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Comment by leeoniya | Hacker News Reader

OT: i really want to use Firefox on Android, except the scrolling performance really sucks and always has, with every device, every FF version, and every Android version. it is so goddamn janky compared to Chrome and Opera (and i assume other Blink-based browsers). i'm on Android 13 and a top-spec Zenfone 9, so it should be a complete non-issue; it's pretty crazy how bad it still is after all this time :(

unfortunately it's not a minor UX annoyance that you can get used to or simply ignore; it permeates and taints every interaction.

does anyone else have this experience?

EDIT: opened about:support and everything looks fine (webrender, hw accel, hw compositor). interestingly, scrolling the long about:support page is largely jank-free.

EDIT2: went into settings and disabled address-bar hiding on scroll, which seems to have helped quite a bit for web content.

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I always used ff on android and never had any scrolling issue. I can't even understand how could that be. I'm using a Samsung s10e with a very bad exynos cpu.

I've been use Firefox for Android on 12 (and 11 before that) just fine, maybe an Android 13 thing? I can't remember the last time I used Chrome, I used Kiwi & Yandex at some points in the past and didn't notice any significant difference). If you are talking about smoothness, it's possible that I missed it, not caring much, but I've definitely never noticed it being so bad it becomes an usability issue.

> If you are talking about smoothness

yes. in 2022 on a top-spec phone and latest OS, scrolling of a static google results page or hacker news thread should not stutter. doesn't seem like an unreasonable ask, imo.

I've been using Android Firefox for years. I've rarely seen a scrolling issues. And those were decidedly not on static pages. Mostly the kind choked with ads.

I've never noticed anything either (and, what ads? That's what uBO is for :) ). And this is on mid tier moto phones.

Maybe someone would have to point it out for me to notice....

I remember trying to switch to Firefox on Android several years ago and encountering exactly the same issue as you - scrolling was just super janky and unusable.

I've recently tried the switch again (a few weeks ago) and did not encounter the same scrolling issues anymore. Could be any number of things that have changed, though, such as a new phone, Firefox updates, OS updates (Pixel 5, Android 13, Firefox 108.1.0).

I'm on a Google Pixel from 2016 and have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Firefox runs perfectly and I do not see any janky scrolling or otherwise bad performance at all. Scrolling in Chrome does not feel different either.

Pixel 5. Buttery smooth.

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