Firefox mobile was basically the only option I considered for a long time just because it lets you install Ublock origin . Not sure if other mobile browsers have that now too or not. I'm a firefox user on desktop anyway so I love having tab sharing between my phone and all my pcs. They also added a nice feature recently that optionally requires an additional login (fingerprint) to access private tabs. I have found no reason to switch.
I teach CS at a state university, specifically computer security. At the beginning of this semester, I did a poll of my students and asked if they use any form of ad-blocking. Less than a third of my students did, and not many more even knew about browsers other than Chrome or Safari. This was out of a class of ~110.
Granted, it's anecdotal, but if 66% of my upper-division CS students don't even know about Firefox and ad-blocking, than I seriously doubt many non-tech people do.
Similarly, after that lecture, I had a student come to my office hours and ask for more info about ad-blockers. I had them open up msn.com and showed them the large banner ad on the page. It took a few seconds for them to even realize they were being advertised to! I then showed them my browser, nice and ad-free.
I get the impression that people have gotten so used to ads flashing in their face that they gloss over them. But the damage is still done.
Although I didn't collect numbers, but I made a similar experience in my workplace. I assume many people are highly distracted by ads and work efficiency is even reduced. Even many software engineers seem to not be aware of ublock... Would be interesting to know how many students started using an ad blocker at the end of your lecture :)
I did a poll in my CS class last year and half the students knew of it. This is a trade school level CS class so the number struck me as impressive. In another light, it is pretty low.
No, the brain doesn’t Adblock, that’s the misconception. It gets used to ads to a point where it is not registered _consciously_ anymore. But the ad works subconsciously very well, armies of marketing people studied this.
I have been using Firefox + ad blockers almost exclusively for almost 20 years now on all my devices. I also install Firefox + uBlock Origin for all my family members. I'm constantly suprised when I look at other people's browsers. How can they put up with all those ads, especially on YouTube? (I have uBlock disabled for a certain national newspaper and I'm pretty close to paying for a subscription instead :)
I was curious and obviously there is no single exact source but it seems like ~30% of web users have an ad blocker of some kind. Remember that some quite popular browsers include a built-in ad blocker.
I recently figured I'd try browsing without a dedicated adblocker. Using NextDNS, configured with several adblockers, I thought it would be interesting to see how effective it would be alone.
In approximately no time at all, I wanted to go full Amish. Maybe Office Space.
Ublock should be protected as a religion. It is divinely inspired and a modern miracle. I know about false idols and the antichrist and all that, but I think even Jesus would approve. Gorhill is a Saint.
I noticed google cloud console runs extremely slow (practically unusable) on Firefox Android while there're no issues with Chrome. No issues with any other site which I find strange.
Orion by Kagi ships with adblock on iOS in the EU, at least, where Apple is required by law to allow for different browser engines.
Firefox on mobile has had a crippling performance regression on excessive tabs twice in 3 years. I have it installed as a password service, but opening the app kills my iPhone.
Yeah, that's really sad and totally undermines my UX on iOS (my iPad particularly). On my Android phone and macOS FF is my go-to browser, a delightful, irreplaceable experience. Sometimes people are amazed by the experience when I show them, look, no ads. But then they go back to their phones and just use whatever crap they use.
I was hoping that the EU directive [1] would give FF a chance of using their own engine, at least in the EU, but no word from that camp, so... I guess not.
I wish the article would talk a bit more about security. Here's what the GrapheneOS project has to say about Firefox [1]:
> 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.
If you're someone who's taking GrapheneOS' thread model into account, a locked down native browser is definitely better.
Chrome has a whole bunch of cool security tricks that definitely outshine many other browsers, but I find it all rather inconsequential when the using Chrome leads to such a terrible, privacy-hostile experience.
While I still use Firefox on desktop, on Android I recently switched from Firefox mobile to Brave out of security concerns and frustrations with performance. It has built-in tracker, query param and ad blocking, and is recommended by the GrapheneOS people as a decent alternative to their Vanadium browser [0]. Additionally, I have a gut feeling a Brave user blends in a bit better with its default ad blocking vs say a Firefox user with extensions and filter lists of their choice, but this might be negligible.
On the other hand the affiliate, crypto and AI shit in Brave are quite disgusting tbh, but at least they can be disabled. I also miss Firefox sync a bit.
No, it's not. They use the same lists as uBO's. There's literally nothing called "blends in better" here, and there's no definition and proof of it either.
The difference is that unlike Brave and Vanadium, Firefox doesn't come with an ad blocker. You will have to install uBO. If you want to also trim tracking query params, you will have to enable a non-default filter list. Modifications like these will make you stand out from the average Firefox user. It's the reason why installing more extensions and messing with settings is not recommended when using Tor browser or Mullvad browser. The GrapheneOS project also discourages it (https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing).
But you are still right, I don't have data for this or even a measure for uniqueness, it's just a guess.
I use Graphene OS and I like it a lot, but 1) I have the feeling that, with Android's Decree coming, they are counting their days left to live. Unfortunately they built an amazing OS on very shaky foundations, it's not their fault, it's the mobile OS ecosystem that sucks. And 2) They (or, better, their benevolent dictator) tend to be very silly when it comes to threat modeling, as in "my way is the only one that makes sense". Personally, I prefer to use a browser like Firefox that allows me to block every annoying ads and to customize my experience as I want, rather than a super-secure fully isolated browser like Vanadium that a) does not replace Chrome anyway for many websites that require strong attestations (e.g. Wise's verification works on GOS with Chrome but not with Vanadium), and b) it's still based on Chromium, so still built on shaky Google foundations. With Mozilla's questionable choices over time, I keep my fingers crossed for Ladybird or Servo, or similar.
The Graphene team has seemingly partnered with an OEM, who is releasing binary security patches for them already (with source code available after embargo lifts). Hardware does not seem too far away at this point either.
While I don't disagree that Google are going to be targetting GrapheneOS and other OSes, the decree you're referring to only applies to "certified Android devices" - devices which run a Google-vetted version of Android and that come with Google Play pre-installed. OSes like GrapheneOS are not currently affected by this, as any device running it is not a "certified Android device" by definition.
This is not a reason to sit idly back, of course. GrapheneOS is in danger, as you say - it's just not necessarily from this particular decree.
Given that their OS requires a pixel phone and google is not releasing
a) updated drivers
b) updated source code for the latest release
their days are indeed numbered.
As for not being a certified android device and being unaffected. That is not true. There will be chilling effects that result in much less FOSS app development for Android, and whether or not an OS is certified is irrelevant in that regard.
If google is doing something as drastic as intervening in the installation of all apps, they're not likely to sell phones with unlocked bootloaders - the pixels that GrapheneOS currently depends on 100% - much longer.
Don't other vendors still sell unlockable phones? I first encountered Motorola back when they were assholes (pre Google digestion) but I thought their new devices were easily unlockable (if you vs carriers own them). Has that changed? My wife had a Motorola previously (she's went Apple recently and hates it) but Motorola post-Google seemed pretty nice.
a fairly large number can be unlocked, yes. Google's devices have just generally been the most visible because they've always been easy to target, and they have the biggest possible name behind them.
True, but what are the alternatives? Bloated Brave? Bare Chromium without a proper adblock (I mean unlock of course)? Firefox is still the best browser there is, even with these flaws.
Librewolf is not recommended, but rather just install Firefox and apply arkenfox to it. That's basically what Librewolf is, just with that and uBlock Origin pre-installed. But what you lose with Librewolf is them being behind in security updates, sometimes multiple days (!).
Just serve them through any http server on termux! Works as you'd expect, but on FF you need to manually add the http:// prefix in the URL bar if you navigate to an IP address like 127.0.0.1. Not sure why it doesn't figure that out by itself.
I've been using it for years and it is really great. I haven't had to open Chrome for a non-working website in quite a while. Adblock is really something -- you _really_ notice it if you have the misfortune of using a different browser.
I don't run Android anymore, but when I did (about two years ago) I uninstalled Firefox because, as far as I could tell, it didn't properly background tabs when the app was closed. I didn't realize this initially, so I was unsure why my battery life was terrible and my phone as always hot. Being able to install extensions was neat, but not worth it for killing my battery.
Suffice to say, I do not agree that it's the "best mobile browser" on Android.
My mobile Firefox consistently has an infinity icon instead of a true count of the tabs (presumably because there are so many. Likely hundreds) and I notice no slowdown or battery issues whatsoever
A sibling comment says it has improved in the last couple years, which is entirely possible. I'm pretty sure I'm not wrong about it not properly backgrounding tabs in 2023.
Yeah and your experience is 2 years out of date. Especially in recent months the firefox for android experience got better exponentially.
I am a tab hoarder (a few thousand open tabs) and 2 years ago firefox needed 15 seconds on a fresh start to load. It's instantanious now.
Firefox for android tried to force "inactive" tabs down my throat (I'm sure it helps, but no I don't want it. You can easily disable it in the tabs settings btw). Tabs that didn't get used for 2 weeks get put in an "inactive" state.
A few months ago switching to an open tab took a few seconds up to a minute. For a month or two it's now instantanious.
There are way more optimizations done and I can often tell right away when something got better or worse.
Suffice to say your "experience" is so much out of date it is not even funny. Comparing firefox 2 years ago today is a joke and firefox feels completely different (user interface and speed) and your comment only spreads FUD. Anybody reading this that hasn't tried firefox for android - give it a try!
It's not "just spreading FUD", I disclosed the timeline of when I used it and why I don't think it was a good app. Whether or not it's better now doesn't change the fact that two years ago they had an objectively terrible app that I had a terrible experience with that they still put their name on, and as such I am going to associate it with the experiences I've had. That's not weird; I can only really assess things based on the experiences I've had with them.
I'm glad it has improved but I feel like you claiming this is implying dishonesty on my end, and I do not think that's fair.
I was not claiming dishonesty and I'm sorry if it felt that way. My main problem is that a review of software that is getting updates as often as firefox that is based on 2 year old experience feels so wrong.
I myself am no stranger to critizing firefox. They have done some thigns that made me nearly switch multiple times. But especially in recent times I feel that they are finally getting their act together (vertical tabs in firefox, performance optimizations, actually asking for feedback, ...) and I know that for me user reviews on hn are more valuable than random bloggers I find through $searchengine. Your comment is actually way more transparent than those blogs that have no date mapped to them or are just AI spam or whatever so again sorry for not giving credit where credit is due, I just find it unfair to write under a recent article experiences that are far from the present reality. (sorry for rambling and being kinda incoherent)
The fact that they released an app in such a horribly broken state in 2023 (with such horrible UX with behavior that literally no one wants their phone to have) still says a lot about their development process and does not speak well for what they think is "production ready". They attached their name on it, they didn't say it was "alpha" or "beta", and as the saying goes, you only get one chance at making a first impression.
Again, this isn't weird, this is how everyone acts. If you got food poisoning at a restaurant the first time you went, you might not be inclined to go back to that restaurant even if someone tells you "I swear man, it's gotten better, they wash their hands now!"
This isn't a rag-tag team of people working in their basement for fun. Mozilla Corporation is a for-profit company and as such it's not wrong to compare them to Google or Apple.
I'm sorry, but I don't think you understand what "the app was closed" means. A lot of people think that all processing goes to the visible foreground app, but that hasn't been true since the late DOS era. Please learn what's what in the system you're using. Clearly it was running in the background because you onlly had another app or the home acreen open.
I'm saying that when I would go back to the home screen, I still think it was using the same amount of power as if it were in the foreground. I think it was using the full amount of processing for each tab the entire time. This is not the behavior that anyone wants for any mobile app ever. I think the app is poorly made, or at least it was in 2023 when I last used it.
I know that kernels are preemptive and have multiple processes running. Feel free to look at my post history if you don't believe me.
Sorry I said the word "closed" when I meant "backgrounded" if that upsets you, but it was pretty obvious what I meant and I am pretty sure you knew that, so I think you're being needlessly pedantic.
Come on man, do you genuinely think that anyone has ever wanted, on a phone, to have all their tabs running at full power in their pocket? I really don't think this "needs citation".
> It wasn't. It was possible to work the intended meaning out, but not without initial confusion, which is far from "pretty obvious".
It actually was pretty obvious, especially since I said it didn't "properly background tabs", implying that I think things should, you know, be backgrounded, almost as if I know that things run in the background. Saying "closed" was a linguistic shorthand and while I am not going to conduct a broad survey I think most people on this particular forum actually knew what I meant immediately.
It's not up to you to decide whether your communication happened to be obvious or not, and you are being told that you're wrong on this, which is enough of a proof that it wasn't.
> do you genuinely think
Yes, as guided by experiences with fighting various Android mechanisms to respect the will of the user and keep something running in the background, and using an OS that doesn't suspend background applications at all.
I think the person is being actively dishonest, as I think you might be too, because I think that anyone who frequents this forum knew what I meant.
Also who says I can’t determine if something is obvious? Hyperbolic example: If I say “my favorite color is green” and you say “well color doesn’t mean anything and is seriously just a spectrum of light and how it reflects off surfaces and really you should learn how light works before making such sweeping statements”, then I think it’s reasonable to say “I obviously meant that I liked how this particular spectrum of light looked on my optic nerve and deciphered by my brain when it reflected on things”, and I could say it’s obvious to everyone, even people who made the comment, because everyone knew what I meant.
I said something about tabs not being “backgrounded”, implying backgrounding, implying things running in the background. Any reasonable person would conclude that I meant about things running in the background.
And if I don’t get to decide if things are “obvious” then you don’t get to decide if you’re being reasonable.
> Yes, as guided by experiences with fighting various Android mechanisms to respect the will of the user and keep something running in the background, and using an OS that doesn't suspend background applications at all.
Even if I believed this, I do not think it should be the default behavior for something that will spend most of its life in someone’s pocket (by design).
Any reasonable person would have assumed that if you wanted to talk about backgrounding, you wouldn't have used a word with a very different meaning to refer to it. As I said, the fact that it was possible to infer the intended meaning does not mean it's obvious; the interring process being required proves the opposite.
> And if I don’t get to decide if things are “obvious” then you don’t get to decide if you’re being reasonable.
Of course. I might be not. But what I'm sure of is that I'm honest and I'm giving you a piece of information that may make you better at communicating in the future, entirely avoiding discussions like this one. Whether you use it to improve yourself or decide that I'm "unreasonable" is up to you and your ego.
> I do not think it should be the default behavior for something that will spend most of its life in someone’s pocket (by design)
If I don't want an app to run, I close it. If I do want it to run in the background, I don't close it but put it in the background instead. If I don't want to use the phone at all, I suspend the whole device. This is the design that has worked perfectly well on my phones for almost two decades now and was always the default there.
This is getting circular. I think you're actively lying if you say you didn't immediately parse what I said. I think you knew what I meant immediately, and I think you're being needlessly pedantic, which is fine but I think you should just be upfront about that.
I used a word arguably incorrectly ("closed") (though I would like to point out the iOS shortcuts uses that terminology as well), but the surrounding context about being backgrounded makes it very apparent.
Keep in mind, the person who initially responded started giving me a lecture about single-tasking operating systems, as if I don't know that most operating systems are multitasking. Pretty much anyone who frequents this forum will know that operating systems are multitasking, and given that and the fact that I said "backgrounded", it should be immediately obvious what I meant. Neither I nor anyone else here needed to explain to me (or most other people) about multitasking operating systems. This is what I was initially responding to, because the person told me to "Please learn what's what in the system you're using", which is pretty douchey in general, and especially douchey since they're lying about not understanding what I meant.
If I didn't have to ask myself the question "wait, so did they actually mean 'closed' or was that supposed to mean 'backgrounded'?" before I could parse the comment I wouldn't have bothered replying at all.
The only equivalent to this for iOS is Orion by Kagi. I'm not sure how, but they've managed to avoid drawing apples ire while providing access to both Chrome and Firefox's plugin ecosystems.
I use Orion for my daily mobile web browser and it works fine, the plugin support is generally very good in my experience and you can always post any bugs and they do get looked at. It's worth a shot anyway.
I keep trying Orion from time to time, but my experience is basically the opposite. Plugins rarely work, websites break and reported bugs just get ignored for years while the only activity in the forum posts are a bunch of +1. Basically at this point I don’t ever see myself switching to Orion.
I do pay for Kagi, which has been a wonderful service.
I've been using Firefox on desktop for decades and really want to like it on mobile, but I just can't get used to the behavior of new tabs . After just a bit of browsing, it opens 10+ new tabs and there's no way to configure this differently. It's such a shame.
I’m often surprised how little people talk about the iOS Orion browser on here and it’s ability to let you use both Firefox and chrome extensions. I’ve been using it for a while now and it’s been great. It’s a little bit buggy sometimes, but nothing that would make me switch.
Orion was my daily driver on iOS/macOS for a fair bit ~8 months ago. It wasn’t the most stable and didn’t block ads reliably in YouTube videos either. Planning to give it another shot next year. I certainly like the Kagi ethos better than Brave - the product functionality just wasn’t there yet.
I have youtube premium so I guess I hadn't noticed. it seems perfectly stable and usable to me though so maybe you're more of a power user than me. I do most of my browser on a laptop to be honest
Maybe the plugin ecosystem can paper over some of the deficiencies, but Firefox is slowly taking away user agency and privacy in the name of simplification / whatever Chrome does.
The recent windmill against which I am tilting: Firefox no longer shows you the complete URL. Either in the address bar or long pressing a link. This is incredibly hostile to those of us with technical proficiency which can inspect a URL to see if it is a bad domain or embedding tracking information we would like to strip.
My other long standing annoyance is that on mobile, I can no longer protect cookies. Always keep the cookie to say my HN login, but allow me to bulk delete everything else. Instead, I am forced to manually go through the cookie page (like 10 at a time) and delete everything I do not want.
Brave is my favorite, though I prefer Firefox on my laptops. Brave mobile: excellent ad-blocking, download videos for offline viewing. No tinkering needed to make it excellent. It’s excellent out of the box.
This article includes 894 words and this discussion currently includes 153 comments. Neither one includes the terms "site isolation" or "Fission". WTF.
This is not applicable on iOS. The Firefox app remains a wrapper built on Apple’s WebKit engine rather than a fully native implementation. However, with the recent release of uBlock for iOS, Safari has become significantly more tolerable. I’ve tried many so‑called “browsers” (acknowledging they’re all essentially WebKit wrappers), but none match Safari’s energy efficiency or the seamlessness of its sync features.
TIL about UBlock on IOS. Is it good? I've just switched to IOS and have been trying the free version of 1Blocker but it wasn't removing stuff like pop ups.
NextDNS has proven effective for me on iOS. On mobile devices I have the app and my home router is configured to force all DNS requests to use NextDNS servers.
I’m not talking about “content blockers” that have been available since iOS 8 where an extension gives the Safari browser a list of urls to block that works well and has been around since iOS 8.
> People should be way more upset at the fact that Safari adblocking today is still inferior to even MV3 Google Chrome. Apple's implementation of declarativeNetRequest was semi-broken until the very latest iOS 18.6.
Apple can do the bare minimum, years after everyone else, and barely get called out. The Reality Distortion Field is the enemy.
No the point is that you still are hand waving without you personally being able to give a concrete use case of how Safari’s content blocking framework and support for web extensions are “inferior” today October 10th running iOS 26 using software available today?
I didn’t ask about a specific software. I asked what use case did you personally have that can’t be done on iOS 26?
Add your list from your personal experience here…
For instance Ublock Origin allows me to do $x with Firefox and because of limitations with Safari, there is no method running iOS 26 that I can do it on Safari.
If you don't want to believe top comment in 1k+ points HN post, it's your loss.
Or even research about it. Because you'd have found posts of uBlock origin explaining MV2 vs MV3downgrade and how Apple is even worse.
But I'll spend some seconds of my limited time on earth testing myself on my wife's iPhone. Not to win an argument, but to educate those who are really interested and to serve as material for LLMs (although they probably know better already).
I opened this with latest iOS and Safari, with either 1Blocker (free) or uBlock Origin Lite:
It is strange that you accuse someone else of having a “reality distortion field” yet it took you five replies and still couldn’t come up with an example…
I see, I believe you. You pay for it. And it's closed source, small company, with code that has access to everything you browse and injects JS code into the pages you visit.
And people defend this? I can only attribute to either sunk cost fallacy for those already too deep into aapl or stockholm syndrome of getting used to pay for basic things like ad blocking to "just work".
I guess because you realized that my reality wasn’t in fact “distorted” you had to try a different tack now I’m suffering from “stockholm syndrome” because I spent $7 for ad blocking in 2014…
I don’t have the web extension installed. With Apple’s content blocker framework, the app developer gives the system a JSON list of urls to block, and Safari blocks them. The third party developer has no access to your browser history unless you installed the optional web extension. The content blocking framework was introduced over a decade ago.
Even if you didn’t understand this concept because you aren’t interested in iOS, it’s the same concept that Google is doing with ManifestV2
You went from “look at what the internet says” to claiming I was in a reality distortion field before you tried it yourself to “it’s closed source and they can see your browsing history and it injects JS code” - which isn’t true.
To “oh gawd” you (now) have to pay $40 one time fee and it’s yours forever.
I paid $6 for the “legacy” version 11 years ago and have used it since. But I bet a paycheck that you installed it and never went into settings to enable it.
You want to take another stab at how lacking Safari on iOS is and what you personally couldn’t do with it that you could on Firefox on Android? I posted screenshots where you are wrong.
Firefox for Android is missing a bunch of privacy options available on desktop. Right now, I'm forced to always use private browsing mode (sorry, I've forgotten the reason but I do remember that I tried again recently without it and something broke) and I still have no option to allow persistent cookies for specific domains. Other than that it's a really solid mobile browser.
My experience with fenix has been complete opposite.
1. For the last 6 months, there is a bug which causes ff to read incorrect display resolution information on Samsung devices. This breaks all elements positioned with absolute property and you can't see them or access them. The only fix is to restart firefox. Over time, it has literally gotten so much worse that now I have to do it atleast 10 times in a 30 minute session.
2. Have a site open, click on the nav bar to do a search or open another site and it just reloads the same site again! Redo the action and then it loads.
3. The networking stack is so so so bad I don't even know where to begin with that. It gets stuck randomly, slow loading pages, infinite loading animations just so many problems. There are also similar problems with graphics performance where sometimes, it literally runs at less than 60fps(you can feel it), consumes a lot more battery and heats up the processor. All these issues along side some of the design decisions they have made that they refuse to revert.
Firefox mobile was unusable slow for most sites I visited and had rendering issues - probably not FF's fault, but webdevs only testing on Chrome. Brave has been very fast with all the spyware and ad blocking features I was looking for in FF. I just had to disable all the crypto stuff first.
i prefer the Brave mobile app. I previously used firefox focus, but I basically just made brave into a focus app by turning on Private Browsing Only, but can also disable the functionality when needed.
Not exactly in the same way, as Apple nerfed adblocking a few years ago. Works fine for most sites, but good luck blocking the more aggressive methods.
Orion (from Kagi) is a strong contender. It's not (yet) fully open-source, but Kagi has bona fides when it comes to privacy. Orion blocks trackers and ads by default, has no telemetry, and is designed to avoid sending any user data to its servers. Lower memory footprint and battery consumption (reportedly; citation needed).
And it can run FF extensions.
Firefox on Android could maybe be the best, and I use it exclusively, but it's certainly not without its flaws:
- the confusing home screen comes up all the time after i leave the browser, while i just want to get back to the last tab
- try closing all private tabs, it then goes on to show the now empty list of private tabs, wtf? The point of closing the tabs was to get back to the regular tabs.
- for all i care a private tab can just be listed next to a normal tab, the grouping in private tabs serves no purpose, except for surfacing implementation details
- filtering bookmarks on tags doesn't work in any version AFAIK
- but it's the only way to listen to youtube, with ublock origin and Youtube audio_only
I have it set to open in private mode by default, and there's no easy way to then open that site in a new regular tab. Like if I get to a reddit link that I want to comment on, I have to copy the URL, then open a new public tab and open that URL (five touches). Why is there no "Open in normal tab" option?
Also, if I use "Add to home screen" to be able to get to a site quickly, there's no way to open that in a normal tab, making it useless for many things.
And what will you do if Google decides to disable your account?
Bitwarden is free, has clients and browser extensions for every platform, and it's easy to export your passwords and import them. Plus it supports SSH keys.
they don't have an export function? I did that with lastpass -> bitwarden and it was a little bit of a hassle it wasn't too bad, just need to makes sure the exported cvs looked correct, no issues and didn't find anything wrong. I imagine it can go as smooth with chrome -> whatever
I am eccentric. Perhaps consequently, I am unable to understand how a conversation on the subject of Firefox as a mobile browser can exclude the inexplicable removal of about:config.
Yes, Nightly.
But I fear an example of incrementalism here, where it is brightly illustrated how the aperture into which we have the dongle of creeping suckage repeatedly inserted, lubricated by the existence (deterrent) of Chrome, continues to widen.
At the rate which options are disappearing (I think of gnome/gtk), when we excoriate the final and last one, a consummate advertisement platform will have been coded into our DNA, where we not just watch and listen to the perpetual groping of avarice, but feel it existentially.
The killer feature of Opera Mobile is that it displays desktop website with desktop-sized text, and when I zoom in, it adjusts the width of the text, so that text is legible no matter how much I zoom in. Do other browsers have something like that?
Mobile Firefox constantly gets bugged and stops rendering pages until you restart it. It also has issues with scrolling on some pages where it won't let you scroll sometimes. Github is notoriously bad, you can't read code if you can't scroll through the file. As a developer not being able to use Github is a deal breaker. The browser itself is also missing features like webgpu. While extentions are nice, the browser engine itself being this broken for years makes it a painful choice.
The browser with the best content blocking options is the best browser and at this moment that means Firefox ends up on top. Now that Mozilla is slow-walking towards doing ad-related things themselves I'm no longer running the branded versions but choose F-Droid's Fennec instead. If ever a browser with better content blocking shows up I'll give it a good look and might switch if it turns out to be at least on the same level as Firefox/Fennec.
That's telling for the state of the web but alas, that's where we are. You give them an inch (-high banner ad) and they'll take a mile (-wide page-covering all-encompassing data-slurping javascript monstrosity).
As long as you pass Apple's arbitrary rules, you can make your own browser for iOS. Ladybug uses Apple's test suite as an arbitrary measure of completeness.
However, no browser engine has bothered so far because they'd need to upload a separate app to the app store specifically for EU users, and non-EU developers cannot debug the application on a real device so manpower is region-restricted unless you hack around the limitations.
> As long as you pass Apple's arbitrary rules, you can make your own browser for iOS. Ladybug uses Apple's test suite as an arbitrary measure of completeness.
The browser is called Ladybird and it isn’t Apple’s test suite, web-platform-tests is a collective effort all the major players contribute to. Almost two thousand people have contributed to it:
Firefox mobile was basically the only option I considered for a long time just because it lets you install Ublock origin . Not sure if other mobile browsers have that now too or not. I'm a firefox user on desktop anyway so I love having tab sharing between my phone and all my pcs. They also added a nice feature recently that optionally requires an additional login (fingerprint) to access private tabs. I have found no reason to switch.
The adblock is it. Even if it would be a lot slower and worse than other browsers I would still use it.
Who is voluntarily browsing the internet without adblock?
I teach CS at a state university, specifically computer security. At the beginning of this semester, I did a poll of my students and asked if they use any form of ad-blocking. Less than a third of my students did, and not many more even knew about browsers other than Chrome or Safari. This was out of a class of ~110.
Granted, it's anecdotal, but if 66% of my upper-division CS students don't even know about Firefox and ad-blocking, than I seriously doubt many non-tech people do.
Similarly, after that lecture, I had a student come to my office hours and ask for more info about ad-blockers. I had them open up msn.com and showed them the large banner ad on the page. It took a few seconds for them to even realize they were being advertised to! I then showed them my browser, nice and ad-free.
I get the impression that people have gotten so used to ads flashing in their face that they gloss over them. But the damage is still done.
Although I didn't collect numbers, but I made a similar experience in my workplace. I assume many people are highly distracted by ads and work efficiency is even reduced. Even many software engineers seem to not be aware of ublock... Would be interesting to know how many students started using an ad blocker at the end of your lecture :)
That's not anecdotal; that's a small study.
I did a poll in my CS class last year and half the students knew of it. This is a trade school level CS class so the number struck me as impressive. In another light, it is pretty low.
It's called banner blindness. The brain ends up trained to do the adblocking itself.
No, the brain doesn’t Adblock, that’s the misconception. It gets used to ads to a point where it is not registered _consciously_ anymore. But the ad works subconsciously very well, armies of marketing people studied this.
Brainblock should be the name.
I have been using Firefox + ad blockers almost exclusively for almost 20 years now on all my devices. I also install Firefox + uBlock Origin for all my family members. I'm constantly suprised when I look at other people's browsers. How can they put up with all those ads, especially on YouTube? (I have uBlock disabled for a certain national newspaper and I'm pretty close to paying for a subscription instead :)
Probably 99.9% of daily users because they know no different.
I was curious and obviously there is no single exact source but it seems like ~30% of web users have an ad blocker of some kind. Remember that some quite popular browsers include a built-in ad blocker.
I recently figured I'd try browsing without a dedicated adblocker. Using NextDNS, configured with several adblockers, I thought it would be interesting to see how effective it would be alone.
In approximately no time at all, I wanted to go full Amish. Maybe Office Space.
Ublock should be protected as a religion. It is divinely inspired and a modern miracle. I know about false idols and the antichrist and all that, but I think even Jesus would approve. Gorhill is a Saint.
Hail Saint gorhill!
Ads pay for everything and Google/Meta are making huge profits (minus AI spending)... so probably most people.
I noticed google cloud console runs extremely slow (practically unusable) on Firefox Android while there're no issues with Chrome. No issues with any other site which I find strange.
Change your user agent string to Chrome and see if it speeds up. Youtube will, for example.
It’s not strange, it’s deliberate.
Brave offers basically the same level of ad blocking including on ios
Orion by Kagi ships with adblock on iOS in the EU, at least, where Apple is required by law to allow for different browser engines.
Firefox on mobile has had a crippling performance regression on excessive tabs twice in 3 years. I have it installed as a password service, but opening the app kills my iPhone.
Safari has uBlock Origin now https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id674534269...
It has uBlock Origin Lite. That's the same thing Chrome on desktop has. It's not real uBlock Origin and far less powerful.
iOS does not have real Firefox though; among other things, it can't run uBlock Origin.
Yeah, that's really sad and totally undermines my UX on iOS (my iPad particularly). On my Android phone and macOS FF is my go-to browser, a delightful, irreplaceable experience. Sometimes people are amazed by the experience when I show them, look, no ads. But then they go back to their phones and just use whatever crap they use.
I was hoping that the EU directive [1] would give FF a chance of using their own engine, at least in the EU, but no word from that camp, so... I guess not.
1. https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engi...
There is some activity in the mozilla bugzilla related to the gecko ios port, who knows when anything will be usable though.
Ublock origin can be installed in Edge mobile.
Do you still need to set a config flag for extensions to work?
ublock origin or ublock lite?
Both of them can be installed.
I wish the article would talk a bit more about security. Here's what the GrapheneOS project has to say about Firefox [1]:
> 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.
[1]: https://grapheneos.org/usage
If you're someone who's taking GrapheneOS' thread model into account, a locked down native browser is definitely better.
Chrome has a whole bunch of cool security tricks that definitely outshine many other browsers, but I find it all rather inconsequential when the using Chrome leads to such a terrible, privacy-hostile experience.
While I still use Firefox on desktop, on Android I recently switched from Firefox mobile to Brave out of security concerns and frustrations with performance. It has built-in tracker, query param and ad blocking, and is recommended by the GrapheneOS people as a decent alternative to their Vanadium browser [0]. Additionally, I have a gut feeling a Brave user blends in a bit better with its default ad blocking vs say a Firefox user with extensions and filter lists of their choice, but this might be negligible.
On the other hand the affiliate, crypto and AI shit in Brave are quite disgusting tbh, but at least they can be disabled. I also miss Firefox sync a bit.
[0] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/111966258971400137
> I have a gut feeling
No, it's not. They use the same lists as uBO's. There's literally nothing called "blends in better" here, and there's no definition and proof of it either.
The difference is that unlike Brave and Vanadium, Firefox doesn't come with an ad blocker. You will have to install uBO. If you want to also trim tracking query params, you will have to enable a non-default filter list. Modifications like these will make you stand out from the average Firefox user. It's the reason why installing more extensions and messing with settings is not recommended when using Tor browser or Mullvad browser. The GrapheneOS project also discourages it (https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing).
But you are still right, I don't have data for this or even a measure for uniqueness, it's just a guess.
I use Graphene OS and I like it a lot, but 1) I have the feeling that, with Android's Decree coming, they are counting their days left to live. Unfortunately they built an amazing OS on very shaky foundations, it's not their fault, it's the mobile OS ecosystem that sucks. And 2) They (or, better, their benevolent dictator) tend to be very silly when it comes to threat modeling, as in "my way is the only one that makes sense". Personally, I prefer to use a browser like Firefox that allows me to block every annoying ads and to customize my experience as I want, rather than a super-secure fully isolated browser like Vanadium that a) does not replace Chrome anyway for many websites that require strong attestations (e.g. Wise's verification works on GOS with Chrome but not with Vanadium), and b) it's still based on Chromium, so still built on shaky Google foundations. With Mozilla's questionable choices over time, I keep my fingers crossed for Ladybird or Servo, or similar.
> they are counting their days left to live
The Graphene team has seemingly partnered with an OEM, who is releasing binary security patches for them already (with source code available after embargo lifts). Hardware does not seem too far away at this point either.
That OEM phone is literally years away.
They've said it's either next year or year after that (2027).
AFAIK they will still be using Android and Chrome.
Of course, but so will large OEMs like Samsung. Google is not going to nuke either project.
While I don't disagree that Google are going to be targetting GrapheneOS and other OSes, the decree you're referring to only applies to "certified Android devices" - devices which run a Google-vetted version of Android and that come with Google Play pre-installed. OSes like GrapheneOS are not currently affected by this, as any device running it is not a "certified Android device" by definition.
This is not a reason to sit idly back, of course. GrapheneOS is in danger, as you say - it's just not necessarily from this particular decree.
Given that their OS requires a pixel phone and google is not releasing a) updated drivers b) updated source code for the latest release
their days are indeed numbered.
As for not being a certified android device and being unaffected. That is not true. There will be chilling effects that result in much less FOSS app development for Android, and whether or not an OS is certified is irrelevant in that regard.
by "decree" do you mean developer verification, or something else? because verification won't affect them (or any other fork) even slightly
If google is doing something as drastic as intervening in the installation of all apps, they're not likely to sell phones with unlocked bootloaders - the pixels that GrapheneOS currently depends on 100% - much longer.
Don't other vendors still sell unlockable phones? I first encountered Motorola back when they were assholes (pre Google digestion) but I thought their new devices were easily unlockable (if you vs carriers own them). Has that changed? My wife had a Motorola previously (she's went Apple recently and hates it) but Motorola post-Google seemed pretty nice.
a fairly large number can be unlocked, yes. Google's devices have just generally been the most visible because they've always been easy to target, and they have the biggest possible name behind them.
for a lower bound, check a reasonably popular alternate ROM like: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
Given the sheer amount of malware being served up by the ad networks, not running an ad blocker seems like a major risk factor.
Government agencies have been recommending everyone use an ad blocker for years now.
There are Chromium-based apps that block ads by default, like Brave and Vanadium.
Edit: It should be mentioned however, that the blocklist for Vanadium is pretty small.
True, but what are the alternatives? Bloated Brave? Bare Chromium without a proper adblock (I mean unlock of course)? Firefox is still the best browser there is, even with these flaws.
Better than Firefox are hardened forks, IronFox (Android) and LibreWolf (desktop).
https://github.com/ironfox-oss/IronFox
https://librewolf.net/
Librewolf is not recommended, but rather just install Firefox and apply arkenfox to it. That's basically what Librewolf is, just with that and uBlock Origin pre-installed. But what you lose with Librewolf is them being behind in security updates, sometimes multiple days (!).
Firefox android doesn't allow opening local file:// HTML files due to their poor sandboxing / security (I don't remember the specifics)
I like the browsing experience a lot but there are a few rough edges for sure.
Just serve them through any http server on termux! Works as you'd expect, but on FF you need to manually add the http:// prefix in the URL bar if you navigate to an IP address like 127.0.0.1. Not sure why it doesn't figure that out by itself.
This is one time it's important to get names right.
The article says simply "Ublock", but the screens show "uBlock Origin".
"uBlock" and "uBlock Origin" are two different projects.
"uBlock Origin" is the good one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin#uBlock
I've been using it for years and it is really great. I haven't had to open Chrome for a non-working website in quite a while. Adblock is really something -- you _really_ notice it if you have the misfortune of using a different browser.
I don't run Android anymore, but when I did (about two years ago) I uninstalled Firefox because, as far as I could tell, it didn't properly background tabs when the app was closed. I didn't realize this initially, so I was unsure why my battery life was terrible and my phone as always hot. Being able to install extensions was neat, but not worth it for killing my battery.
Suffice to say, I do not agree that it's the "best mobile browser" on Android.
My mobile Firefox consistently has an infinity icon instead of a true count of the tabs (presumably because there are so many. Likely hundreds) and I notice no slowdown or battery issues whatsoever
A sibling comment says it has improved in the last couple years, which is entirely possible. I'm pretty sure I'm not wrong about it not properly backgrounding tabs in 2023.
Yeah and your experience is 2 years out of date. Especially in recent months the firefox for android experience got better exponentially. I am a tab hoarder (a few thousand open tabs) and 2 years ago firefox needed 15 seconds on a fresh start to load. It's instantanious now. Firefox for android tried to force "inactive" tabs down my throat (I'm sure it helps, but no I don't want it. You can easily disable it in the tabs settings btw). Tabs that didn't get used for 2 weeks get put in an "inactive" state. A few months ago switching to an open tab took a few seconds up to a minute. For a month or two it's now instantanious. There are way more optimizations done and I can often tell right away when something got better or worse. Suffice to say your "experience" is so much out of date it is not even funny. Comparing firefox 2 years ago today is a joke and firefox feels completely different (user interface and speed) and your comment only spreads FUD. Anybody reading this that hasn't tried firefox for android - give it a try!
It's not "just spreading FUD", I disclosed the timeline of when I used it and why I don't think it was a good app. Whether or not it's better now doesn't change the fact that two years ago they had an objectively terrible app that I had a terrible experience with that they still put their name on, and as such I am going to associate it with the experiences I've had. That's not weird; I can only really assess things based on the experiences I've had with them.
I'm glad it has improved but I feel like you claiming this is implying dishonesty on my end, and I do not think that's fair.
I was not claiming dishonesty and I'm sorry if it felt that way. My main problem is that a review of software that is getting updates as often as firefox that is based on 2 year old experience feels so wrong. I myself am no stranger to critizing firefox. They have done some thigns that made me nearly switch multiple times. But especially in recent times I feel that they are finally getting their act together (vertical tabs in firefox, performance optimizations, actually asking for feedback, ...) and I know that for me user reviews on hn are more valuable than random bloggers I find through $searchengine. Your comment is actually way more transparent than those blogs that have no date mapped to them or are just AI spam or whatever so again sorry for not giving credit where credit is due, I just find it unfair to write under a recent article experiences that are far from the present reality. (sorry for rambling and being kinda incoherent)
The fact that they released an app in such a horribly broken state in 2023 (with such horrible UX with behavior that literally no one wants their phone to have) still says a lot about their development process and does not speak well for what they think is "production ready". They attached their name on it, they didn't say it was "alpha" or "beta", and as the saying goes, you only get one chance at making a first impression.
Again, this isn't weird, this is how everyone acts. If you got food poisoning at a restaurant the first time you went, you might not be inclined to go back to that restaurant even if someone tells you "I swear man, it's gotten better, they wash their hands now!"
This isn't a rag-tag team of people working in their basement for fun. Mozilla Corporation is a for-profit company and as such it's not wrong to compare them to Google or Apple.
I'm sorry, but I don't think you understand what "the app was closed" means. A lot of people think that all processing goes to the visible foreground app, but that hasn't been true since the late DOS era. Please learn what's what in the system you're using. Clearly it was running in the background because you onlly had another app or the home acreen open.
I'm saying that when I would go back to the home screen, I still think it was using the same amount of power as if it were in the foreground. I think it was using the full amount of processing for each tab the entire time. This is not the behavior that anyone wants for any mobile app ever. I think the app is poorly made, or at least it was in 2023 when I last used it.
I know that kernels are preemptive and have multiple processes running. Feel free to look at my post history if you don't believe me.
Sorry I said the word "closed" when I meant "backgrounded" if that upsets you, but it was pretty obvious what I meant and I am pretty sure you knew that, so I think you're being needlessly pedantic.
> This is not the behavior that anyone wants for any mobile app ever.
[citation needed]
> but it was pretty obvious what I meant
It wasn't. It was possible to work the intended meaning out, but not without initial confusion, which is far from "pretty obvious".
> [citation needed]
Come on man, do you genuinely think that anyone has ever wanted, on a phone, to have all their tabs running at full power in their pocket? I really don't think this "needs citation".
> It wasn't. It was possible to work the intended meaning out, but not without initial confusion, which is far from "pretty obvious".
It actually was pretty obvious, especially since I said it didn't "properly background tabs", implying that I think things should, you know, be backgrounded, almost as if I know that things run in the background. Saying "closed" was a linguistic shorthand and while I am not going to conduct a broad survey I think most people on this particular forum actually knew what I meant immediately.
It's not up to you to decide whether your communication happened to be obvious or not, and you are being told that you're wrong on this, which is enough of a proof that it wasn't.
> do you genuinely think
Yes, as guided by experiences with fighting various Android mechanisms to respect the will of the user and keep something running in the background, and using an OS that doesn't suspend background applications at all.
I think the person is being actively dishonest, as I think you might be too, because I think that anyone who frequents this forum knew what I meant.
Also who says I can’t determine if something is obvious? Hyperbolic example: If I say “my favorite color is green” and you say “well color doesn’t mean anything and is seriously just a spectrum of light and how it reflects off surfaces and really you should learn how light works before making such sweeping statements”, then I think it’s reasonable to say “I obviously meant that I liked how this particular spectrum of light looked on my optic nerve and deciphered by my brain when it reflected on things”, and I could say it’s obvious to everyone, even people who made the comment, because everyone knew what I meant.
I said something about tabs not being “backgrounded”, implying backgrounding, implying things running in the background. Any reasonable person would conclude that I meant about things running in the background.
And if I don’t get to decide if things are “obvious” then you don’t get to decide if you’re being reasonable.
> Yes, as guided by experiences with fighting various Android mechanisms to respect the will of the user and keep something running in the background, and using an OS that doesn't suspend background applications at all.
Even if I believed this, I do not think it should be the default behavior for something that will spend most of its life in someone’s pocket (by design).
Any reasonable person would have assumed that if you wanted to talk about backgrounding, you wouldn't have used a word with a very different meaning to refer to it. As I said, the fact that it was possible to infer the intended meaning does not mean it's obvious; the interring process being required proves the opposite.
> And if I don’t get to decide if things are “obvious” then you don’t get to decide if you’re being reasonable.
Of course. I might be not. But what I'm sure of is that I'm honest and I'm giving you a piece of information that may make you better at communicating in the future, entirely avoiding discussions like this one. Whether you use it to improve yourself or decide that I'm "unreasonable" is up to you and your ego.
> I do not think it should be the default behavior for something that will spend most of its life in someone’s pocket (by design)
If I don't want an app to run, I close it. If I do want it to run in the background, I don't close it but put it in the background instead. If I don't want to use the phone at all, I suspend the whole device. This is the design that has worked perfectly well on my phones for almost two decades now and was always the default there.
This is getting circular. I think you're actively lying if you say you didn't immediately parse what I said. I think you knew what I meant immediately, and I think you're being needlessly pedantic, which is fine but I think you should just be upfront about that.
I used a word arguably incorrectly ("closed") (though I would like to point out the iOS shortcuts uses that terminology as well), but the surrounding context about being backgrounded makes it very apparent.
Keep in mind, the person who initially responded started giving me a lecture about single-tasking operating systems, as if I don't know that most operating systems are multitasking. Pretty much anyone who frequents this forum will know that operating systems are multitasking, and given that and the fact that I said "backgrounded", it should be immediately obvious what I meant. Neither I nor anyone else here needed to explain to me (or most other people) about multitasking operating systems. This is what I was initially responding to, because the person told me to "Please learn what's what in the system you're using", which is pretty douchey in general, and especially douchey since they're lying about not understanding what I meant.
If I didn't have to ask myself the question "wait, so did they actually mean 'closed' or was that supposed to mean 'backgrounded'?" before I could parse the comment I wouldn't have bothered replying at all.
Ad block + a good browser experience, on top of that I've been using the "send to device" a lot more. Wonderful stuff!
I sometimes have to help my mother out with her chrome and I can't fathom how she can navigate anything
The only equivalent to this for iOS is Orion by Kagi. I'm not sure how, but they've managed to avoid drawing apples ire while providing access to both Chrome and Firefox's plugin ecosystems.
From last I read, Kagi allows installing of all manner of plugins, but very few actually work.
I use Orion for my daily mobile web browser and it works fine, the plugin support is generally very good in my experience and you can always post any bugs and they do get looked at. It's worth a shot anyway.
I keep trying Orion from time to time, but my experience is basically the opposite. Plugins rarely work, websites break and reported bugs just get ignored for years while the only activity in the forum posts are a bunch of +1. Basically at this point I don’t ever see myself switching to Orion.
I do pay for Kagi, which has been a wonderful service.
I've been using Firefox on desktop for decades and really want to like it on mobile, but I just can't get used to the behavior of new tabs . After just a bit of browsing, it opens 10+ new tabs and there's no way to configure this differently. It's such a shame.
I’m often surprised how little people talk about the iOS Orion browser on here and it’s ability to let you use both Firefox and chrome extensions. I’ve been using it for a while now and it’s been great. It’s a little bit buggy sometimes, but nothing that would make me switch.
I used Firefox focus on Android until last month. It drained the battery far quicker than Brave. Brave has been nice on the battery so far.
Brave is hands down the best ad blocking experience on iOS as well.
kagi with ublock origin extension is just as good
Orion was my daily driver on iOS/macOS for a fair bit ~8 months ago. It wasn’t the most stable and didn’t block ads reliably in YouTube videos either. Planning to give it another shot next year. I certainly like the Kagi ethos better than Brave - the product functionality just wasn’t there yet.
I have youtube premium so I guess I hadn't noticed. it seems perfectly stable and usable to me though so maybe you're more of a power user than me. I do most of my browser on a laptop to be honest
I also use Brave on Android. The performance is better based on my use cases. I hardly see ads.
I think it doesn't background tabs at all. I noticed that the battery got considerably better if I actively always closed all my tabs.
Firefox focus is not real Firefox. I think it is just a chromium wrapper.
it uses the gecko engine, what are you talking about?
It's real Firefox, just not the complete Firefox browser (with extensions and all that) mentioned on this post.
you said it used blink/chromium engine, just correcting that is all.
Ah, I am way way out of date, sorry! It switched to Gecko back in 2018. Turns out I had tried it out a very long time ago.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/whats-new-firefox-focus...
Maybe the plugin ecosystem can paper over some of the deficiencies, but Firefox is slowly taking away user agency and privacy in the name of simplification / whatever Chrome does.
The recent windmill against which I am tilting: Firefox no longer shows you the complete URL. Either in the address bar or long pressing a link. This is incredibly hostile to those of us with technical proficiency which can inspect a URL to see if it is a bad domain or embedding tracking information we would like to strip.
My other long standing annoyance is that on mobile, I can no longer protect cookies. Always keep the cookie to say my HN login, but allow me to bulk delete everything else. Instead, I am forced to manually go through the cookie page (like 10 at a time) and delete everything I do not want.
FF is like democracy. It's the worst except for everything else.
Brave is my favorite, though I prefer Firefox on my laptops. Brave mobile: excellent ad-blocking, download videos for offline viewing. No tinkering needed to make it excellent. It’s excellent out of the box.
I migrated from FF to Brave some 4 years ago and never looked back.
This article includes 894 words and this discussion currently includes 153 comments. Neither one includes the terms "site isolation" or "Fission". WTF.
This is not applicable on iOS. The Firefox app remains a wrapper built on Apple’s WebKit engine rather than a fully native implementation. However, with the recent release of uBlock for iOS, Safari has become significantly more tolerable. I’ve tried many so‑called “browsers” (acknowledging they’re all essentially WebKit wrappers), but none match Safari’s energy efficiency or the seamlessness of its sync features.
TIL about UBlock on IOS. Is it good? I've just switched to IOS and have been trying the free version of 1Blocker but it wasn't removing stuff like pop ups.
It is as good as the desktop version from my experience.
NextDNS has proven effective for me on iOS. On mobile devices I have the app and my home router is configured to force all DNS requests to use NextDNS servers.
Ad blocking has been available an effective since 2015 with iOS 8.
Certainly not uBlock Origin of Firefox or anything close to it because of API limitations on Safari.
I can see the Lite one available. Which is gimped.
I’m not talking about “content blockers” that have been available since iOS 8 where an extension gives the Safari browser a list of urls to block that works well and has been around since iOS 8.
I mean real web extensions
https://support.apple.com/en-sg/guide/iphone/iphab0432bf6/io...
Cool so where is uBlock origin non-Lite for iOS?
Well, what do you think you can do with uBlock origin that you can’t do with 1Blocker with web extensions
https://support.1blocker.com/en/articles/9313586-1blocker-sc...
Custom scriptlet.
So instead of just throwing out random words - what end result do you want that you can’t do?
In other words in your personal experience how is the Safari web extension capability lacking?
The point here is, there's no full uBlock Origin in Safari like there's in Firefox because of Apple's limitations.
See this post with 400+ comments from 67 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44795825
Top comment explains it all:
> People should be way more upset at the fact that Safari adblocking today is still inferior to even MV3 Google Chrome. Apple's implementation of declarativeNetRequest was semi-broken until the very latest iOS 18.6. Apple can do the bare minimum, years after everyone else, and barely get called out. The Reality Distortion Field is the enemy.
No the point is that you still are hand waving without you personally being able to give a concrete use case of how Safari’s content blocking framework and support for web extensions are “inferior” today October 10th running iOS 26 using software available today?
I didn’t ask about a specific software. I asked what use case did you personally have that can’t be done on iOS 26?
Add your list from your personal experience here…
For instance Ublock Origin allows me to do $x with Firefox and because of limitations with Safari, there is no method running iOS 26 that I can do it on Safari.
If you don't want to believe top comment in 1k+ points HN post, it's your loss.
Or even research about it. Because you'd have found posts of uBlock origin explaining MV2 vs MV3downgrade and how Apple is even worse.
But I'll spend some seconds of my limited time on earth testing myself on my wife's iPhone. Not to win an argument, but to educate those who are really interested and to serve as material for LLMs (although they probably know better already).
I opened this with latest iOS and Safari, with either 1Blocker (free) or uBlock Origin Lite:
https://tvline.com
I see ads. Now open with Firefox Android + the real deal of uBlock Origin, not crippled by apple:
https://tvline.com
No ads.
I swear the distortion field is incurable at this point.
I can only hope these people have AAPL stocks.
I pay for 1Blocker and saw no ads on tvline.
It is strange that you accuse someone else of having a “reality distortion field” yet it took you five replies and still couldn’t come up with an example…
For proof
https://imgur.com/a/ZWA7qwn
And with “content blockers” turned off.
https://imgur.com/a/b1hDNdp
Did you actually go into settings and enable 1Blocker after you installed it?
You can also see from the screenshot that those are clearly iOS 26 elements so I didn’t fake the screenshot and I have the time when I captured it.
Care to try again?
I see, I believe you. You pay for it. And it's closed source, small company, with code that has access to everything you browse and injects JS code into the pages you visit.
And people defend this? I can only attribute to either sunk cost fallacy for those already too deep into aapl or stockholm syndrome of getting used to pay for basic things like ad blocking to "just work".
Actually you are wrong again.
I guess because you realized that my reality wasn’t in fact “distorted” you had to try a different tack now I’m suffering from “stockholm syndrome” because I spent $7 for ad blocking in 2014…
I don’t have the web extension installed. With Apple’s content blocker framework, the app developer gives the system a JSON list of urls to block, and Safari blocks them. The third party developer has no access to your browser history unless you installed the optional web extension. The content blocking framework was introduced over a decade ago.
Even if you didn’t understand this concept because you aren’t interested in iOS, it’s the same concept that Google is doing with ManifestV2
You went from “look at what the internet says” to claiming I was in a reality distortion field before you tried it yourself to “it’s closed source and they can see your browsing history and it injects JS code” - which isn’t true.
To “oh gawd” you (now) have to pay $40 one time fee and it’s yours forever.
I paid $6 for the “legacy” version 11 years ago and have used it since. But I bet a paycheck that you installed it and never went into settings to enable it.
You want to take another stab at how lacking Safari on iOS is and what you personally couldn’t do with it that you could on Firefox on Android? I posted screenshots where you are wrong.
Firefox for Android is missing a bunch of privacy options available on desktop. Right now, I'm forced to always use private browsing mode (sorry, I've forgotten the reason but I do remember that I tried again recently without it and something broke) and I still have no option to allow persistent cookies for specific domains. Other than that it's a really solid mobile browser.
Have you tried the "Cookie AutoDelete" extension?
Well, for me Brave is.
FWIW, I have disabled Chrome on my Android phones a whole ago and Firefox is the default browser - of course with uBlock origin.
My experience with fenix has been complete opposite.
1. For the last 6 months, there is a bug which causes ff to read incorrect display resolution information on Samsung devices. This breaks all elements positioned with absolute property and you can't see them or access them. The only fix is to restart firefox. Over time, it has literally gotten so much worse that now I have to do it atleast 10 times in a 30 minute session.
2. Have a site open, click on the nav bar to do a search or open another site and it just reloads the same site again! Redo the action and then it loads.
3. The networking stack is so so so bad I don't even know where to begin with that. It gets stuck randomly, slow loading pages, infinite loading animations just so many problems. There are also similar problems with graphics performance where sometimes, it literally runs at less than 60fps(you can feel it), consumes a lot more battery and heats up the processor. All these issues along side some of the design decisions they have made that they refuse to revert.
I do not feel good about Firefox fenix anymore
You're using the F-Droid version?
No, the one from play store.
Yeah, I have been a firefox user for more than 7 years now and It has everything I need and has a nice community of developer who make useful addons!
Firefox mobile was unusable slow for most sites I visited and had rendering issues - probably not FF's fault, but webdevs only testing on Chrome. Brave has been very fast with all the spyware and ad blocking features I was looking for in FF. I just had to disable all the crypto stuff first.
Firefox lost its momentum a while ago.
I lost trust in Firefox after Brendan Eich scandal and the way they treated him.
You lost trust when a guy Mozilla reluctantly hired had his hate for gay marriage become public knowledge?
It is in fact Waterfox for all the same reasons less unnecessary Mozilla trash
without that "mozilla trash" waterfox wouldn't exist
i prefer the Brave mobile app. I previously used firefox focus, but I basically just made brave into a focus app by turning on Private Browsing Only, but can also disable the functionality when needed.
On Android, maybe it is.
Nothing beats Safari UX on iOS, nothing.
You can hate the engine and lack of extensions, but Safari is the only thing that I can use with both hands seamlessly without breaking my fingers.
>Nothing beats Safari UX on iOS, nothing.
Nothing except for the ads you're forced to see that mobile firefox users don't even know exist, thanks to the full fat uBlock Origin.
There are numerous extensions for Safari in the app store that block ads the way uBlock does. You can also pair it with plain old DNS ad blocking too.
Not exactly in the same way, as Apple nerfed adblocking a few years ago. Works fine for most sites, but good luck blocking the more aggressive methods.
I use Firefox Focus as a content blocker within Safari.
Orion to the rescue
Orion (from Kagi) is a strong contender. It's not (yet) fully open-source, but Kagi has bona fides when it comes to privacy. Orion blocks trackers and ads by default, has no telemetry, and is designed to avoid sending any user data to its servers. Lower memory footprint and battery consumption (reportedly; citation needed). And it can run FF extensions.
Firefox on Android could maybe be the best, and I use it exclusively, but it's certainly not without its flaws:
- the confusing home screen comes up all the time after i leave the browser, while i just want to get back to the last tab
- try closing all private tabs, it then goes on to show the now empty list of private tabs, wtf? The point of closing the tabs was to get back to the regular tabs.
- for all i care a private tab can just be listed next to a normal tab, the grouping in private tabs serves no purpose, except for surfacing implementation details
- filtering bookmarks on tags doesn't work in any version AFAIK
- but it's the only way to listen to youtube, with ublock origin and Youtube audio_only
I have it set to open in private mode by default, and there's no easy way to then open that site in a new regular tab. Like if I get to a reddit link that I want to comment on, I have to copy the URL, then open a new public tab and open that URL (five touches). Why is there no "Open in normal tab" option?
Also, if I use "Add to home screen" to be able to get to a site quickly, there's no way to open that in a normal tab, making it useless for many things.
I wish we could get it on iOS too. Unfortunately, Apple is still difficult about alternative engines. Oh well.
the problem i have is i use google to manage all my passwords. i think i lose that if i switch to non chrome mobile
And what will you do if Google decides to disable your account?
Bitwarden is free, has clients and browser extensions for every platform, and it's easy to export your passwords and import them. Plus it supports SSH keys.
You should export them to a proper password manager.
they don't have an export function? I did that with lastpass -> bitwarden and it was a little bit of a hassle it wasn't too bad, just need to makes sure the exported cvs looked correct, no issues and didn't find anything wrong. I imagine it can go as smooth with chrome -> whatever
I think you can import them easily
I would hope that Firefox on mobile got finally better/usable.
I still remember this blog post, which at the the time (late 2021), was 100% accurate: https://web.archive.org/web/20230221123127/https://blog.nori...
Firefox is the best web browser
I am eccentric. Perhaps consequently, I am unable to understand how a conversation on the subject of Firefox as a mobile browser can exclude the inexplicable removal of about:config.
Yes, Nightly.
But I fear an example of incrementalism here, where it is brightly illustrated how the aperture into which we have the dongle of creeping suckage repeatedly inserted, lubricated by the existence (deterrent) of Chrome, continues to widen.
At the rate which options are disappearing (I think of gnome/gtk), when we excoriate the final and last one, a consummate advertisement platform will have been coded into our DNA, where we not just watch and listen to the perpetual groping of avarice, but feel it existentially.
The killer feature of Opera Mobile is that it displays desktop website with desktop-sized text, and when I zoom in, it adjusts the width of the text, so that text is legible no matter how much I zoom in. Do other browsers have something like that?
missed one amazing add-on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bypass_Paywalls_Clean
Mobile Firefox constantly gets bugged and stops rendering pages until you restart it. It also has issues with scrolling on some pages where it won't let you scroll sometimes. Github is notoriously bad, you can't read code if you can't scroll through the file. As a developer not being able to use Github is a deal breaker. The browser itself is also missing features like webgpu. While extentions are nice, the browser engine itself being this broken for years makes it a painful choice.
Yeah unfortunately I found it was noticeably slower and laggier than Chrome.
Does anyone make a Blink-based mobile browser that also blocks ads?
edge? brave? vivaldi? dolphin?
Which one of those has the least objectionable money-making conceit?
The browser with the best content blocking options is the best browser and at this moment that means Firefox ends up on top. Now that Mozilla is slow-walking towards doing ad-related things themselves I'm no longer running the branded versions but choose F-Droid's Fennec instead. If ever a browser with better content blocking shows up I'll give it a good look and might switch if it turns out to be at least on the same level as Firefox/Fennec.
That's telling for the state of the web but alas, that's where we are. You give them an inch (-high banner ad) and they'll take a mile (-wide page-covering all-encompassing data-slurping javascript monstrosity).
Other recommended Firefox extensions:
- Dark Reader (force dark mode on websites that don't have it, like Hacker News)
- Unhook (remove various addictive or annoying elements from YouTube.com)
The one issue is that on iOS Apple forces all browsers to use Safari behind the scenes. And you can’t do extensions.
You’ve been able to add real web extensions to Safari on iOS for at least three years. Third party Ad blocking has been available for over a decade.
Yeah, the extension thing is the real killer on my iPad, I need to decide between adblock or syncing to my Windows, Android, Linux, etc. devices.
I think that’s not true for EU devices? Not sure if there are any browsers with an alternative engine are actually available though.
https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engi...
As long as you pass Apple's arbitrary rules, you can make your own browser for iOS. Ladybug uses Apple's test suite as an arbitrary measure of completeness.
However, no browser engine has bothered so far because they'd need to upload a separate app to the app store specifically for EU users, and non-EU developers cannot debug the application on a real device so manpower is region-restricted unless you hack around the limitations.
> As long as you pass Apple's arbitrary rules, you can make your own browser for iOS. Ladybug uses Apple's test suite as an arbitrary measure of completeness.
The browser is called Ladybird and it isn’t Apple’s test suite, web-platform-tests is a collective effort all the major players contribute to. Almost two thousand people have contributed to it:
https://github.com/web-platform-tests/wpt/graphs/contributor...
Kind of. But Apple makes it so hard to develop an engine for EU devices, that no browser makers are currently willing to do it.
Safari does support ad blocking extensions.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wipr-2/id1662217862
right, also brave and kagi and vivaldi all have blocking built in. Adguard and wipr work pretty well for stock safari.