1y ago

Mozilla allows desktop extensions on Firefox for Android

www.theregister.com Firefox desktop extensions to run on Android browser

Browser has added multi-process support

29 comments

It took them SO LONG to get back to this point. They gutted the extensions with the redesign a while back. Only allowed approved extensions(which I understand since a lot of desktop extension ui just doesnt work on android and many extensions are broken), but then they kinda just stopped. They added a convoluted method of creating an account and whitelisting extensions on the account if you use nightly, but it was a hassle to use and it's been years since even that was introduced.
- And I mean, for normies it might be OK, but why not add a toggle that allows me to install whatever I want. If they don't work I'll just have to uninstall the again. It's not like it's gonna break my browser
  
  They don't even allow the use of about:config in the main Firefox branch.
- Where are my tabs on tablet? Oh where did they go...
  
  I last used a chromium based browser more than 5 years ago. Recently I bought myself a tablet and had to make the difficult decision to switch to the kiwi browser there just because Mozilla can't be bothered to include tabs for their tablet layout.
  
  Any fork for that?
- Yeah I thought it was odd, considering the previous version just got a revamp not long before.

That’s great news! Hopefully they can get the same done on iOS.
- Firefox on iOS is not even the same engine, it's WebKit. Skinned Safari.
  
  Hopefully it changes soon...
  https://9to5mac.com/2023/02/07/new-iphone-browsers/
- On iOS, the Orion browser "supports" Firefox and Chrome extensions. Quotation marks because obviously, it's very hit or miss. Some extensions are unusable with a touchscreen.

Ooh yeah. I wasn't going to jump through that weird whitelist process to get that twitter blueblocker on Firefox for Android, but not I don't have to!

This is great but I literally can't use the base app on my S20. Like clicking on Google search hits causes the app to freeze. Trying to scroll up on a page triggers a reload 30% of the time. I want to use Firefox but it's nowhere near good enough, and adding extensions on top of that state is not going to help.
- Do you have the "Google Search Fixer" add-on? If so, it's a known issue. Until it's fixed, do not click any images on the first page, only after changing to the "images" category.
  
  Oh shit this is my problem with Google image search I thought Firefox was shitting the bed.
  Gonna disable the extension for now.
- Dont have these problem i know thats no help but just to let you know it works fine for me.
- Neither of those things happens with me. Was this something recent? Could possibly be something in the settings if you want to try resetting to default.
  adding extensions on top of that state is not going to help
  While Firefox mobile always had ublock origin, I don't think I could use a mobile browser without UBO. Having a banner, autoplay video and many interstitial ads pop up on an already small screen would make the web unusable. It also deals with annoyances on like Fandom's featured videos, Reddit mobile's shenanigans, etc. So even if I had those issues, I'd probably work through them for the extensions
  
  Same here, I've never had an issue and I've been using Firefox on my phones since the galaxy note 4
  
  I'm using brave mixed with a network wide ad blocker, so while it's nice that Firefox has UBO I'm fine without. Firefox has been presenting these issues every time I've tried switching, so for about a year now, so no not a recent issue.
- I'm using Mull which is a firefox fork. never had these issues.
- You can go to settings > customize and turn off pull to refresh if you want.
- I use Firefox nightly and it's sold for me, but I have also had my app freeze on Google search once. It would amaze me if there were not aware of this and were trying to figure it out

Im confused: were they not already working? Ive been using exttensions on the mobile app for years. Did they have separate extensions just for mobile?
- There's only been a limited selection up until this point
- Yes, in normal Firefox, Nightly already have them before iirc.
  
  While it was possible to force Nightly to accept the other addons, it was a hidden developer option (not present in the regular Firefox). From the regular user's perspective it was still a hassle.

29 comments