Technology

If you're on Android, using Firefox + ublock origin (or some other browser with AdBlock) is game-changing.

Continuing to use, say, Chrome, makes almost zero sense.

Google threatening to take away the ad blockers was enough to make me go back to Firefox.

Manifest V3, Web Environment Integrity, YouTube's recent war on ad blockers.

The main issue is that now people just test their shit against Chrome. Maybe Safari if they're feeling generous. There's a few bits in Firefox Android where things just work a little bit less smoothly than they do in Chrome, and needing extra presses to work in FF. Not sure why, maybe Chrome is making clickable targets that little bit bigger or something.

i used opera on mobile and opera GX on my PC. switched back because of security and privacy concerns. i did not miss any major features, firefox really has become the best browser.

People are becoming more conscious of stuff plenty of us have been aware for quite some time already. The idea that a browser made by a corporation who harvests your data for the purpose of advertising doesn't give a shit about privacy and will try to block adblockers is not something some people weren't expecting - but normies are getting this shoved in their face with YouTube giving them the anti-adblock notification.

Firefox (and it's clones) is basically the only other choice - all the other (major) browsers (that aren't Safari) are based on Chromium, which is developed by Google.

For me it was performance. Google Chrome consistently couldn't handle the tab loads I would put on it after around 2022, despite my computer not really showing signs of degradation.

Since switching to FF, I can run the same amount of tabs with almost not hiccups or stuttering - what I'd experience with Chrome. Hell, Chrome would crash randomly and I'd lose all my tabs and would have to reload them.

Plus, sometimes to fix Chrome's poor performance I'd shut the program down entirely, upon re-launch the browser wouldn't even remember all of the tabs/windows I just closed (it used to). So, if I was doing research on something, Chrome would just not open certain windows back up after a hard reset, even if I CTRL + SHIFT + T and I check history. Madly infuriating.

FF opens all windows and tabs upon hard reset, no questions asked. Plus, the compatibility between PC and mobile is awesome: I can load up a tab from my phone that's on my PC super easily, which makes things useful for when I want to share web content with friends or family.

I seem to have woken up from my slumber of tolerating Chrome, and chose a better service instead.

The only problem I have with it is that it has no amoled dark theme. Still my default browser though.

Minor gripe but the scrolling feels so bad on desktop imo

The site owners have different values and notices than any one writer or journalist. The problem with ads is they became too intrusive. So ad blockers block all, including on respectful websites. It's better for consumers to block all, but journalism does with no revenue and most don't want to pay. We don't yet have a middle ground.

androidpolice have had lots of articles about ad blocking and picking the best one etc.

Then they won't let anyone view the site when they follow that advice...

There are also Firefox forks, but you have to install apk manually and then extension are easy to download without developer collection

https://www.androidpolice.com/install-add-on-extension-mozilla-firefox-android/

The option to install any extension has always been possible it's just a tad more work to get setup.

I did this ages ago, I just add the extensions I want to the list and then they appear to let me install them

about:config being available at all for regular Firefox for Android would be nice

Use Fennec F-droid, works fine there

uBlock Origin has cookie/popups filters that you can enable in its settings that work pretty well

YT on Firefox Mobile has the added benefit of letting you swap to desktop mode and play videos with the screen off, no YT Premium needed ;)

Been doing this for years, but if too much of a hack for you, NewPipe also supports background video, and downloading video, or just the audio, which is great if you have a lot of long form audio-focused channels like music reviews, videoessay content, etc.

This, that is the only feature I miss from mobile chromium browsers, but the addition of anyways dark mode with dark reader is outweighing it a little bit

yes! I was shocked that was not a feature when I migrated over on mobile.

fr. I hope Firefox would also allow iOS users to install extensions. It's definitely possible since Orion browser, a browser made by Kagi supports both chrome and firefox extensions on their iOS app (I'm not promoting it at all btw).

also at least on my Android tablet, the tabs are hidden behind a button (like on a phone) rather than being displayed in a bar (like on a desktop), even though at least in landscape mode there would be enough space for the latter. This too should be fixed or configurable.

This is extremely annoying, and it's been a documented enhancement request from the community for years. What's even more confusing is that it's only a problem on Android -- it works properly on all desktop environments and iOS. I have no idea why they won't fix it for Android.