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. I’m gutted 
2 Likes
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, it’s not very pretty. I’ve computed average rating from the last 1019 reviews (approx. 2 days) and it’s 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 ]
3 Likes
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.
11 Likes
Ok Mozilla. I’ve used Mozilla browsers and email clients since day one, since Netscape disapeared. I’ve seen many changes, heroic leaps and grave mistakes. But this… updating Forefox on Android and rendering the beloved Add-ons unavailable, is really pissing me off! I can’t 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?
6 Likes
At the risk of polluting this thread, I do regret this decision. I love Firefox and I am a long term “I don’t care about cookies” user, and I regret that this addon is not available on Android anymore (the web sucks without it)
4 Likes
A side remark in this recent add-ons blogpost: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/08/24/introducing-a-scalable-add-ons-blocklist/ may shed some light on the factors involved with allowing the installation of arbitrary extensions on Android:
We are currently evaluating additional optimizations in order to further minimize the size of the blocklist for use on Fenix, the next major release of Firefox for Android.
This may of course also not have been a factor in the decision.
1 Like
just gonna post the add-ons i use in fennec:
- ClearURLs
- Decentraleyes
- External Video Player
- Google Search Fixer
- Nano Defender
- Redirect AMP to HTML
- Remove reddit app promos
- Nano Adblocker
- Search by Image
- Video Background Play Fix
- and another extension that I installed outside of AMO
fenix really shouldn’t have been released in this state add-ons are the only reason i use firefox on my phone. Some add-ons should really be built-in.
1 Like
I’m not letting my Firefox on Android to update until you start allowing all extensions again. If it updates itself, the decision is rather clear: uninstall and switch to Kiwi or Brave.
2 Likes
Workaround - install Fennec via F-Droid - it is a fork of Firefox before they broke add-ons:
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/
4 Likes
I’ll use Fennec F-Droid until Mozilla comes to it senses. I’ve lost all my passwords during upgrade anyway…
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
1 Like
In the meantime, you can add the “I don’t care about cookies” blocklist to uBlock Origin in the Firefox.
Go to uBlock Origin’s settings, tap on the dashboard, then visit the filter list tab, scroll to the bottom, and import a custom URL.
The blocklist URL is https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/abp/
It is quite a few more steps to set it up, but you’ll have a similar cookie reduced experience when done.
2 Likes
I used Firefox because it supported extensions. Not because it shipped with a tiny curated list of guaranteed-foolproof extensions, but because it supported extensions, period.
I don’t think there has been a good reason other than its broad general support of all extensions for anyone to use Firefox, for quite some time. The 2017 extensions fiasco was embarrassing and bad news already, but the new, improved fiasco of 2020 is so far looking less like a setback and more like the end of Firefox.
Other browsers on Android now support extensions. They aren’t as polished-looking, but they mostly work. Firefox doesn’t mostly work, because Firefox has decided to drop the one feature that really set it apart. New little features can be nice, but not at the cost of dropping the main feature.
I suspect that this has happened under pressure from “our partners” who don’t enjoy the possibility that their “services” might be circumvented.
7 Likes
Fennec on f-droid is the answer for now until Firefox reverts this or another fork replaces Firefox entirely.
All versions of Fennec, including the last - 68.11.0 - are still available from Mozilla’s download site, btw. (I’ll not post the url - it’ll probably change - but it’s easy to find.) I’ve put the APK on my devices in case they accidentally update.
“Kim Cosmos” makes an interesting point in a comment elsewhere. I’ll quote part if it:
The real reason for the addons problem was that when developers submit an addon they can choose which platform it runs on, OR check the ‘all’ box. Because firefox crowed cross compatability the developers always ticked ‘all’ despite android FF having no toolbar for launching these addons. The developers were assuming FF would check, FF assumed the developers would check. Consequently about 2/3 of all the android addons never worked.
That’s certainly true. Because it was so hard to find real Android addons on AMO I added ‘Android’ to the title of some of my addons.
The piece, by Vladimir Palant, is here: https://palant.info/2020/08/31/a-grim-outlook-on-the-future-of-browser-add-ons/
Of course it’s only a solution for nerdy people, not for the ‘normal’ ones.
And when does Fennec implement the recent update which killed the FF?
This is the way I’m seeing things a couple days after the loss of most my add-ons (user, not maker):
Yeah, fenix is faster and smoother. Would love to use it.
Until I cannot install arbitrary add-ons that will never get enough “likes” to be vetted and added by Mozilla I have switched to F-Droid Fennec (Firefox Sync works by the way!). This is a temporary solution and if I don’t see Mozilla coming to it’s senses, I will find a modern Browser that does what I want.
It doesn’t really matter which add-ons I’m missing, it’s about diversity and control.
How do you plan on newly developed Add-Ons ever making it to a recommeded status? All things start small, none of the Add-Ons that are Recommended, werde noticed by the Mozilla Staff from day one. The beauty of add-ons is that they do not require an active interest by the browser-maker, just of the author and those who what to use them.
@Mozilla_Support I would really love some input here (or are you busy coding the unlimited add-on support, which is the only acceptable reason for your silence?).
2 Likes
Kiwi is not great in all ways, but it’s better than Firefox.
Not even just one of many others. Firefox has become a pointless choice, when it was formerly a viable choice. To make a game analogy, Firefox was a lackluster player who had one very powerful secret weapon, powerful enough to win frequently. Since the switchover, Firefox is a lackluster player, period.
The out-of-control extension free-for-all was and still is everything that Firefox has going for it.
2 Likes
@d-r-k You’re right, of course. The objective should not be to allow sideloading but to allow addons from AMO. But sideloading in the nightly build (which is pre-beta) is a good first step.
It seems that the approved addons are part of a ‘collection’ on AMO. During migration any addon not in this collection is relegated to a ‘not supported’ bucket. The obvious way forward is to allow addons that are known to work and are assessed as harmless to be put in another collection - ‘unapproved’. Users would have to opt in to this collection.
Getting an addon like mine into this new collection could involve two steps:
1 That the author has tested in nightly. Mozilla could monitor that with telemetry. (That would solve the problem Kim Cosmos identified.)
2 Maybe a stricter automatic validation tool, depending on the addon’s permissions. Addons such as mine, which are mainly content scripts options and local storage, are very low risk.
But what I’d really like now is a commitment to enable addons from AMO eventually. Or at least something more positive than the vague marketing-speak we’ve had for months. Then I’ll just carry on using 68 and wait. (The early Maemo builds lacked a few features too!)
And some sign that the Fenix team are reading this?