Firefox Has Integrated Brave's Adblock Engine
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itsfoss.com
> - We are not, and have no plans to abandon MV2 extensions. This will ensure certain types of add-ons, like ad-blockers, continue to work best in Firefox.
> - Firefox supports several ad-blockers as add-ons on Desktop and Android, including uBlock Origin.
> - We are not bundling Brave's ad-blocking system, we're testing one of their open source Rust components to improve how Firefox processes tracker lists.
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1sttf82/firefox_wi...
This is what the official Firefox account had to say when this came up on reddit.
Oof, so even people that should really know better are now equating MV3 with "no more ad blocking"? I think at this point the entire thing just needs to be renamed.
(Only Chrome removed the request blocking API from their MV3 implementation; Firefox did not.)
It wouldn't be the first time tech gossip rags would take something Mozilla did out of proportion to make outrage videos about that become a hit on Reddit.
When Mozilla added some weird AI thing (I think it was page summaries?) I was asked by people whose algorithm picked up this nonsense whether it'd be better for their privacy to switch back to Chrome or Edge.
Sounds like the issue here is paid social media platforms, where everybody is looking for ways to differentiate their slop from the rest. It would be weird to expect a different outcome.
> However, DeclarativeWebRequest is limited in the number of rules that may be set, and the types of expressions that may be used.[336] Additionally, the prohibition of remotely-hosted code will restrict the ability for filter lists to be updated independently of the extension itself. As the Chrome Web Store review process has an invariable length, filter lists may not be updated in a timely fashion.[337][338]
Is that not true?
For precision, I should have said "significantly worse ad blocking", not exaggerated as "no more ad blocking".
> The browser now ships adblock-rust, Brave's open source Rust-based ad and tracker blocking engine.
It makes sense that Mozilla would test this. The amount of Rust code in Firefox is already at 12%.
https://4e6.github.io/firefox-lang-stats/
Memory-safe code can make a huge difference in trust and software risk. Google has said that a 70% of Chrome vulnerabilities are related to memory (un)safety. This is in the browser with dominant marketshare.
https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/memory-safet...
That said, if this is writing on the wall I’d hope they’ll listen to the community this time and allow the engine to be extended / make it such that a block all ads feature always exists. I’m cautiously optimistic given Mozilla’s track record just over the past year-ish. They have released some great new features that help bring Firefox closer to feature parity with other browsers.
I am a Firefox hopeful and recently switched back to using it as my daily driver when Arc went belly up (but mainly for uBlock Origin support).
There is no feature Firefox provides that is more differentiating than ublock origin. As long as pages load and security issues are patched it is the reason to choose Firefox as a browser. What would they prioritize over it?
While far from being perfect, I find it good enough for keeping things separated, especially when using a desktop/workspace workflow. For example, in workspace/desktop 2 I have a Firefox window opened with the first tab set to "container A", so hitting ctrl-t there opens new tabs with the same container "A", so I'm logged-in for all projects A. In another Firefox window in workspace 3 I work with "business project B" tabs (where I'm logged into different atlassian, github, cloud, gmail, ...)
Then with a Window Manager like i3wm or Sway I set keybinds to jump directly to the window (and workspace), using the mark feature [1]
It's also possible to open websites directly in specific containers so it's flexible. For example on my desktop 8 I have all my AI webchats in "wherever my company pay for it" tabs: `firefox --new-window 'ext+container:name=loggedInPersonnal&url=https://chat.mistral.ai' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessA&url=https://chatgpt.com' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessB&url=https://gemini.google.com' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessB&url=https://claude.ai'`
It's also the only way I found to keep opened multiple chat apps (Teams, Slack, Discord, ...). The alternative electron apps are as resource-hungry, and in my experience never handled multiple accounts well (especially Teams).
[O] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sticky-window...
[1] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
In any case, for better or worse, when people say MV3, they now usually mean "Chrome's MV3 implementation", which obviously never applies to Firefox.
The feature that better adblockers need is one callback that's similar to one that's still in V3. It's not difficult to keep if it's your own codebase.
In case of the extension manifest, that's probably layered on top of the JS engine which does get attention and scrutiny. It's not like an API needs to be updated. If you'd always do that, nothing would ever be interoperable and we'd likely have a hard time trying to communicate.
Brave still allows you to install uBlock & some other extensions that should technically not be supported under MV3, but they still ship it with support for those.
Just heard about Helium browser, which is just dechromium + uBlock and it's still beta.
My last hope is ladybird right now, I don't use Firefox or Chrome as my main browsers anymore, and use them only within temporary sandboxes. Without history, without cookies, without logins for the most part.
I built my own tools on top of it, mostly to use internet websites and selfhosted kiwix archives with my local agentic env.
I guess what I am saying is that I don't have a primary browser anymore. Not a browser where I just can trust it that it doesn't do shit with my data. Being able to selfhost kiwix is a superb internet experience if you build your own search dashboard for it, I can fully recommend it.
Have to merge my things upstream with ZIMdex when I have the time (probably around June).
Nope, FF is being infiltrated by adtech for last year or two. Last holdout is Safari now :)
Why do people say crap like this... Safari was the first browser to completely remove mv2. From all the major browsers Safari has the worse adblocking experience and support for adblocking extensions...
1. Third-party cookie blocking by default — 2003 (Safari 1.0); industry first.
2. Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), using on-device machine learning to identify and limit cross-site trackers — 2017; industry first.
3. Storage Access API prompts for embedded third-party content (e.g., social login widgets) — 2018 (ITP 2.0); industry first (co-developed by WebKit, later adopted as a web standard).
4. Full third-party cookie blocking (no exceptions) — 2020 (ITP in Safari 13.1); industry first for a major browser.
Ad/tracking blocking is one of the things that can only be trusted if it's open source, i.e. uBlock Origin.
By the way, does this Adblock Engine actually block trackers? Or it just stops the ads from displaying?
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id674534269...
* pre-fetching
* html filtering
* use of WebAssembly
* data compression and private/incognito mode
Many people seem to treat it synonymously with "no more procedural request blocking", but that's not a thing Mozilla ever did:
> For Manifest V3 extensions, Chrome no longer supports the "webRequestBlocking" permission (except for policy-installed extensions). Instead, the "webRequest" and "webRequestAuthProvider" permissions enable you to supply credentials asynchronously. Firefox continues to support "webRequestBlocking" in Manifest V3 and provides "webRequestAuthProvider" to offer cross-browser compatibility.
The permission model also seems much more reasonable (less permissions have to be requested upfront at install time) than MV2, so I actually hope Firefox does deprecate it at some point.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/firefox-manifest-v3-adbl...
Running an adblocker is the defining feature of the extensions API. ublock origin has 5x as many users as the second-most-popular extension [1]
Supporting ublock isn't just a nice-to-have add-on feature for an extension API, it's literally the only thing most users care about.
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/search/?promoted=re...
Which, in my experience, blocks ads just as well, but also lets pages load significantly faster.
MV3 supports uBlock.
Lots of people have been pointing out that ad companies will figure ways out around it. But they really haven't been.
MV3 and UBOL have been in wide usage for about a year and a half now. And nothing has been changing. Adblocking continues to be great.
The fact of the matter is, the ad block lists were getting so large and the JavaScript functionality was slow and it was significantly impacting page load times. UBOL uses vastly more efficient compiled code that is part of the browser and is just a far better ad blocking experience altogether.
But I guess that just doesn't fit the narrative that people want to believe, where MV3 was part of a big evil plan.
EDIT: I did have it set to `Complete,` so perhaps I have something else going on.
Bingo. That was it. Again, thanks.
And everyone I know who used UBO and switched to UBOL has had no complaints about ads not being blocked.
Whereas people who don't actually use it love to continue to insist that it's this degraded experience that doesn't work as well. And usually when one of them comes up with an example of some ad not being blocked, it turns out because they hadn't configured UBOL to use complete blocking mode.
Everyone who you know is irrelevant. I've tested and see that ads pass through, and tracking passes through with uBo light on Chrome. I can see it in the browser trace, and I can see it in DNS logs.
The only thing that means anything is how well it operates with your average browsing on a daily basis. And it's such a popular extension because it does an amazing job at blocking ads. That's just a fact. The only people who seem to claim otherwise appear to be the ones with an ideological axe to grind. It's silly.
And other things are relevant, like resource usage.
No. uBlock Origin works best in Firefox: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
uBlock Origin Lite can't do everything uBlock Origin does: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
If Lite is working for you then good. If you want fuller capability then you want uBlock Origin in Firefox.
Not sure about page load, but CPU time is about the same between the two: https://x.com/gorhill/status/1792648742752981086/photo/1
However, I am also concerned that this is an "embrace extend extinguish" move.
I use uBlock Origin in Firefox and network ad blocker. Wondering what other options are there.
I’m not familiar with off the shelf solutions for this that have ad blocking built in. Also ads are injected by JS so you need a mechanism to detect that.
More and more ads are now served from the same domain as the site making it harder to distinguish them from real content.
But then you're using ZScaler and that just feels all nice and icky.
Squid supports ACL's that can block URL patterns, domains, IP addresses, file extensions, mime types and much more.
Here [1] is an out of date example. There are probably better and more up to date examples. Some examples are based off Squid V3 as some distros still ship with that but Squid 6 added more flexibility around chaining options SOCKS options and such.
My favorite recent feature has been Brave Scriptlets, which are just little javascript functions you can run on specific sites. I've replaced most of the add ons I used with small scripts. Pretty nice.
I would prefer an engine not built on Chromium... but I've lost faith in Mozilla. I'm glad that Firefox added a built in adblock engine, but it seems too late too late. Brave has been awesome, and being Chromium based gives them time to keep working on stuff that matters.
To sell for $60 a web browser that technically has all the features removed is a pretty goofy move.
Brave Just Released a Paid Browser: Here's What You Need to Know https://youtube.com/watch?v=3i5KH0l895o
I don't trust Brave though and don't want to use chromium.
I'm doing a goofy thing and buying it, despite knowing I can debloat Brave, because I already do that. I didn't know this existed till I read this thread. I've been benefitting from Brave for many years now; it's great that they've provided a way to pay for this without dealing with the crypto stuff, and I'm extremely happy to do so, because they deserve some of my money.
If you can't afford it or don't want to pay, fine. But why are you trying to influence other people to do that by labelling it "goofy"?
How would you strip those things out mobile, by the way?
I'm living under a rock, but my first thought was that you turned off TLS.
Chrome also used to natively support userscripts back in 2010 [2] but they mostly killed it off
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Userscript
[2] https://lifehacker.com/chrome-4-supports-greasemonkey-usersc...
Tampermonkey has analytics enabled, and is closed source.
Here's a comprehensive summary on all three. [3]
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/violentmonkey
I don't think there is or ever will be a "new internet explorer". If your page works in Chrome, there's a 99% chance it'll work in Firefox and Safari. Web standards have been unified to the point painting and layout algorithms are now part of the spec. It's why Ladybird managed to get a decently compatible engine in an extremely short time frame.
To make an obviously unproven and not universal observation: I feel like it's people who just like the google integration in Chrome and want an excuse to run it, even though they feel like they should use Firefox because it's more compatible with their world view, so they latch onto any issues Firefox has to go "see, they are all the same anyway", and then just repeat vague "Mozilla sucks" stuff.
What world view is this? Considering that Mozilla is a puppet Google basically owns if you look at where the funding comes from.
even less reason to use it on desktop
Fantastic first impression. I'm good, thanks.
To be clear, the toggle is to turn off the 'wallet' feature that isn't even enabled until you use it. So you are just disabling seeing the thing at all... with a simple toggle.
And the AI bullshit from their builtin search engine, I'd guess that too is a simple toggle.
Without googling, I'd put good money that there's a thing called "Brave VPN" in the homepage by default, and I have to disable that with a simple toggle.
In two years I may have to disable the crypto-miner, still with a simple toggle, of course, very user convenient.
This is the entire industry in a nutshell. Everyone, from every direction, at all times, is trying to squeeze you for a few cents with antagonistic "features" enabled by default. I have very little patience for this.
"But it's a simple click." Have some self respect, we can do better than this.
The browser does not re-enable the things you have disabled, but they keep implementing new stuff that you have to disable too.
It’s annoying, although that’s how most software works nowadays (and I include Firefox unfortunately). You have to disable a lot of stuff to make it usable.
On desktops/laptops, keyboard shortcuts save reaching for a mouse, aiming (on the relativley large screen), and clicking. On handhelds, I don't think it's faster to use a shortcut than to simply tap something an inch away.
Also, on handhelds, the keyboard blocks a significant part of the screen. And keyboard shortcuts typically use accelerator keys, which are hard to use on handhelds.
Do you use Android with a physical keyboard?
As someone who bought an HTC Dream / Android G1 when it was new, and wishes more handhelds had a similar form factor, this comment depresses me.
Weirdly enough, the same time this was added to Geckko is when I started implementing the adblock-rs library for Waterfox - I stumbled across the bindings by accident when using searchfox on the main branch instead of esr140! Quite the coincidence doing it at the same time.
Cromite - Chromium, MV2 extensions, good new tab page with 4x4 shortcuts (2x4 pinnable) with direct access to bookmarks
https://github.com/uazo/cromite/releases
Ultimatum - Chromium, MV2 extensions, not so good new tab page similar to original Chrome with only like 4 shortcuts without swiping, limitec customization, no password manager AFAIR
https://github.com/gonzazoid/Ultimatum/releases
Helium - Chromium, only MV3 extensions, built in browser from Graphene
https://github.com/jqssun/android-helium-browser/releases
Elixir - Chromium, only MV3, tabbed interface suitable for tablets
https://github.com/SF-FLAM/ElixirBrowser/releases
Former Kiwi Browser, then for about year IceRaven (Firefox) user up until recently when they fckd up already bad illogical UI and made it even worse, which was the last drop to again give up on this users hating browser (will never forget users begged for 10 years so dear devs will implement simple pull down to refresh).
On desktop the recommendation is much easier:
Vivaldi - Chromium, MV2, no AI, amazing customization compared to primitive Brave, faster than FF
I'm actually glad to see Mozilla has grown a little bit "predatorial" if it can bring good to the users. The implementation is polite too, as it lets you know there was an ad been muted.
There's a lot of things that can still be done in the browser space. For example, one-click login even without entering email, easy purchase without the website ever collecting your card number (or other financial detail beyond necessary), etc etc. Ads can also be improved too, by making them not violating nor annoying.
The possibilities are still great, I hope Mozilla can figure out a way to tap into it.
Maybe uBlock Origin for Firefox could be updated to make use of this
though it doesn’t seem to work as well as ublock, the ad slots are still there with just the ad missing so there’s a giant ugly blank spot.
Would anyone who has kept up let me know what would be the 2026 "industry standard" in terms of an ad-blocking and privacy stack?
I primarily use Chrome on Mac and Safari on iPhone but I'm willing to change browsers for better ad-blocking and privacy.
I would also be interested in solutions that scale beyond a single machine, for when I'm at home (e.g. should I get a little box and use it as an ad blocker between my internet my router and my network or something?)
A chief benefit is that Chromium is much more secure than Firefox, especially on mobile.
It's an entirely different management team.
Edit: also crazy that someone who doesn’t want to support the Brave guy would support the browser using the Brave guy’s stuff, but I guess I see lots of chick-fil-a haters shopping in Amazon these days, so who am I to question what’s in vogue?
> Brendan Eich didn't personally write the code, and he doesn't benefit from Firefox using it. If anything this hurts him, since Firefox is catching up to an advantage of Brave without investing their own development resources.
> No matter from what angle I look at this situation, your complaint makes no sense.
Don't assume the positions of people who disagree with you are not thought out. It is a dangerous line of reasoning to go "if only they thought it through for more than five seconds they'd agree with me".
Remember, this isn’t based on like, logic or functionality or power or visibility or anything related to the product - it’s based on an emotional view of someone related to the product. It actually doesn’t matter if you could theorize a way that he gave away his core tech just to screw his ow company over. It’s arguably irrelevant to the conversation.
Avoiding just about any company for ethical reasons without avoiding the vast majority is performative or something most people can ignore because it’s insanely personal.
I don’t think you spent more than 5 seconds thinking about this if you thought my only POV was “he’d believe me if he thought about this for a few seconds”. I don’t think it’s obvious, I just think it’s significant.
The injection of politics into absolutely everything is so arbitrary and harmful.
> The injection of politics into absolutely everything is so arbitrary and harmful.
Are you referring to Eich, or the people who react to his political choices?
My point is that this same setting aside of irrelevant (to the technical aspects) differences should apply to use of software in addition to development of software.
Also, you don't have to benefit Brendan Eich by using Brave. Turn off the crypto and AFAICT Brave gets no money from you.
Not that I actually recommend Brave: I have no opinions on it. I'm just tired and worried by the attitude of judging software by the non-technical opinions of who wrote it.
So please explain: why shouldn't I use my wallet to prevent people like Brendan Eich from shaping society against my friends and loved ones? Why should I add to his capital while he's actively trying to make the lives of the people I care about worse?
> Also, you don't have to benefit Brendan Eich by using Brave. Turn off the crypto and AFAICT Brave gets no money from you.
Or I can use Firefox and strengthen the competition.
Fair enough. My argument is this: as a society we need to live alongside people we disagree with, perhaps even disagree with fundamentally. My ideal is to not judge people's work in one field by their work (or opinions) in another. I think that this way we can get more done in the fields in which we are in agreement. How well do you think the United States would have gone without the Three-fifths Compromise? IMO not well. Do I agree with the slaveholders? No. Do I think the compromise was better than refusing to work with them at all? Yes.
> Why should I add to his capital while he's actively trying to make the lives of the people I care about worse?
Uh, I don't see this as a matter of capital once you turn off BAT crypto stuff. Please enlighten me.
Since we're apparently still trying to find a compromise on this topic, it seems imperative to me that I continue my boycott of Brendan Eich's companies, so the eventual compromise will have better terms for my friends and loved ones. Unless I see definitive proof that this approach is worse for the people close to me, I won't give up the only social tool I have to protect them.
> Uh, I don't see this as a matter of capital once you turn off BAT crypto stuff. Please enlighten me.
First, Brave has lots more monetization avenues than just the crypto stuff. But even if I turned all of that off, I would increase the usage stats of Brave while decreasing the stats of Firefox. Just because Brendan Eich doesn't profit quite as much off of me doesn't mean he gains no profit.
Out of curiosity, where do you draw the line when it comes to boycotting people or companies?
> I'm just tired and worried by the attitude of judging software by the non-technical opinions of who wrote it.
And I'm thrilled that it continues to happen more and more.
That's a choice you are free to make. Other people can and will make different choices. Many people never shared that principle, and instead happily exercised freedom of association to not support or spend time around awful people.
Projects are not some magic boundary in which everything outside is left outside. You can't dump piles of money into hurting your colleagues and expect them to see that as a neutral choice.
Do as you please, but it makes no sense to me, and doesn't strike me a principled at all: it's basically virtue signaling. But then again, I don't view people that hold different political views as my enemy. They're just people I disagree with, and they can still make a great browser, even though we disagree on some things.
What's being misrepresented?
Second, it's your subjective view that this "is standard political stuff that people can agree or disagree on", and I very much disagree! Tax policy or similar areas, sure, we can agree or disagree. But keeping basic rights (or even taking them away) from a subset of the population is not "standard political stuff" to me.
Would you say the same if, instead of gay marriage, the issue was interracial marriage? I sincerely hope not, even though certain voices on the right are trying to turn this into "standard political stuff" too these days.
I guess I'm just not willing to write off 40% of society because they disagree on a particular issue that may seem clear as day to me. The most important thing I would like to foster is civility in our discourse with our neighbors, and that has been sacrificed on the altar of dogma to a degree that I cannot condone.
But I'm not absolute in my tolerance. Marriage rights don't trigger me much at all, but genuine human rights abuses like we're seeing in the wars going on, and the rise of fascism in the US are both areas where I would boycott a company (like OnlyOffice, for example).
Tax policy is actually a big part of the driver of fascism, since it entrenches oligarchs and allows consolidation of e.g. the media, and therefore the narrative. But I guess I'd call that standard political stuff, too.
So I guess I'm not exactly sure where I draw the line, but donating a thousand dollars to speak out against gay marriage didn't cross it for me. Yes, I disagree with him. And yes, I still like Brave.
I do appreciate the discussion!
You have to walk the walk too Mozilla! Saying that as a FF for years.
No matter from what angle I look at this situation, your complaint makes no sense.
Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Tor Browser, Librewolf, they're all little more than reconfigurations and reskins of Chromium when you look at the entire code base. Yes, the Brave as block engine and Operas power saving modes are non-trivial, but the engine they're built on is the size of an operating system.
"Tor Browser is based on Mozilla Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release) but has been heavily modified for use with the Tor network."
Those are direct quotes from their respective web pages. Neither of them has anything to do with Chromium.
I would edit my comment above to clarify, but the limited edit time window for HN seems to have passed.