I’m losing my mind here.
I’m trying to load a simple xpi file I created from this walkthrough below using Android Firefox Nightly.
Things I’ve done so far
Tried different compression methods to make the zip/xpi
Set xpinstall.signatures.required to false
Set xpinstall.whitelist.required to false
Made sure add on has an ID
I’m losing my mind here because as far as I know there is no way to know why the xpi/zp file is just showing as grayed out and not installable?
Hey @JamieFireFox. What do you mean by “the xpi/[zip] file is just showing as grayed out and not installable”?
As mentioned in the Developing extensions for Firefox for Android, the web-ext CLI tool is the recommended way to get a development extension from your computer to your Android device.
At the moment Firefox for Android only supports installing add-ons directly from addons.mozilla.org; attempting to install an add-on from another site will end up downloading the XPI file. That said, there is a developer/poweruser feature that allows users to install a locally saved XPI file. See this Reddit thread for details.
At the moment Firefox for Android only supports installing add-ons directly from addons.mozilla.org; attempting to install an add-on from another site will end up downloading the XPI file.
Is this documented anywhere? It would be very useful as an aside on Extension Workshop’s Self distribution page, for example. The current version of the page makes it seem like the only “downsides” to self distribution are lack of visibility and the need to publish an update manifest manually. No out-of-the-box availability on Android is kind of a big deal.
Also, does anyone know where the issue is being tracked? I assume that the behavior is not intentional and that Android should eventually support unlisted extensions (?).
@robinmetral, I just did a quick Bugzilla search and the best match I found was bug 1874530: “When download .xpi file in Fenix, should ask user install it or not, like Firefox desktop”.
I just created issue 2028 on the Extension Workshop project to track your documentation improvement suggestion.
@dotproto thank you so much!
@appgalaxy no offense, but this topic has nothing to do with the app you’re advertising. Also, if you’re going to make claims about why Mozilla doesn’t currently allow unlisted addons on Firefox for Android, please back them up with reliable sources. I suspect that this is just LLM-generated nonsense and I’ve reported it as spam.
Thank you for your feedback! I apologize if my response seemed off-topic or unsupported. My intention was to provide helpful information, but I understand the importance of staying relevant and citing reliable sources. I’ll ensure future responses are more accurate and contextually appropriate. 