IMO Firefox on an Android is better than anything you can get on iOS. It fully supports uBlock Origin!
I also use a Pixel phone, though I use LineageOS so I feel less tied to Google
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I find firefox on android unusable because it has this awful, non-native scroll behavior.
On android I use either Brave or Samsung Browser.
What do you mean by non-native scroll behavior? I'm asking seriously, never noticed anything.
Also wondering. I've been using Firefox on Android for at least a couple years now. Works fine for me
Ditto for me.
Firefox for Android used to implement scroll coasting in a way that felt very different from Chrome and native Android apps. I just gave it a try now and it seems like they've fixed it, scrolling feels native now.
I just retested in case they fixed it and no [1]. The easiest way to tell it's non-native scroll is that Android has this effect when you reach the top or bottom that it "stretches" the content. You can try it everywhere (even inside Firefox settings menu) and it will work like that, except for the actual webpage in Firefox.
Another difference in the scroll is that it has much higher friction (deceleration) in Firefox than native Android.
[1] Firefox 103.2.0 on a Samsung S20 with latest updates.
Little late, but for the record, your first issue reeks of a Samsung-specific bug. My Pixel 2 running LineageOS stretches the same in the [phone] settings app as it does in the [Firefox] settings page. Samsung has always had weird quirks in the way their skinned Android runs, and AFAICT, were the absolute worst for causing app developer headaches in the earlier Android days. I would be shocked if they've gotten dramatically better since.
The settings page stretches correctly. The issue is with the webpages.
I'm sure the settings page does - but because Samsung implements APIs a little differently, and this has caused devs issues in the past, I'm assuming the browser with a smaller dev team may have missed this quirk at first glance. Other Chrome-based browsers probably don't have this issue - Chrome's team is very well-funded, and forks likely benefit from Google doing the edge-case testing.
Maybe Firefox is doing something weird, but I've got a coworker with that same phone - so at the very least I can compare my Pixel to his Samsung, and see who threw standards out the window.
I'm not the GP but I've noticed since the switch over to "New" Android Firefox (Fenix or whatever?) scroll events aren't handled properly. That is, dragging your finger around on the screen works, but any other source (keyboard, for example) does nothing. Maybe that's what they were referring to; maybe they have a different issue.
Check out https://www.bromite.org/, it's a android chromium fork with adblocking built in like brave but without the crypto stuff. Also has support for userscripts!
Chromium and therefore still encumbered by this poor Manifest v3 behaviour.
It doesn't have extension support so that's not relevant.
Have you used Firefox for Android recently? That scroll issue was fixed with the release of GeckoView, at least from what I've noticed.
I came from Android, while I agree with Firefox + ublock supremacy, I've been using Sarai with Ad Guard Pro (VPN based) and it has been good.
I don't think their reasoning for switching to iOS was because of Chrome specifically, it was because of Google as a whole.
There are browsers for iOS with really good ad and tracker blocking. I use Orion, whose blockers are based on uBlock.
iOS user here.
I forgo the on-device ad-blocking and use DNS blocking. It's a decent catch-all for most things I'm worried about.
NextDNS is one of the better hosted DNS blocklists, IMO
I find Firefox on Android to completely unusable for many of the sites I visit because it doesn't support the Google Translate plugin for some completely idiotic reason. I can only use it on sites that are in English. For everything else, I have to use Chrome.
You can enable translation on Firefox Nightly - I blogged about this (and other) extensions: https://www.quippd.com/writing/2022/01/26/most-wanted-add-on...
I have Firefox Nightly, and it still shows the same small handful of extensions as regular Firefox. Is there some secret menu I have to go to or something? Honestly, this is ridiculous, and it's pretty obvious that Mozilla simply does not want us using any other extensions. They have no right to complain when I use Chrome instead. I need translation just to survive and pay my bills.
> Is there some secret menu I have to go to or something?
Kind of. See the setup section: https://www.quippd.com/writing/2022/01/26/most-wanted-add-on...
To be clear: it is a willful choice by Mozilla to fully protect Android users but to leave iOS users in the turmoil of a constant stream of invasive and malicious ads. I specifically took my parents off of Firefox for this express reason. Brave has a built-in adblocker, as do many other iOS browsers.
And it is not like Mozilla isn’t aware, I believe there are 2-3 open issues on Bugzilla, years old, that have just been left to wither.
Isn't there some rule that any browser on iOS must use the native Safari engine? So if iOS Safari doesn't support something, there's no way for Firefox to add that support. It's basically just a skin.
Yes, but like I said, many other 3rd-party browsers have perfectly fine built-in adblockers.
Hell, you can install Firefox Focus (which is a ‘private mode only’ browser) and that does have built-in adblocking. More perversely, you can use it as a content blocker for Safari.
(No, other browsers using Safari’s engine do not inherit the content blocking)
I repeat: Mozilla is willfully choosing not to protect iOS Firefox users from ads. Plain and simple.
What? Install Firefox Focus on iOS. Use it directly, or select it as a content blocking provider for Safari to get ad blocking in Safari.