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Comment by tombrossman | Hacker News Reader

Slightly off-topic but does anyone know the status of the "Send Tab to Device" function? It is my favorite feature on Firefox for Android and it has disappeared. Not the first time this happened, either. Are they randomly adding and then removing support for this? I'm definitely not the only one affected: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1087138.

I can visit the desktop version of Mozilla's add-ons site and see an extension which supposedly does this, but the 'add to Firefox' button is disabled if I visit the same link on my mobile. Bizarre.

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I have the same functionality under Menu button (the three dots) - Share - Send to other devices (with a Firefox icon). When I press that I get a list of devices connected using Firefox sync and can send the tab to my computer.

If I share a URL from other apps, like Chrome, there's an "Add to Firefox" option available also.

Using Firefox 48.0 on Android, it auto updates so it should be the latest version.

Can't you automatically get the same with Firefox Sync? And indeed, it seems to me the UI has changed recently. Anyway, if you have sync enabled on both desktop and device, you can see the other sync'd devices open tabs (if enabled, what you sync is configurable). From the desktop is from the hamburger menu, "Synced Tabs" icon. From Android, you now need to go to the history pane. The first line is "Synced Devices", press this to see other tabs and open any ones as needed. So instead of explicitly selecting to send a tab to a device, just wait or force a sync (on Android: from the Settings sync page) if in a rush.

It's a bit of a crude workaround but that might work. My use-case is that I frequently browse to a site on my mobile and want to view it later on my desktop machine. I could do that with a couple clicks easily before. Now I will have to keep a bunch of tabs open on my mobile and remember to manually go and check for them when I'm back on the desktop.

Just one example, I would browse through my Twitter feed before going to sleep. Any interesting links from Twitter were sent to the desktop machine from the mobile. In the morning, I would start Firefox on the desktop and a bunch of new tabs would automatically pop open, which was great.

If you don't find it then consider Pushbullet, which has similar but improved functionality.

Just checked the Pushbullet site intending to see if they support Linux and to review their privacy policies. "Sign in with Google" or "Sign in with Facebook" are the only options on their sign in page. It does look like a cool service but not at all aligned with my privacy and open-source concerns. Thanks anyway.

Blergh, sorry. I could have sworn they had an e-mail option. Sign in with Google does allow mirror of alerts (texts, hangouts, etc) from your Android device to others but if that's not in your comfort zone so be it.

I worked on bringing this feature to desktop this summer and making it faster with the Push API. The desktop UI is still behind a nightly-only flag. I'll be happy to answer any question!

Probably referencing this:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1297454

It seems to work on iOS...

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