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Comment by ghostpepper | Hacker News Reader

This is good to hear, I'm looking forward to trying it out.

Off topic, but has anyone noticed Firefox on iOS has gotten quite slow? It happens when I switch from another app to Firefox, and then tap the URL bar to highlight the text in preparation to type either a URL or a search query, the whole app will stop responding for anywhere from 1-5 seconds. This happens even on a fresh restart of the phone or after killing the app.

I'm using an iPhone 12 Mini on the latest iOS but I've noticed it for a few months now. It might sound minor but when everything else on the phone (including Safari) is so snappy, it's very noticeable.

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I thought firefox on iOS is just Safari with another skin.

It is.

I'm fine with calling Blink based browsers "Chrome skins" and WebKit based browsers "Safari skins" but only if we all understand that "skin" isn't just a cosmetic thing. Firefox on iOS has its own features, settings, history, bookmarks, sync system, and other stuff that can create real, noticeable differences. Even if you assume "skin" means just the UI behavior, wouldn't it make sense that there could be a Firefox-specific bug with the URL bar?

To answer the GP's question, this does sound like a known Awesomebar issue that might be improved with a future update to the Places database: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-ios/issues/11775

This sounds exactly like my issue (and I have even experienced it with the exact site in the bug report, reddit). For some reason I did not even think that the firefox iOS app would have an open source bug tracker but of course it would. Also had no idea it was called the 'awesome bar'.

This is just a sign I should spend more time on HN and less on Reddit.

The browser engine is the same, but all of the UI surrounding it is provided by the app, so they could have done something that caused a slowdown.

Yup - have noticed this. Just in the past week or maybe 2. Safari doesn't exhibit the issue so it seems to be with the wrapper - & definitely related to addressbar/URL typing/homepage functionality freezing the app. Quite a few crashes too which I've never seen before.

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