEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Cool! I’ve been using Firefox Nightly to workaround extension limitations. I’ll be able to switch back to having nicer icon colors xD

    I hope that with this being official support some extensions regain full features on mobile. For example, vimperator cannot open tabs on mobile currently(using it with samsung dex)

  • sabreW4K3@lemmy.tfEnglish
    31·
    1 year ago

    The key takeaway from this is that they’re finally rolling out their Web Manifest v3. I’m super excited