Finally migrated back to Firefox today after a multi year user of Chrome.
What pushed me over the edge? Most of my app icons (keep, pulse, calender, whatsapp) stopped opening in their own windows again.
I had to install the PWA extension in Firefox to get that working again, and it’s going to be a slight hassle having to copy and paste URLs from all those windows, but I’m tired of fixing the task bar icons.
Could’ve gone to Edge since it would work out of the box, but I like Firefox. (except for no native PWA support.)
Edit: found I can right click links in the PWA instances and use the send to other device option to open them in my main Firefox window.
The lack of any ad blockers on mobile chrome is what personally made me switch.
Trying to read basically any news article on your phone without an ad blocker is a nearly impossible task these days.
The lack of any ad blockers on mobile chrome is
what personally made me switchwhy I’ll never switch, unless I have a gun pointed at my head.Are you certain risking death isn’t preferable? I heard Firefox also teaches you krav maga if needed.
@deersindal I have a paid lifetime subscription to Adguard, so ads aren’t a thing on my phone at all, for pretty much any app.
Same here. I’ve never had an issue with Adguard or any reason not to trust it but because it’s a small Russian company dealing with encryption I don’t feel comfortable openly recommending it. I personally think it’s great and run it everywhere.
@MaxHardwood TIL. Never thought about where Adguard is written.
NextDNS has been working fine for me and it’s free.
You can use adblock with chrome on android too.
Go to settings > privacy and security > use secure dns > and enter custom dns provider from adguard or nextdns or whatever you like.
Adguard
https://dns.adguard-dns.com/dns-query
Nextdns
I switched back to Firefox about a week ago too. Mostly because Lemmy is a whore for it.
what a fox ;)
Same for me!
Same. Only thing I miss is being able to set a predefined selection of websites to open at start. As far as I can tell, the current version only has the option to reopen tabs from last session.
Yeah. And I know this is probably bad, but I loved google’s default page with news and trending links. I find it super useful and relevant.
Oh man time for my little rant. Long time Firefox supporter and still use it on desktop, but I had to uninstall on Android. It reloads the tab every time I switch out and back to it. It just kills me. Especially since I pay for Kagi search, and it’s nearly doubling my search count by reloadng all the damn time. So now I’m using Privacy Browser on Android, and it’s great, bit I’d rather be on Firefox. There are threads asking for a fix from years ago and it’s still a problem
I didn’t know that Firefox for android will reload tab. That’s why my voyager app keep reloading some images.
Anyway, for the time being, my immediate solution is to install ‘Stop Auto Reload’ addon (possible by using Firefox nightly custom add on collection). Still early to tell but so far it doesn’t reload the images.
Thanks for the tip! I might give that a go
Does Kagi give better results than Google? If so, how consistently?
Honestly, it’s hard to say. I’m using it partly on principle as part of degoogling. I will say it’s ahead of all the other alternatives I’ve tried (DDG, Qwant, Startpage, Mojeek etc).
You don’t get Google suggestions and that’s moslty a good thing IMO although I sometimes miss getting a currency conversion or dictionary item answered without having to visit a site. Generally the results are as good as Google but Wikipedia or something is more likely to be top rather than buried under some spammy results.
You can try 100 searches or something for free, give it a go
It has currency conversion, but it expects specific format
Nice, thanks!
IIRC Startpage is just an alternative frontend for Google, so it being better than Startpage would make it better than Google.
i’ve been having issues with autofilling credentials from saved passwords on firefox android
This is well known problem, you need to restart the phone itself or kill the services… I don’t know why they haven’t fix this yet for such long time
Definitely doesn’t happen for me, that’s annoying.
Does Firefox focus face the same issue?
Yeah, I’m still putting up with Firefox here—it affected both my devices, a Nokia 7 plus with stock Android and a MIUI device with all the RAM/battery optimizations turned off for the app. I think at this point its entirely a Firefox issue.
I find DuckDuckGo for Android is a decent option, albeit chromium based.
News Flash:
Every single browser for Android has Chromium under the hood… Including Firefox.
For that reason alone is why I’m using Samsung Internet with AdGuard Content Blocker on my Galaxy A series.
Uhh that’s not true? Firefox for Android is Gecko based and doesn’t use chromium.
Maybe you’re confused with iPhones? Firefox for IOS is WebKit based, because that’s what apple mandates. That’s why it doesn’t support extensions. But on android there’s no such restrictions.
No. I’m not sure where you’ve gotten your information from, but that is incorrect. Firefox on my Android phone shows that it’s the Gecko engine:
Like the other commenter mentioned, you’re probably thinking of iOS where every browser is WebKit under the hood.
Firefox is open source, so if you still feel that you are correct in your assumption, and you can view it here - there is no Chromium code. Also, chrome specific URLs don’t work (eg
chrome://flags) which would be in a Chromium based browser such as Brave.Where did you get that misinformation from? I think you may be confusing Android for iOS where all iOS browsers are using WebKit - Safari’s engine. That is about to change though.
Weirdly I haven’t had this issue much yet. I have had issued where the tab would kinda / break in sense that the tab would become useless and nothing can be done (eg. It will just show blank or some other tabs content)
Maybe try whitelisting Firefox from battery optimisation. It should help as some OEMs do aggressive background kill for apps.
Yeah I tried that but no luck. I’ve seen suggesions it relates to RAM management but there’s no settings available for that.
Which brand is your device from? Maybe I could find something useful.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro. Ive tried disabling battery optimisation, enabling autostart. Xiaomi phones are known to be aggressive with optimising, but every Chromium based browser is fine - Chrome, Vivaldi, Brave, and what im using now which is Privacy Browser. So I do think there’s sonething about Firefox in particular
Ohh. I never had this problem when I was using MIUI. IDK how it works.
For me, it not only reloads every time, but it reloads from cache, meaning I have to manually reload again to get the latest version of the page I was on. And the first reload from cache is slower, not sure how that makes sense.
Good. Let’s all enjoy Firefox while we can, before WEI becomes mandatory for all top 500 web sites.
Good decision! :) Yay for one more user!
Welcome back!
There were points at which Firefox was difficult to stick with, especially after the extension apocalypse, but I think it’s evolving pretty well at this point.
I migrated to Firefox last week both pc and mobile. The android version is not as fast as other chromium based browsers but the ability to install any add-on is a must for me, browsing the web without my essential extensions is impossible for me.
I previously used kiwi browser that supports extensions but i found they were buggy sometimes, specially static filters in ublock origin.
uBO has all you need, ClearURLs is not needed. Use these filter lists instead:
Also, Badger does the same as uBO, therefore you don’t need it. The same thing goes for cookies. Use default Annoyances lists (Adguard + EasyList) and add that:
You have a new list in uBO for the cookies banner.
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Thank you for your lists, mind if i ask you where do you find this kind of info?
I am not sure if I got the question? I have been using uBO from the beginning and can clearly remember as year after year uBO was able to replace more and more extensions. Furthermore, I think (assume) that addon you are using has something to do with JavaScript and thus may be replaced with uBO. But you either know how to write the rules or know the list with those rules. Personally, I made a personal list for everything I need yet is not founded anywhere within available lists.
I highly recomend you to read the uBO documentation. It has all you may need to understand it better: uBlock Origin Wiki
What should have pushed you over the edge is that one is open source and the other isn’t. You do not control what Chrome does
Not many of us control what Firefox does, either… 🤷
Signed, a long time Firefox zealot
I switched back to Firefox about a year ago after wandering the wastes of Chromium land. I love it!
I still use Ungoogled Chromium for work with the same extensions that i use in Firefox.
I know firefox has profiles, but firewalling work from personal stuff in Firefox is tedious, whereas i can use Velja (or similar) to target URL patterns to particular browsers.
I’m personally using Firefox multi-account containers. It’s way better than switching to profiles.
I have for example one container type for work and for specific URL i even made it so they are always opened in this containers. It’s really useful as cookies are separated.
I’m coupling it with Simple Tab Groups where I can group tabs together based on criterias (For example all tabs running in my “work” container). At the beginning of my work day I switch to my “work” group and all my tabs on my window are work related and at the end I switch back to my “personal” group with my usual tabs.
It’s a bit more work but lets me be completely chromium free :)
Interesting. I do that for social media apps, etc. But i also want to keep my work bookmarks isolated from my personal ones. Not sure how to do that within one profile even with containers.
I ditched Gmail and chrome last year after a long ride. Feels great to be back.
What did you switch to from gmail?
Migrated my own domain email to Proton.
If you’d like to see the pros/cons of different email providers, here’s a link for the best privacy-friendly options :)
I did the same a while back. Youtube with ublock origin is awesome!
Genuinely curious, and I intend to switch back in the near future, but I’ve also been using chrome for years now with uBlock and YouTube has remained ad-less to this day. Has something changed recently?
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I would block Google on dns level at home if my kid and partner didn’t use it for work. Google is so shitty.
Right, but wouldn’t that mean Firefox+uBlock would also stop working for YouTube as well?
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What a time to be alive eh?
Yeah, haha, the days of monopolistic companies taking away your options and forcing you into a paid pigeon hole. We’re sliding down the slope and picking up speed.
Ha, yes that’s what I was concerned about. FF still definitely a better option. Thanks for the explanation!
welcome back.
it’s going to be a slight hassle having to copy and paste URLs from all those windows,
You might find something on the Chrome addon store that allows you copy tabs urls, similar, but not quite as good as
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/copy-tabs/ and you can import/open them with https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-tabs-from-clipboard/Hope it helps.
Welcome back!
welcome back. not all but most of us had moment in time when something was trigger to return back to firefox, making it the new browsing-home and enjoying it since.
Which extension?
Edge did the same shit tome a few times btw. It’s chrome with a different paint job.
