Firefox for Android now supports over 450 add-ons
A few weeks ago, Mozilla had announced that it would soon support Open Extensions on Firefox for Android. The good news is that the waiting period is over, the mobile browser now supports over 450 add-ons.
While Firefox has supported extensions on Android devices for a long time, the experience has thus far been somewhat underwhelming, because it only allowed you to choose from among 2 dozen add-ons. Basically, this was a curated experience of add-ons hand-picked by Mozilla. There was a workaround for the Nightly and Beta channel versions of Firefox, you could create a custom add-on collection, which would allow you to install any extension that you liked. But the steps were a bit complicated, and also required a Mozilla account, which many users may not be comfortable with. Users had been requesting the browser maker to open up its ecosystem to support more extensions, which is exactly what it has done.
Open Extensions, as Mozilla terms them in its announcement, have been available in Firefox for Android Nightly and Beta channels for a while. Now, the extensions are available in the stable version of Firefox for Android.
In order to install the extensions on your mobile phone, update Firefox for Android to the latest version from the Google Play Store or get the APK for Firefox 120.1.1 from Mozilla's servers.
Once you have updated the app, you can browse the official Firefox for Android add-ons repository at this page.
Note: Tap on "see more trending extensions" to browse the full catalog of extensions.
It currently supports 491 extensions for mobile devices, and the list will likely grow larger in the future. Get an ad blocker like uBlock Origin, Sponsorblock and you will be able to watch videos on YouTube without being bothered by ads, or Google's anti-ad block prompts. Want to translate web pages quickly? You may find Simple Translate useful. Here are some notable add-ons that you can install now: I still don't care about cookies, OneTab, Old Reddit Redirect, SteamDB, Group Speed Dial, etc.
You can tell whether an add-on will work with the mobile browser, if the extension's page has a label that says "Available on Firefox for Android". One Reddit user pointed out that not all extensions that have been marked as available for Firefox for Android, are actually showing up on the mobile add-ons repository. They quoted Consent-O-Matic as an example, though it's worth noting that the add-on has not been updated since February.
Another user mentioned that you can actually install add-ons that are not yet marked as compatible with Android. In this case, you will need to visit an extension's page, tap on the browser's menu and switch to the desktop page view. This will let you install the extension on Firefox for Android. But, it is possible that such extensions may not work properly because they were not designed for the mobile browser, YMMV.
Adding support for hundreds of extensions could convince users to switch over from other browsers to Firefox for Android. It's a shame that Firefox on iOS won't get support add-ons, but you can thank Apple and its ridiculous walled-garden for that, because it forces browser makers to make their app using WebKit, instead of custom browser engines such as Google Chromium's Blink or Mozilla Firefox's Gecko. This could change in the future.
What are your favorite add-ons on Firefox for Android?
I wonder how many Android users have installed UBO. On the Android addons page Ashwin linked to it says there are 7,389,315, But go to the addons page for Windows and the number of users is exactly the same. Same goes for all the other addons.
I doubt that making addons available on Android will make much difference somehow. When I’m travelling on the metro and observe all the phone junkies doing their thing they’re not using Firefox or any other browser, but rather some chat app like Instagram, Facebook or Whatsapp. Browsing the web doesn’t seem to be their thing.
now the only thing missing is bring back the tab bar
…and import & export bookmarks to local filesystem, without sync/cloud
Wonderful news. Powerful addons is what makes Firefox special.
The worst nonexistent feature of Firefox android is and has been the ability to export/import/backup bookmarks. Sure there are non-firefox methods on rooted devices but otherwise? Given the half-life of phones this is a huge failure of Mozilla. Wish a clever Firefox Dev would devise a remedy. Might be the most popular add-on of all time.
+1
Useless post.
Said the pot to the kettle.
I think this is going to be a game-changer for me. The ability to use extensions like uBlock Origin and to be able to block cookie notifications mean that I’m going to end up opening sites in the Firefox browser rather than their dedicated apps, which seems somehow wrong!!!
Why is it wrong? It’s daft to have apps for everything. I’d much rather use Firefox.
Now if only they’d fix the incessant crashing and page hanging issues.
@ DComedian,
I can’t seem to load UBO’s dashboard settings menu. The URL bar reads “moz-extension:// (followed by an alphanumeric string) and then /dashboard.html, but the page remains blank. There’s also a diagonal red stripe through the padlock and pressing that shows the message “Connection is not secure”. Here’s a pix of it: https://i.postimg.cc/X7dGKBMV/UBO-not-secure.jpg
Do you see that as well?
There are lots of APIs and functions that are not available in Android version.
Similar with Kiwi Browser, some, very few things don’t work, but settings and even element picker do
I use mobile internet sparingly. My phone is not really advanced and quite old, and I use it to check news, email and messages, calculate road trips and watch short YouTube clips while I am on the bus or in the car. So anything new except for most lean browser with great native ad blocker won’t do.
For now, I am still using Brave/AdGuard combo and added NewPipe. With Firefox with no extensions as backup.
Why post this? The news triggered you maybe?
Great news. Firefox is more important than ever. Chromium needs to die!
It is decent and I am using it now more than I use Cromite. I only use uBlock Origin extension and the browser seems to not have the lag on accessing websites that it used to have.
Wonderful news!!!
Mozilla is on the right track again!
I would still be mostly happy were uBO the only extension available…….
I tried the Windscribe extension in the updated Iceraven (updated Fenix base) but it didn’t work properly, sadly
I recall on another addon page, possibly Tamper monkey, that the developer had to update the addon to reload the background page or script every 30 seconds to work on Android – I suspect Windscribe not working was related to this.
Extensions are made with Desktop in mind. Let’s be honest, nobody needs extensions in Android, unless adblocker, everything else should be offered by the Browser to avoid more battery and resources being used in Extensions.
That’s why Chromium doesn’t have extensions, Google says it is because of performance and battery life, because something available doesn’t equal to it will work fine when it was built for a different platform and nothing was thought for ‘mobile’ and its limitations.
> Google says it is because of performance and battery life
Lmao, how without extensions aka without adblock result in better performance and battery, Google has a good record of lying to users, especially end-users because they are noobs anyway, thus lie or truth are the same to them.
I am using same set of extension that I am using on firefox and brave on desktop in kiwi browser on mobile for many years. Did not find any issue with performance or battery life difference in mobile. on the contrary using ublock origins give me better performance in mobile then chrome.
If google is saying something without any evidence will you believe it? it is just an excuse to show you ads and harvest your data by google.
This article prompted me to look up Firefox’s market share and according to Statcounter it reached a disastrous 3% (all platforms) and 0.5% on mobile. Not even one percent.
I remember it was at around 35% before Chrome came out (and at like 60% in a few countries like Germany).
All this time they’ve been removing features, both on desktop and mobile (it had full addon support on mobile at some point, then removed it).
When they removed XUL extension support on desktop, the most powerful addon system of any browser, everyone told them this was a bad idea and they didn’t care.
It’s like some execs purposefully wanted to run Firefox into the ground since Chrome came out, and by golly they’ve succeded.
and how this is relevant to the article? Nobody care.
Very nice! I will look into this. It would be nice to have a follow-up article (or even more, please).
Maybe even articles about which O.S. (Think Apple, Android, Linux maybe even.) which app will be useful and possible, with certain releases, etc.
Possibility to connect from phone to desktop/laptop (all o.s.).
Maybe even comments/articles about screen estate possibilities with certain apps?
And there is much more to discuss, the list is almost endless.
Chameleon is a good extension to reduce browser fingerprinting, which is super useful when Firefox on Android does not have about:config support, and resistFingerprinting through forks slows the refresh rate to 60Hz.
Firefox nightly has about:config and you can change those settings there :)
Amazing that FF 120 will still install on Android 5.0 a.k.a. Lollipop which was released in 2014 and yet Windows 8.1 which was officially supported until January 2023 only qualifies for FF ESR 115.x
My phone has Android 7.1.1 a.k.a. Nougat and I’ve just installed a number of addons without a hitch.
Why must you make me sad, I am 4.4.2 KitKat and cannot get latest Firefox, although my ver of firefox is the most modern web browser on my phone out of all the others. So it’s impressive none the less.