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Comment by DistractionRect | Hacker News Reader

AFAIK, it was available in nightly. You could curate your own add on list which you could then install on Firefox for Android Nightly, and I'm fairly certain you can still do that if you want something that isn't in this new, expanded list.

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You can also directly sideload .xpi by tapping the Nightly logo in the About page a few times. I'm not sure when they added this back.

Wow, thanks for sharing. I just installed Firefox Nightly (v122.0a1) from the Play Store and sideloading does work again. After tapping the Nightly logo several times, an "Install add-on from file" option shows up in the settings. I can even install an unsigned add-on with "xpinstall.signatures.required" set to "false" in about:config. For the longest time, Nightly allowed users to set up the "Custom Add-on collections" workaround to install add-ons from addons.mozilla.org but not sideload add-ons directly, so this is a major improvement.

Edit: Nightly gained the ability to sideload add-ons 2 weeks ago from the pull request at https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-android/pull/4568. Also, a Mozilla employee has confirmed that sideloading is going to make it to the release channel of Firefox for Android!* Firefox is having an incredible month. It took time, but I'm extremely glad Mozilla is taking user feedback seriously.

* "We do want this feature in Release." https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-android/pull/4568#...

Oh wow, finally, great. The inability to manually install add-ons was also a major annoyance for add-on development (at least for me), because without that you were restricted to temporary add-on installation via devtools, so you couldn't really seriously test drive your own add-ons for any extended period of time. (Or attempt tracking down some rare bug.)

I can confirm that sideloading .xpi does not work in Nightly (at least the one from the Play store -- I've never worked up the energy to build the apk from source and don't feel like using the F-Droid because reasons)

I even tried creating my own collection to include Violentmonkey and it didn't work but I don't this second recall why

Give it another try. The current version of Nightly (v122.0a1) from the Play Store has functional sideloading for me after I unlock the "secret menu" in the settings by going to "About Nightly" and tapping the Nightly icon several times.

Before Bypass Paywalls Clean (D) existed, I was able to install Violentmonkey on Firefox for Android through the add-on collections workaround to use the Bypass Paywalls Clean userscript. You need to enable desktop mode when assembling the add-on collection (or do it from a computer) for Violentmonkey to show up as an option in the search.

> Give it another try. The current version of Nightly (v122.0a1) from the Play Store has functional sideloading for me after I unlock the "secret menu" in the settings by going to "About Nightly" and tapping the Nightly icon several times.

uh-huh

> You need to enable desktop mode when assembling the add-on collection (or do it from a computer) for Violentmonkey to show up as an option in the search.

And people say "Firefox not popular, why?"

what a tire fire, for no damn good reason

I completely agree, Mozilla has made a ton of mistakes with Firefox for Android in the last few years. That's why I'm happy to see Mozilla finally follow through with their promise to expand add-ons for Android and pleasantly surprised that sideloading is about to be enabled in the stable channel of Firefox for Android.

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