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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

I got super excited until I realized this was only for Android.

An actual firefox for iOS is disallowed from by the app-store rules.

I know. That’s why I was excited. I thought they found a workaround.

Even if they find a technical workaround, Apple will just reject the app though. Not sure there is a workaround for that.

I believe jailbreak or those other "developer" methods (certificates/enterprise?) are still available.

Yeah, both of them will see mozilla kicked out of App Store

I'm given to understand that it's not even a technical issue; you can build an iOS app that uses a real browser engine of your choice, it's always just been that Apple by policy won't let you publish it. (This is all second-hand, though, so take with a grain of salt.)

Does iOS allow creating new executable pages?

Nope. (Well, maybe iOS would allow it with the correct entitlements but apple won’t let you publish an app that can.)

You can run a browser in an interpreter but anything modern would be very unpleasant to use that way.

I expect there are 2 options: Either you can make a good (fast) browser without it (unlikely or everyone would do it), or it is possible to do because Safari has to work somehow.

> apple won’t let you publish an app that can

Agreed, but we're talking about whether you can technically make such an app, say to run in dev mode on your own personal device.

Safari might be special cased though.

Dev mode is still limited and doesn't grant root access to the device. In dev mode there's still an app certificate, and Apple still signs it, and still prohibits escaping the app sandbox. There are also JIT specific entitlements to allow an app to dynamically load or generate code. Without those, it's unclear how feasible a developer-signed version of Firefox on iOS is.

https://siguza.github.io/psychicpaper/ is a recent writeup that includes more details on (escaping) the limitations.

> it is possible to do because Safari has to work somehow.

Safari is a special case. It is allowed to use JIT and writable executable pages, but this is not allowed for third party apps.

It is definitely technically possible on iOS, but a significant challenge for third party developers unless using a jailbroken device.

You're correct, no need for grains of salt. Hence why some apps that are in jailbreak "stores" can do things apps from the store can't.

Yeah, I was pretty sure but I don't actually operate in that sphere at all so I'm working completely from random stuff I remember reading:) Thanks for confirming.

My jailbroken iPhone 3GS was the best mobile experience I've had. Used that thing for 5 years.

Same here. I was hoping that since these are "recommended" addons, perhaps they had negotiated with the developers to make them freely available and just included them in the build as features the user can enable if desired.

There is a Firefox Focus though: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/firefox-focus-privacy-browser/... I use Firefox Focus almost every day, mainly for "focused" browsing, i.e. one page at a time, no tabs; without tabs and the urge to open links you really get to focus on the current page more. It has some content blockers capable of blocking ads and trackers too, although in my regular browsing I use 1Blockers for configurability (say, disable cookies on news sites).

+1 for firefox focus, it is the browsing app I use for iOS unless I want to come back to something later then I'll open it in safari, from focus

> There is a Firefox Focus though

It's still built on WebView.

Yes. But this article is about the browser called Firefox, not the rendering engine called Gecko. It is somehow common for HN commenters to conflate these two, or think that the rendering engine is the "soul" of the browser, a view I do not agree with.

Yes, same here.

iOS devices are just not suitable for browsing the internet as we know it I'm afraid.

I will get another device for internet browsing on the go just because this is so annoying. Not even on iPad where you kind of have the real desktop browser experience you can use add-ons.

I know it’s not the same, but other iOS browsers use safari’s content blocking API to achieve a similar effect (e.g. Brave, DuckDuckGo, Onion browsers). They can use the same rule set from HTTPS Everywhere, and can block JavaScript on a per-site (more limited than no-script, but close.)

If you’d rather just use Safari instead of a branded skin, you can install your own content blockers.

The app HTTPS4All uses the same rule set as HTTPS everywhere:

https://github.com/bouk/HTTPS4All

For script blocking, AdGuard for iOS supports custom rules. Try:

  *$script

And to whitelist:

  *$script,domain=~example.com,~example2.com

Kind of a hassle. Again, Firefox could just include this in their skin of Safari.

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