1 yr. ago • 97%

Finally migrated back to Firefox today after a multi year user of Chrome.

What pushed me over the edge? Most of my app icons (keep, pulse, calender, whatsapp) stopped opening in their own windows again.

I had to install the PWA extension in Firefox to get that working again, and it's going to be a slight hassle having to copy and paste URLs from all those windows, but I'm tired of fixing the task bar icons.

Could've gone to Edge since it would work out of the box, but I like Firefox. (except for no native PWA support.)

Edit: found I can right click links in the PWA instances and use the send to other device option to open them in my main Firefox window.

68 comments

The lack of any ad blockers on mobile chrome is what personally made me switch.

Trying to read basically any news article on your phone without an ad blocker is a nearly impossible task these days.

52
- The lack of any ad blockers on mobile chrome is ~~what personally made me switch~~ why I'll never switch, unless I have a gun pointed at my head.
  
  6
  
  Are you certain risking death isn't preferable? I heard Firefox also teaches you krav maga if needed.
  
  3
- @deersindal I have a paid lifetime subscription to Adguard, so ads aren't a thing on my phone at all, for pretty much any app.
  
  4
  
  Same here. I've never had an issue with Adguard or any reason not to trust it but because it's a small Russian company dealing with encryption I don't feel comfortable openly recommending it. I personally think it's great and run it everywhere.
  
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- You can use adblock with chrome on android too.
  
  Go to settings > privacy and security > use secure dns > and enter custom dns provider from adguard or nextdns or whatever you like.
  
  Adguard
  
  https://dns.adguard-dns.com/dns-query
  
  Nextdns
  
  ad38b8.dns.nextdns.io
  
  1
I switched back to Firefox about a week ago too. Mostly because Lemmy is a whore for it.

42
- what a fox ;)
  
  7
- Same for me!
  
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- Same. Only thing I miss is being able to set a predefined selection of websites to open at start. As far as I can tell, the current version only has the option to reopen tabs from last session.
  
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  Yeah. And I know this is probably bad, but I loved google's default page with news and trending links. I find it super useful and relevant.
  
  1
Oh man time for my little rant. Long time Firefox supporter and still use it on desktop, but I had to uninstall on Android. It reloads the tab every time I switch out and back to it. It just kills me. Especially since I pay for Kagi search, and it's nearly doubling my search count by reloadng all the damn time. So now I'm using Privacy Browser on Android, and it's great, bit I'd rather be on Firefox. There are threads asking for a fix from years ago and it's still a problem

37
- I didn't know that Firefox for android will reload tab. That's why my voyager app keep reloading some images.
  
  Anyway, for the time being, my immediate solution is to install 'Stop Auto Reload' addon (possible by using Firefox nightly custom add on collection). Still early to tell but so far it doesn't reload the images.
  
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  Thanks for the tip! I might give that a go
  
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- Permanently Deleted
  
  10
  
  Honestly, it's hard to say. I'm using it partly on principle as part of degoogling. I will say it's ahead of all the other alternatives I've tried (DDG, Qwant, Startpage, Mojeek etc).
  
  You don't get Google suggestions and that's moslty a good thing IMO although I sometimes miss getting a currency conversion or dictionary item answered without having to visit a site. Generally the results are as good as Google but Wikipedia or something is more likely to be top rather than buried under some spammy results.
  
  You can try 100 searches or something for free, give it a go
  
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- Definitely doesn't happen for me, that's annoying.
  
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- i've been having issues with autofilling credentials from saved passwords on firefox android
  
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  This is well known problem, you need to restart the phone itself or kill the services.. I don't know why they haven't fix this yet for such long time
  
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- Yeah, I'm still putting up with Firefox here—it affected both my devices, a Nokia 7 plus with stock Android and a MIUI device with all the RAM/battery optimizations turned off for the app. I think at this point its entirely a Firefox issue.
  
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- Does Firefox focus face the same issue?
  
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- Weirdly I haven't had this issue much yet. I have had issued where the tab would kinda / break in sense that the tab would become useless and nothing can be done (eg. It will just show blank or some other tabs content)
  
  Maybe try whitelisting Firefox from battery optimisation. It should help as some OEMs do aggressive background kill for apps.
  
  2
  
  Yeah I tried that but no luck. I've seen suggesions it relates to RAM management but there's no settings available for that.
  
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- For me, it not only reloads every time, but it reloads from cache, meaning I have to manually reload again to get the latest version of the page I was on. And the first reload from cache is slower, not sure how that makes sense.
  
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- I find DuckDuckGo for Android is a decent option, albeit chromium based.
  
  2
  
  News Flash:
  
  Every single browser for Android has Chromium under the hood... Including Firefox.
  
  For that reason alone is why I'm using Samsung Internet with AdGuard Content Blocker on my Galaxy A series.
  
  -16
Good. Let's all enjoy Firefox while we can, before WEI becomes mandatory for all top 500 web sites.

31
Good decision! :) Yay for one more user!

26
Welcome back!

There were points at which Firefox was difficult to stick with, especially after the extension apocalypse, but I think it's evolving pretty well at this point.

18
I migrated to Firefox last week both pc and mobile. The android version is not as fast as other chromium based browsers but the ability to install any add-on is a must for me, browsing the web without my essential extensions is impossible for me.

I previously used kiwi browser that supports extensions but i found they were buggy sometimes, specially static filters in ublock origin.

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- uBO has all you need, ClearURLs is not needed. Use these filter lists instead:
  
  ➗ Actually Legitimate URL Shortener Tool
  
  ClearURLs for uBo (unofficial)
  
  Also, Badger does the same as uBO, therefore you don't need it. The same thing goes for cookies. Use default Annoyances lists (Adguard + EasyList) and add that:
  
  I don't care about cookies
  
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  You have a new list in uBO for the cookies banner.
  
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What should have pushed you over the edge is that one is open source and the other isn't. You do not control what Chrome does

11
- Not many of us control what Firefox does, either... 🤷
  
  Signed, a long time Firefox zealot
  
  1
I switched back to Firefox about a year ago after wandering the wastes of Chromium land. I love it!

I still use Ungoogled Chromium for work with the same extensions that i use in Firefox.

I know firefox has profiles, but firewalling work from personal stuff in Firefox is tedious, whereas i can use Velja (or similar) to target URL patterns to particular browsers.

10
- I'm personally using Firefox multi-account containers. It's way better than switching to profiles.
  
  I have for example one container type for work and for specific URL i even made it so they are always opened in this containers. It's really useful as cookies are separated.
  
  I'm coupling it with Simple Tab Groups where I can group tabs together based on criterias (For example all tabs running in my "work" container). At the beginning of my work day I switch to my "work" group and all my tabs on my window are work related and at the end I switch back to my "personal" group with my usual tabs.
  
  It's a bit more work but lets me be completely chromium free :)
  
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  Interesting. I do that for social media apps, etc. But i also want to keep my work bookmarks isolated from my personal ones. Not sure how to do that within one profile even with containers.
  
  1
I ditched Gmail and chrome last year after a long ride. Feels great to be back.

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- What did you switch to from gmail?
  
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  Migrated my own domain email to Proton.
  
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  If you'd like to see the pros/cons of different email providers, here's a link for the best privacy-friendly options :)
  
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I did the same a while back. Youtube with ublock origin is awesome!

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- Genuinely curious, and I intend to switch back in the near future, but I’ve also been using chrome for years now with uBlock and YouTube has remained ad-less to this day. Has something changed recently?
  
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  11
welcome back.

it’s going to be a slight hassle having to copy and paste URLs from all those windows,

You might find something on the Chrome addon store that allows you copy tabs urls, similar, but not quite as good as
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/copy-tabs/ and you can import/open them with https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-tabs-from-clipboard/

Hope it helps.

6
Welcome back!

5
Am I dumb or does chrome (both desktop and mobile) lack a simple way to clear all data on close? Like what the actual fuck? Both firefox and edge have an easy to find checkbox to do this...but not chrome?

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welcome back. not all but most of us had moment in time when something was trigger to return back to firefox, making it the new browsing-home and enjoying it since.

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Which extension?

Edge did the same shit tome a few times btw. It's chrome with a different paint job.

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Could this possibly be a solution to your shortcuts not opening in a new window? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1287367

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I suspect I'll be ditching Opera on desktop/Android for FF as soon as the manifest V3 changes make it to opera and kill ad blocking. Shouldn't be long now.

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- They keep pushing it back so who knows if that will happen on January 1st 2024
  
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Samesame a month back!

3
How are the developer tools lately? That's the only thing keeping me on Chrome at work. Otherwise, I'm using Firefox on my phone and personal computer.

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- I prefer them over chrome's
  
  11
  
  I haven't used them in a few years and found them a lot worse than Chrome at the time. I'll have to give them a try at work this week so I can hopefully fully switch over.
  
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