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Comment by 4bpp | Hacker News Reader

I always wonder why Firefox Mobile is so unpopular. Isn't the internet basically unusable without an ad blocker (which they say none of the other mobile browsers support) nowadays? Are the 3.something percent desktop Firefox such a refusenik demographic that they don't browse the internet on their phones at all, or do the mobile Chrome forks have some advantage I am unaware of?

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Firefox Mobile used to be decent... no, exceptional 'til they shat the bed by removing features such as extensions, changing bookmarks and disrupting workflows. One can no longer save pages to PDF. Other things take thrice the number of taps to achieve the same outcome.

As much as I love Firefox and Mozilla at large, I believe a lot of their woes are self inflicted. Yes, COVID blah blah blah, but a cursory look at their financials shows a NPO that behaved like Goog was gonna continue funding them indefinitely.

Vivaldi is my daily driver on desktop and Firefox is the "sandboxxed" browser. Might start looking into their mobile offering seeing as FF Mobile isn't getting any better. Damn shame really.

Firefox is not the default browser on mobile OSs. 99% of users don’t change the default. Most people don’t know that this is possible, desirable, or an issue.

Even if you do, does it actually change that much? You cant actually stop the os on mobile from using its default browser for most of it's tasks. Firefox on iOS is basically a reskin of safari if I am reading it correctly.

> You cant actually stop the os on mobile from using its default browser for most of it's tasks.

On Android, the only thing that the default browser ever opens for is captive portal detection. Otherwise, all links from apps like Signal or OSMAnd open in Firefox. Granted, I am running Lineage OS. Does a phone with Google Play Services installed override Firefox for Android to use the preinstalled web browser instead?

I've got firefox as my default on Oxygen OS. Don't remember the last time chrome was opened on my phone--by me or by other software. Firefox is even handles the tabs embedded in other apps.

I don't know, I disabled Chrome long ago to make sure it doesn't do shady stuff in background.

To add to your point, onnAndroid Firefix can even be the in-app browser (what Chrome calls Chrome Custom Tabs), and you can verify this by checking the menu as it will say Powered by Firefox.

Speaking as a mobile browser snob who lives and works out of their phone, it changes tons. Firefox Mobile used to be garbage but now it's my primary mobile browser. HN gets overly focused on cyber politics while forgetting the user experience imo. Right now Firefox Mobile comes with a better ad blocker than chrome, a better dark mode than the competition including Brave, and it has a reasonably good setup for a bottom screen omni bar (controversial with people who hate nice things).

And if you're on Apple devices, you're stuck with a skin atop what is essentially Safari anyway.

Posting from Firefox on a desktop. I like my Ad Blockers to actually work.

Mobile Safari supports ad blocking.

Unless you're on an older iOS device. (I still have my iPad 4, and it doesn't allow ad blocking, not even in Firefox, which I use.)

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