Is Iceraven the better Firefox for Android mobile browser?
About two years ago, Mozilla revealed plans to replace the then-current version of its Firefox web browser for Android with a redesigned browser. The new browser would offer better performance and web compatibility according to Mozilla because of its new framework that it was based on.
It was called Firefox Preview during development and migration from the classic version of Firefox for Android to the new Firefox for Android started in early 2020.
While the new Firefox's performance and web compatibility was indeed better, Mozilla made a few design decisions that affected part of the old browser's userbase. The first was that the new Firefox supported only a limited number of add-ons. Mozilla picked add-ons from its recommended extensions program, including crowd-favorites such as uBlock Origin.
Users who installed other add-ons in Firefox could not get these to run in the Android version anymore. The Stable version offers up to this day no option to install all add-ons that are available. Mozilla did introduce full add-ons support in Nightly, a development version of Firefox, but handling was complicated.
Another feature that Mozilla removed from the stable version of Firefox was support for about:config. This angered users who used about:config to make configuration changes.
Iceraven
Iceraven is an open source fork of the new Firefox web browser for Android. It is based on the stable version of the browser and most features are identical to that of Firefox.
There are two core differences between the two browsers, and these address both issues described above. When you use Iceraven, you may access about:config just like before. The feature works just like before: type about:config in the address bar of the browser and you get the list of available parameters that you may modify to your liking.
The second difference improves support for add-ons. Iceraven supports more add-ons; not all of them, because the system requires the use of a custom collection, but the list is much longer. Users may request the inclusion of add-ons if one is missing.
Not all of these will work, one of the main reasons why Mozilla disabled support for installing all add-ons in Firefox Stable for Android. Some won't work because they may use desktop specific features, others won't work because Firefox for Android lacks support for certain features, still.
The main downside to using Iceraven is that there are no "warranties or guarantees of security or updates or even stability". While it worked fine during extended tests, users may run into issues using the browser.
Closing Words
Iceraven's support for about:config and more add-ons may be reason enough for Firefox users to give it a try. Installation of Firefox Nightly for Android is an alternative, as it supports these two options as well; you only have to create your own add-ons collection and integrate it in the browser to extend support for extensions in the mobile browser.
Since both are considered experimental, it may come down to which browser works better for your use cases. Iceraven is based on Firefox Stable, but it includes modifications that may affect stability.
Now You: have you tried Iceraven? Which browser do you use on Android?
thanks you saved my 1000 tabs :)
Fantastic! Thank you! This worked like a charm. Had exactly the same issue in Firefox on a PC and this fixed it.
Thank you for sharing this! Like you, I’d noticed that disabling/re-enabling the extension would work for that browser session, but I hadn’t tried anything yet to force a fix. I’m SO glad it was this easy!
I sure hope the OneTab team issues an official fix ASAP, though. Now that it’s been a few days, they’re starting to get bad reviews, which is unfortunate.
Yes! I also tried the workaround. I also reported this bug to OneTab team on the first day I faced this issue.
Thanks, Ashwin for the fix!
I was nearing desperation when I found your direction. It worked.
Thank you so much.
Hi, OneTab developer here. Sorry for this – it’s not clear why this bug is suddenly happening for some people, but we’re urgently investigating this with the Mozilla/Firefox team and will be providing a fix very shortly.
Thank you so much for sharing this fix! You saved my tabs. The only note/point I would like to add is for Step 2.
Perhaps put a note stating they should copy Step 3 and forward of your tutorial to Word. Once we close Firefox, we lose visibility to your tutorial. For me, I know I would not be able to remember the .bkp.
Again, thank you!
Easy temporary fix: To make OneTab work again, type “about:addons” in your Firefox address bar. Then find OneTab in the list of extensions, and click the blue toggle button twice. This will disable and then re-enable OneTab, and cause it to work again.
We’re working with Mozilla for a permanent fix. Sorry for the inconvenience, this is a very strange issue that is only affecting the Firefox version of OneTab.
I have found by disabling and then re-enable in the add on menu I get my tab back. Short term fix. Will try yours.
Thank you. I thought I had lost a month of digging. I’ll be a little more attentive about exporting the urls from the extension list now. It’s a great tool but Firefox doesn’t always play nice with its extensions.
Good news – I’ve been working with Mozilla all morning to resolve this. Mozilla have confirmed it was due to a bug in Firefox (related to extension permissions downgrades).
To fix OneTab, just go to “about:addons” in your Firefox address bar, click the ‘cog’ icon in the top right, and click ‘Check for updates’. This will upgrade you to OneTab v1.39, which fixes the issue.
Darn, I tried everything here and I still can’t get my tabs back. I even did a full system restore to a point last week hoping that my saved tabs would be in the old .xpi file, but no luck.
I’m pretty disappointed :(
Probably I should’ve been more patient, but now I don’t know how to feel about this. I lost about 900 tabs in the recovery process (I reinstalled OneTab), which, incredible as it sounds, weren’t all just a messy dump I’m never going back to, but actually important stuff (yeah, I have a peculiar workflow).
Trying to suppress the anger and reflecting on what happened, it seems I should blame myself for not having a backup. But surely I couldn’t back it up manually every time I save a tab, it would defy all purpose of having this addon in the first place. A couple of years ago data was stored at “~/.mozilla/firefox/%PROFILE%/jetpack/[email protected]/simple-storage”, and you could back it up with simple crontab. This is no longer the case, this folder is just empty. And since OneTab is closed-source black box, I couldn’t have done anything else as well.
So the only reasonable lesson to be learned is that I actually must stop relying on OneTab, since sooner or later it will let me down again. Fuck it.
I just disable and re-enable. No tabs lost!
I switched from OneTab to Tab Stash (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-stash/) months ago and haven’t looked back. I had never experienced any data loss with OneTab, although I was a bit concerned by some reports of data loss I read about. My main issue was with OneTabs performance, it’s a hog. I had been looking for a replacement and testing out a ton of addons for a couple of months when I finally discovered Tab Stash, and am damn glad I did. I really can’t recommend it strongly enough…
Thanks, bsdaddict. Never tried it, looks nice, but I’m a bit concerned by small number of stashed tabs on these screenshots, not sure if it’d be usable when stashing a lot of tabs. How many tabs do you usually have stashed?
Tab Stash is is a great alternative to One Tab, y’all… I made the switch months ago and am very happy with it.
>DO THIS FIRST: Before trying the following fix, I recommend disabling OneTab and re-enabling it from the about:addons page, to access and regain your tabs.
Worked for me! Many, many thanks!
I know it’s late but ist there an option for chrome on android tablets aswell? My wife hates it that the search bar and Tab list will just come Up again when she Scrolls up