12 mo. ago • 97%

It's never been a better time to switch to Firefox on Android

www.androidpolice.com It's never been a better time to switch to Firefox

Mozilla is ready to get back in the browser ring on mobile with Firefox 120

The final push to start using Firefox over Chrome on Android might finally be thanks to the enormous selection of add-ons (Firefox's version of extensions) coming out next month. Chrome doesn't offer native support for extensions in its mobile app. Also, better security.

80 comments

I can't. I'm already using Firefox.

80
Funny to see this. I just switched last week (to get ublock) and it's o so much better. Only thing i miss is the translate function that chrome has

32
- Thankfully, translate arrives soon as a plugin, and later as a native feature.
  
  33
  
  I am using a plug-in on my pc
  
  3
- Would be great if Firefox Translations are brought to Android.
  
  Please spread the word!
  
  8
- Along with the adblocker, the darkreader add on is my favourite.
  
  2
- The main thing I miss is auto fill. Firefox's auto fill for credit cards kinda sucks (often misses fields), and I don't think it auto fills addresses.
  
  0
  
  I let bitwarden do that...
  
  2
Also you can switch the address bar to the bottom where it's closer to your thumb

25
- I don't think I could ever get used to that.
  
  6
  
  I thought the same, but it only took me like 2 days to get used to it.
  
  10
- For me it often covers important elements of the site that way. Especially these annoying "use our app" overlays, and then the "continue using website" button is hidden behind the address bar with jo way to scroll it into view. So no way to use the website :(
  
  3
- If there was one thing Windows Phone and Windows 8 IE did well for mobile devices, it was the bottom orientated address bar.
  
  I’m surprised that it took Android and iOS so long to adapt it; Firefox if i recall correctly adapted to it first in 2014 with an experimental Windows 8 mode that sadly was discontinued.
  
  https://www.neowin.net/news/mozilla-finally-releases-beta-of-its-touch-friendly-firefox-for-windows-8/
  
  1
Been using focus as my default for years, and Firefox for main stuff for years. Works fine for me and ublock is a must for me so..

23
- Ublock is absolutely a must.
  
  Page on Firefox with unlock: 6 sentence news article.
  
  Same page on chrome: video in the corner, popup blocking 30% of the screen, flashing ads every second sentence, halfway through there's another popup asking you to log in.
  
  Like wtf, people live like this?
  
  13
With the things that are going on with Google right now, it's the right move to just switch to Firefox

13
Ublock, AdNauseum, Privacy Badger, oh my! All on Mobile phones!

12
- Its possible for a long time, but hidden away.
  
  2
IF FF ever implement support for tabs on tablets I might consider using it.

I only use phone and tablet and to use a glorified phone app on a tablet is not a great experience. Almost every other browser in existence supports tags for larger screens.

Until FF fixes this it doesn't matter how many extensions they allow in the browser I'm out.

11
- If treestyletabs worked on mobile that would work great. Just make the tabs bigger. Then again I think the UI is totally different on mobile so I feel the pain.
  
  I have been using firefox on a phone since 2014 at least. I particularly like I can just go "send this tab to my PC" and it'll just be there without bothering with bookmarks, note apps, emails to myself or such.
  
  I once had a text file on a VPS I would ssh on my phone to and paste links into. Blah.
  
  2
- Completely agree. The tablet experience licks balls.
  
  Tabs are needed, and god knows what it thinks its doing when you tell it to load the desktop version of a site. Apparently it thinks I clicked a button saying "embeggen all elements and waste screen space pls"...
  
  Enjoy it on phone, mind.
  
  0
  
  loading the desktop version of a sits is not Firefox's fault. It depends on the web devs.
  
  4
  
  I agree, on the phone it's a great app.
  
  My problem is that as I only use tablet and phone it doesn't make sense to use two different browsers so until it's changed Vivaldi it is.
  
  1
I just officially downloaded it and will likely soon jump ship from DuckDuckGo.

Really the biggest thing for me will be not blinding my eyes due to a lack of dark mode outside of search results. (Thanks to using the dark reader add-on in Firefox)

9
- You're jumping from duckduckgo? Where to & why? I ask as a fellow DDG user.
  
  6
  
  I think they meant the DDG android browser.
  
  10
  
  Personally I quit using ddg. Duckduckgo uses Microsoft's Bing API I jumped atleast two years ago from ddg. They seem to be buddy buddy with Microsoft, they have a history for it. Oh and remember when ddg use to talk about filter bubbles, well now they support filter bubbles.
  
  I think this is because they have so much more users now then they did back then so now they are forgeting small parts of their original purpose. While keeping the one big one, privacy. We'l see how long ddg protects that without getting caught doing more shady stuff with Microsoft. Yes I said more, they were caught before allowing ads on Microsoft website in the ddg android browser once before.
  
  5
- Seriously, darkreader is a lifesaver for someone like me who is light sensitive.
  
  4
I've been using Firefox for a long while now. It's great these days

8
Yep, same-zees. Big-time chrome user, switched on desktop and mobile to Firefox. As Google is being foolish twist these days.

8
Can I log in to my Google account in the browser and have it sync all of my stuff with my account though? Bookmarks, visited pages, etc etc.

That's the thing that makes it hard to switch to something else on PC too, I need my Google account integration, and other browsers just don't seem to support it :-(

I'd absolutely love up switch back to Firefox, it was my browser of choice before Chrome was released, but I do absolutely want to keep all my Google account integrations at this point.

7
- You can log in to a Mozilla account in both the desktop and mobile browsers and sync everything that way. No Google needed!
  
  22
  
  That doesn't bring your info over from Chrome though
  
  1
- Why would you want to do that? Firefox has their own privacy conserving sync
  
  9
  
  To bring your bookmarks and everything else OP mentioned over from Chrome
  
  0
- Don't all modern browsers import data from your primary browser when you switch?
  
  There is such a thing as a Firefox account, and your Firefox on your phone will know what your Firefox on pc was doing, etc if you're logged in
  
  I suppose you could do it manually if you want. https://takeout.google.com/
  
  8
- Import once in FF for Desktop, sync everything privacy friendly with an Firefox account. Never felt a difference.
  
  3
- As a person who had a Google account for over 15 years... With all the stories of Google locking accounts, I'd recommend exploring a backup. It's been my thing all year.
  
  There are stories of people who use their gmail for everything. Then they got their account locked and suddenly couldn't pay bills, see their baby pictures, reset passwords on other sites. And Google doesn't really have customer service so it was locked for weeks.
  
  3
Been using FF on almy devices for over a year now. Best.Browser.Ever.

7
I use Firefox on Android exclusively. Having ublock for youtube on my phone is great... But since updating to Android 13 watching full-screen video in FF has been an issue. Usually it requires that I restart the app to work.

6
Only gripe I'm having with Firefox on Android is the battery usage, which is quite awful unfortunately when compared to other browsers

6
Does anyone else have the problem that scrolling on a page becomes kinda laggy when there are more than usual elements on a webpage? For example, some website for streaming series. As soon as I scroll down where a lot of small buttons with episode numbers on them are rendered, Firefox on Android becomes noticeably laggy for me.

Other than that I really like it but that little problem annoys the hell out of me.

5
- Yes it does lag much more than chrome, even on S23U. Even with noscript enabled, actually. I am trying to get used to it for the last few weeks cause goddam noscript makes internet a better place.
  
  3
- Which websites? Can you share some examples?
  
  2
  
  Try AniWatch for example and slowly scroll across the episode list.
  
  2
- Chromium based browsers on Android always have been more snappy than FF. That said I have primarily used FF for around a year and it is alright. Whenever something does not behave well, I use Vivaldi.
  
  1
When will management of site permissions like js and cookies and management of site data separatly will arrive?

Will switch that day!

4
I just swapped off of it, Firefox has been buggy for me, no matter which fork I use, it's been slow too. I recently just migrated to fulgris

3
- These types of comments always interest me. What phone are you using?
  
  5
  
  Im currently using a stock S9+ snapdragon (why its still stock -_-). I do have most google stuff disabled and pretty much all my apps aside from android and webview (which fulgris relies on) are from fdroid or ffupdater. It could be the standard A10 shenaigans, but it's not something i've been hitting on webview and chrome based browsers
  
  1
  
  I do see a difference between Firefox on a Pixel 4a and Safari on an iPhone 13. The iPhone loads a webpage in less than a second whereas Firefox needs 2-4 seconds for the same webpage. I still use Firefox though as it is better in every other aspect.
  
  1
I have issues with it. Some pages and apps don't work well on Firefox. Rendering is off : alignments, some apps don't even work. I will be switching away.

3
The only thing I miss is immersive mode, aka hidden status bar on scroll. Otherwise it’s perfect.

1
I just hope they can fix the app. Compared to Chrome it really isn't as good.

0
Just think, all those extensions where already here once. They just kicked it. I will never comprehend why.

0
- Because Firefox for Android was slow as molasses... People keep complaining about the kissing extensions but Firefox was hella slow on android and the new Browser was drastically better. The only way to compete with Chrome was a rewrite. They still enabled individual extensions, the most popular. I, for one, am glad they took this route. We're much better off today.
  
  6
I would use Firefox on Android but I'm waiting until the security is on par with Chromium such as having internal sandboxing and site isolation.

Also since Firefox doesn't have a WebView implementation, it has to be used with the Chromium based one so it doesn't make sense for me to use two browser engines.

0
- I made a similar comment on this article in !technology@lemmy.world - for anyone who is blindly downvoting thinking this is some Google psyop, this is the explanation from GrapheneOS (who fortunately provide their own de-googled chromium-based browser Vanadium):
  
  Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they're currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn't have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox's sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux) and lacks full support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn't happening for their Android browser yet.
  
  https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing
  
  4
Samsung internet rocks and you can't tell me otherwise.

-7
- Tracks u just as much as chrome
  
  4
  
  and sells it, look at their privacy policy
  
  3
Nah

-9

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