Is this expected behavior? Firefox on Android - when offline Firefox won't load cache of page when you navigate to it but does load it if you navigate away and press the back button?

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Turn off all wifi/internet
  2. Navigate to a website you’ve visited before (you should see “server not found error”)
  3. Navigate to any other website (still see sever not found)
  4. Click back (you now see the cached version of the initial site you tried to visit)

This is strange to me because:

It didn’t show the cached version the first time (or at least and option for it)

The cached version only loads after visiting another page and tapping the back button. I understand this is likely do to Firefox using cached pages when you hit back in normal internet connected browsing but still seems odd. This also isn’t the behavior on the desktop version.

Does anyone know if this is expected behavior or if there is a bug ticket open for it? I tried searching but didn’t have much luck.

Note: Pixel 3a with FF 68.3.0

Also posted here https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/ed6g4d/_/

Can confirm this, Android 9, 68.5.0.

My steps:

  • enable aeroplane mode
  • clear phone memory (ensure firefox is killed)
  • start firefox
  • observe the selected tab reports server not found
  • navigate to google.com and back
  • observe cached version of original page displayed