this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
39 points (83.1% liked)

Technology

59288 readers
6184 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

What is the best version of Firefox that I can use it in android based on security and privacy.

all 25 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] eruchitanda@lemmy.world 78 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] glorious_puffy@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For security and privacy use mull it is a fork of Firefox and has very good tracking protection out of the box

[–] Porka_911@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you for sharing. Was not aware of this 👍

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Mull is mainly backporting Tor Uplift Features onto Firefox ESR. If you're not in need of extreme privacy protection you're better off with regular Firefox because it's updated more often and comes with very good privacy protections as well. You'll need to add uBlock Origin to both of them in any case.

[–] sic_semper_tyrannis@feddit.ch 4 points 1 year ago

Mull updates to the latest version of FF within a few days always

[–] Teknikal@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago

I going to say mull because it's a hardened version.

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I use both regular Firefox and Firefox Focus. Focus is basically what incognito window is on PC, when you close it everything is gone. By not choosing either of them as the default browser I can open links in one or the other as needed.

Focus opens faster because it's lighter but doesn't have reader mode and you can't open tabs manually. It's mostly for opening quick links that you don't want to poiute your main browser with cookies.

For a while Firefox tried to offer the ability to choose whether open links normally or in incognito tabs but it never worked well. Not sure if it's an Android limitation or what.

[–] 0xD@infosec.pub 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I had Firefox Focus but it started going on my nerves because it has no proper ad blocking. Since then I just set up standard Firefox to open everything in an incognito tab and I just switch to a permanent one for important stuff.

Am on Android 14 (started this with 12) and never had any issues with the URL loading in the proper tab.

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Am on Android 14 (started this with 12) and never had any issues with the URL loading in the proper tab.

Can your Firefox offer you the choice to open the link in either a normal tab or incognito? On my phone you pick one or the other in settings and always opens links in that type of tab. But I'm still on Android 11 for the moment so maybe that has something to do with it.

[–] qfjp@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Different commenter, but I'm on android 13 and private browsing works just fine for me. Private links are kept in a separate 'group' from normal tabs, and you're given the option to choose if you long press on a link.

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Do you mean you're given a choice in Firefox or in other apps? I meant being presented with a private/regular mode choice when opening from other apps, like sharing a link or using "open in browser". That's mainly what I use Focus for, because Firefox alone will only do one or the other (as per preference setting).

[–] qfjp@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you mean you're given a choice in Firefox or in other apps? I meant being presented with a private/regular mode choice when opening from other apps, like sharing a link or using "open in browser".

Oh I see, I'm talking about where everything is in firefox, though if you mean just on the regular context menu of any link I don't see that for chrome either. In fact it looks like the only way to do it in either browser is what you said: choose in the settings to either have plain tabs or private by default. Now I'm curious how you managed to do it in other browsers.

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The only one where it worked was I think the old Opera of years ago before it was bought out.

Nowadays I just keep both Firefox and Focus.

[–] qfjp@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ah, that makes sense. I still miss the text reflow that browser had, but I've long given up on finding a replacement for it.

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 1 points 1 year ago

Omg yes, it took me so long to give up on it, because of the text reflow. 😅 But then Firefox introduced reader mode and it helps a lot. I had forgotten all about reflow until you mentioned it.

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Fennec (available on fdroid) removes the already minimal tracking features in Firefox and is just as secure.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 year ago

Mull but that's only Firefox based.

If you want Firefox go with the official up to date version from your app store

[–] Candybar121@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

IMO firefox nightly, because it lets me run desktop extensions

[–] Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

IIRC Fennec (on F-Droid) also does this while sticking close to Stable otherwise (updates lag a few days behind usually).

[–] jacktherippah@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Mull is the best Firefox fork on Android. Vanilla Firefox has trackers and telemetry by default and very little protection against fingerprinting.

See: DivestOS browser table for more info

[–] popemichael@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Firefox "Nightly" build is the best if you want total freedom of addons, scripting, etc.

I love it because I can use "desktop only" addons like SponsorBlock, which blocks sponsors (Norton, clash of clans, etc) automatically and Enhancer for YouTube, which lets you do anything from changing fonts to blocking end cards.

Not only that it lets you use YouTube even if your phone is locked, which is a highly sought after premium feature.

[–] kratoz29@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use Firefox Beta because it has extension supports, and I haven't found critical bugs.

[–] StopSpazzing@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Beta... That defeats the point of security portion of the question.