If you have any questions about add-on support in the new Firefox for Android experience, please post them here!
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Are there at the moment any āofficialā ways for a normal addon developer to test their extension in that environment? Is this something that requires just"some special settings, a special build and/or some additional software thatās available to the general public, or does it require something that only developers specifically approached by Mozilla can have?
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Not yet ā the team is working on that now. 
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Hi @tanriol! At todayās Add-ons Show & Tell, there was a demo of how to use the latest version of web-ext to test an extension on the new Firefox for Android. You might want to check it out.
Just to set expectations, though, weāre still figuring out how broadly we will support extensions on the new Firefox for Android. We should have an update on that decision in a few weeks.
Iāve received this notification about upgrade to Fenix and the article mentions that my addons will be migrated as well 
However it seems that they will also get disabled, unless theyāre one of those lucky 9 
So if my Firefox for Android upgrades in upcoming weeks and I will loose access to my addons, I will be very unhappy (to put it mildly). Especially when I know my addon is compatible and could work.
Is there some solution to this problem?
I donāt mind staying on old Firefox as long as it receives security updates.
Also I donāt mind flipping some āabout:configā pref that would enable disabled addons.
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I hear your disappointment about limited add-on in Fenix. Weād like to expand support and weāre still evaluating how we can do that without running into the security and compatibility problems we saw with add-ons in Fennec.
Right now, there isnāt a way to install unsupported extensions in Fenix, though you can use web-ext to temporarily load an extension. Once you get upgraded thereās no way to roll back to Fennec.
Iāve passed your message on to the Fenix team and hopefully weāll have more updates in the coming weeks.
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We just need some way to run āunpopularā but personally-important addons: a hidden pref, or a permission.
Or allow sideloading. I described my use case for wanting this here: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/11308#issuecomment-662877387
Another suggestion: put small simple auto-approved addons like mine in a category, like āexperimentalā, so they donāt show up in an AMO search and are limited to 50 installs.
Iāve used Fennec since it was released on Maemo on the Mokia N810. Most of my addons started life as userscripts and userstyles. Web Extensions enabled me to distribute those more easily - most of my users were too untechy to manage Greasemonkey and Stylish. But if you persist in disallowing personal addons can you at least provide a userscript and userstyle manager as approved addons? They donāt have to be fully-featured (as long as I can use localStorage). Then I could wind the clock back and get 80% of what I have now.
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Thank you Caitlin for the info!
What exactly was wrong with addons in Fennec?
Compatibility problems are common issue with every new release and itās up to the addon developers to keep their addons compatible. If API didnāt change, I donāt see a problem.
But what was wrong with security?
Itās understandable why there would be only limited addons from AMO. But two things are clear.
One, developers need to be able to persistently test extensions. Having an extension in daily use with the browser is important. So developers need a way to install an extension in a way that will survive a restart of the app.
Two, in testing our extensions, we may find that they work perfectly (or weāve made them to). But many extensions are too niche to ever be recommended, for many reasons. Users need to be able to sideload an XPI. If the addons canāt be installed from AMO, and the user needs to manually open an XPI file provided by the developer (maybe they ARE the developer!), then itās clear that they have no reason to complain to Mozilla.
There is no reason why we shouldnāt be able to persistently sideload an extension we know works with current API support.
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Thanks for the clarity on whatās going on - I donāt personally agree with the direction this looks like itās going in, but I can understand the reasoning behind it and I do appreciate the openness in your update.
It would be great if the community could be made aware of the options being considered, before a final decision is made.
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Out of the questionable experience of being forcefully upgraded to fenix and losing add-ons, Iāve some questions:
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why was this upgrade forced upon users making them lose their add-ons without notice and ability to downgrade?
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what criteria was in place to choose those 9 out of the recommended add-ons?
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what is the timeline to support other recommended add-ons?
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Add-ons are Firefoxā for Android unique feature, making it stand out from all the other mobile browsers.
Now you broke it.
For all users, for an unknown amount of time, for an unknown outcome.
Whatās the strategy behind this?
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Dear Mozilla, Iām a Firefox user since v1, before I was a Netscape user. I chose for Firefox cause I want the web to stay open and because I want the freedom to customize my browser with extensions from the community. Cause thatās where Firefox did always stand for.
My Firefox for Android automatically upgraded to the new WebGecko engine which does not white-list custom webextensions anymore. Although they are webextensions and canāt do many harm, if they do they get reported and banned. Iām from the EU and I cannot surf without the extension āI donāt care about cookiesā The GDPR, which was intended to be a good thing, made all developers put a warning on their website, which is totally useless because you have to accept cookies anyway and most sites donāt even work without cookies, so this warnings really mess up the internet. This extension frees the surfers from this useless popups on every site, over and over again. I need it!
I tried to change the about:config, which Mozilla also disabled in the WebGecko official build (Mozilla take us for morons now, big mistake Mozilla, cause morons would never take the effort to even install Firefox, they are happy with the preinstalled Chrome or even Edge, which is also Chrome now). So I installed Firefox Nightly, where about:config is still available, but even after changing the boolean extensions.htmlaboutaddons.recommendations.enabled to false I can still not install my desired extensions. The WebGecko engine seems faster so I like it, thatās a good thing, but I want my favourite extensions back! There is no use for any android user anymore now to choose for Mozilla, cause the other browsers are also āsafeā and āfastā.
Again this is a really big mistake, Mozilla will loose a lot of users, know your public Mozilla, just put an option to let users ātake the riskā for themselves to decide if they want to install āa non-recommended-extensionā. Please, this is really a big let down.
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Just a note: this preference is for a different purpose, not related to what extensions can be installed. It controls whether some Recommended Extensions are displayed on the Add-ons page below your installed extensions (at least on Windows/Mac/Linux; it might not have any effect on Android).
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Hey folks, quick update: weāre currently working on supporting a pref in Nightly to enable loading arbitrary extensions in Fenix. This is a work in progress and we donāt have specific details to share yet, but you can see the dependencies listed in this issue.
We do not have updates on greater extension support on release channels at this time.
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Thanks, this gives some light at the end of the tunnel.
I hope you are aware that extension support was FFs unique differentiator on Android. Removing it made it just one of many others.
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Thanks for giving us a tiny bit of visibility, it is certainly better than none! It is a real shame though - this was definitely the killer feature for me (and hopefully for lots of users of some extensions I am building). Unfortunately, it means that I will have to port my extensions over to a new browser - meaning porting back to chromium (so kiwi and co.) after initially building for chromium but then switching to FF for desktop + mobile out-of-the box compatibility. Iām gutted
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Will that also bubble up to Beta?
I had bad experience with Nightly channel when I used it for daily work.
Also, I hope you guys are monitoring the reviews in the Play Store, itās not very pretty. Iāve computed average rating from the last 1019 reviews (approx. 2 days) and itās 2.39:
(() => {
const parentDiv = '.pf5lIe';
const blackStar = '.vQHuPe';
const ratings = [...document.body.querySelectorAll(parentDiv)].map(x => x.querySelectorAll(blackStar).length)
const sum = ratings.reduce((acc, x) => acc + x)
return [sum / ratings.length, ratings.length]
})()
// Array [ 2.3866535819430816, 1019 ]
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Removing support for general add-ons was a terrible decision.
It must be clear to Mozilla they have totally misjudged their users desires for this feature.
Each day that passes without general add-on support in Firefox Mobile versions is costing significant amounts of users and is leading to constant 1 star reviews in the Play Store.
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Ok Mozilla. Iāve used Mozilla browsers and email clients since day one, since Netscape disapeared. Iāve seen many changes, heroic leaps and grave mistakes. But thisā¦ updating Forefox on Android and rendering the beloved Add-ons unavailable, is really pissing me off! I canāt see how you can be so arrogant to believe that your browser is worth so much without the additions written by the add-on authors. Maybe, just out of spite, I will start using Brave. Or check out Opera, if that still exists. Or throw all my reservations aside and start using Google Chrome.
Damn, Mozilla, why? Why?
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At the risk of polluting this thread, I do regret this decision. I love Firefox and I am a long term āI donāt care about cookiesā user, and I regret that this addon is not available on Android anymore (the web sucks without it)
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