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Comment by villish | Hacker News Reader

The best feature is being able to use Firefox extensions and thus uBlock Origin and sponsorblock on iOS. It's a little buggy but worth it for me.

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You can also do that with reynard [0], and eventually firefox itself [1], if you just move to the EU or Japan.

Or switch to android, an operating system that didn't need government intervention to let you install a browser engine.

[0]: https://github.com/minh-ton/reynard-browser

[1]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1882872

Do we have a timeline for when proper firefox will be available on iOS?

I’m in Japan and my App Store is set to Japan, but if I try to install ublock origin

“Add-ons are not compatible with Firefox for iOS. Try installing them on Firefox for desktop.“

While Apple has technically permitted third party browser engines in the EU, they have made it so onerous and expensive that no company is likely to build one. Apple remains the gatekeeper and will likely deny any builds for many years while they abuse the EU courts in delay tactics.

The EU has been fumbling the application of the Digital Markets Act. They have been sitting on a judgement of non-compliance regarding third party stores for literally years now. By now they could have moved to forced compliance and huge fines. It's not clear if there is some kind of hidden diplomacy happening, a desire to not anger Trump, or sheer incompetence. Either way, I have lost hope that the EU bureaucratic engine will ever do anything to help ordinary people. Their only function now appears to hurt the very weakest in society, because they can't fight back.

-angry Dane

Just so you know, "move to Europe" is pretty complicated inside Apple ecosystem. You can't move your App Store account from one country to another while you have any subscriptions active. You cancel them, wait for them to expire, and only then you can switch. So, for example, if you subscribed to an app yearly in January, and then cancelled your subscription in May, you still have to wait until January of next year. Very annoying in practice.

It's easier if you create a new apple ID which you use for the EU, separate from your existing one, and then login to the phone with your old Apple ID, and login to the app store specifically with the new one.

As a bonus, you can then re-buy all your apps if you want to not have to sometimes toggle between the old / new one to re-download already purchased apps.

Frankly, I'm surprised apple doesn't hard-require you to re-purchase all your apps when you switch regions, it would be a lot more apple-like.

Whatever you think uBlock Origin is doing; it‘s most likely just the built-in Orion ad-blocking.

While uBlock Origin can be installed in Orion on iOS just fine, it remains non-functional.

As discussed before, I find this to be false advertising by Kagi: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48476448

Next best thing for me is using Safari with uBlock Origin Lite, which actually works.

I grew tired of posting the same thing every time the extension support in Orion comes up, so thank you for doing it for me

> best feature is being able to use Firefox extensions

“The only browser supporting Safari, Chrome, and Firefox extensions.”

It isn’t really, just marketing fluff. Foxify[1] allowed Firefox to install Chrome extensions almost a decade ago and then I ported that to Waterfox after privileged extension support was removed from Firefox 56.

Currently still in Waterfox stable but figured there’s not actual much advantage to supporting Chrome extensions as Firefox ones are more featureful, so have removed it in the final version based on ESR 153 - albeit would be trivial to add support back in.

[1] https://github.com/bnpoirier/foxify

Safari has UBlock Origin by the same original Raymond Hill. I've had create success with it.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id674534269...

That's uBlock Origin Lite, not uBlock Origin. They are two very different extensions. Lite, for example, does not allow you to add custom filters.

SponsorBlock has a native Safari/iOS extension that works fine.

I use 1Blocker which works very well too.

As a Firefox user, I make extensive usage of the location bar and the fact that Firefox allows you to search in history, bookmarks etc. etc.

It's so convenient to me, that I rarely use bookmarks. I keep a large history, and Firefox will efficiently allow me to find web sites I previously visited because it will effectively search in my browsing history when I type one or more words in the location bar, looking not only into the URL but also into the title.

This is something that I always miss when I try a different browsers. Also, while Mozilla Foundation has many issues, Firefox is opensource. I am looking forward into Ladybird but it will take time before it's usable. Until then, Firefox remains my favorite browser.

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