One important thing is that they finally fixed Manifest v3 support on Android. Host permission prompts are working in the new 120 beta! Manually editing permissions is still not available, but now that permission prompts are working, this is no longer a showstopper. There are still some other Android MV3 showstoppers, like lack of history and bookmarks API, as well as a few differences from Chrome that affect both desktop and mobile.
Anyways, the real headline here is that they are giving away free t-shirts to the first 200 people to submit a well-tested extension and enable Android support in their AMO listing.
Hopefully the free t-shirts leads to great extensions rather than sloppy jobs. I was able to qualify for it pretty easily, but I nit picked the quality of my extension's experience myself before submitting it, and didn't end up getting any feedback other than "looks great" -- so not actually sure what the quality assurance would have been like if it were a crappier extension.
I know this is a controversial opinion here and there's a lot to complain about Google and Youtube leadership, but my best client is actually paying for Youtube Premium. It surprises me that I derive more value from YT than other streaming services. We can discuss if the pricing is fair or not, but we already pay for Netflix/Prime/HBO/etc and everybody seems okay with that (except for the recent prices increases in some regions). I'd like to understand the reasons people are spending (so much?) time on testing browsers and blockers in this case, when the widespread opinion seems to be that creators should be compensated for their work.
Regarding pricing, they need to decouple it from YouTube Music. I have a music streaming service and I’m not changing. Currently the price is too high and imagine the bundling is part of the reason.
Interesting. I started on the other side, as a Google Music subscriber years ago and only realized how much I appreciated YouTube Red later on.
Of course, as soon as my credit card date needed to be updated, they kicked me off of the introductory pricing I was told I could keep forever. It's now about double that price (your price may vary for "reasons"). Then they killed Google Music in favor of the inferior YouTube Music.
This is it for me. I am doing a YouTube Prime trial, and I have found that the removal of ads is the only feature I care for, and the price is simply way too high for that.
I was excited about downloading videos for offline viewing, but it turns out I can't download them to my laptop (only to my phone), so that's a feature I won't use after all.
I'm not interested in the music streaming service or any of the other features, either.
So ad removal is the only feature I'm using. I would pay half of what they are charging currently for just ad removal alone, but since that's not an option, I am about to cancel the trial and return to traditional adblocking.
That's very specific to you though - nobody I know is watching YouTube over mainstream content (although I'm sure this is different for younger people). The only reason I was subscribing was that I watch the occasional podcast (maybe a few times per week) on my TV (so I can't adblock). They litter those videos with ads to the point it's unwatchable. £12.99 a month (more than Spotify, Netflix, Disney etc.) is so expensive that I'll just not watch. Decouple and give me no ads for even £7.99 and I'll do it.
But you can access YouTube content for free. You aren't paying for access to the content like you do with other services; you are paying just for ad removal.
I think if you refuse to watch ads the difference is moot.
And it’s fine that people who ad block get the service for free but they’re going to be playing a cat and mouse game forever, the same way I could get the New York Times for free if I threw links at archive.is, but if I’m a regular reader that experience is going to suck to the point of a subscription being worth it.
I also think that all of these streaming services are so ridiculously affordable compared to most other life expenses. Nobody seems to mind spending $12 on one trip to McDonald’s or Starbucks for product that only lasts a fraction of a day but somehow a month of watching zero ads on YouTube with a few extra features thrown in isn’t worth the price.
Not everyone makes the same income, has the same expenses, or has the same priorities.
I disabled adblock about a month before started my YouTube trial because I wanted to do a fair comparison. What I have found is that the removal of ads is simply not worth the $18/month YouTube Premium costs in my country. For that price, I would rather just see ads even without any adblocker.
There are a LOT of things I could spend $216 on that would give me more pleasure than not seeing YouTube ads for a year. Even better, I could just reconfigure my adblocker a couple of times a year (something I already do due to the malware arms race). That's way better than cutting $216 out of my hobby budget.
Now, if I had the option to get YouTube Premium (or some reduced version of that only offered ad removal) for about half the current price, then it would probably be worth it.
(And no, I do not buy fast food, either. It is more expensive and tastes worse than something I can whip together at home.)
When I want to compensate creators for their work I subscribe to Nebula or Patreon. YouTube stifles creators and creator success happens in spite of the platform a lot of the time (consider: summoning salt’s multi-hour analysis of Megaman speedruns had to fight demonetization for literally days! We still have no real idea what the root cause was!)
>YouTube stifles creators and creator success happens in spite of the platform a lot of the time
It's a networking effect, unfortunately. While there are some very talented creators out there, there is an oder of magnitude between "is a great creator that quickly gathers an audience" and "a creator whose audience will move en masse with them to a new platform". Microsoft spent hundreds of millions trying to appeal to the latter with Mixer and it just didn't cut through despite having exclusive access to some of the largest streamers.
It's tough, and user apathy means it's hard to move off, even if you happen to find someone else to pay.
> When I want to compensate creators for their work I subscribe to Nebula or Patreon. YouTube stifles creators and creator success happens in spite of the platform a lot of the time.
While I do agree that platforms in general tend to "stifle" creators it shouldn't be discounted how much YouTube actually does pay them. Especially in comparison to other platforms, e.g., TikTok, Instagram or Twitch, it seems to be quite fair. Though if you want to just compensate the creator other avenues tend to be far more better in terms money in from you -> money out to the creator.
Why? They put up content on the web that people can watch without paying for it. Why would I stop viewing that content just because I don't want to pay their premium price?
Be it from ad or from YouTube premium, Google is still getting roughly the same amount of money out of you. If you dislike Google’s actions so much, the only ways to not give them money are either to stop watching YouTube altogether or use an ad blocker. In fact, watching with ad blockers is still the worse option since you are still increasing the YouTubers’ popularity and making the site more visited by other people (who are probably not using an ad blocker)
I avoid it where I can, but some folks only post videos on youtube. It's much harder for a video-sharing alternative to get off the ground because google (and others in big tech) completely distort the playing field.
I think this is evidence that the opinion that creators should be paid is not widespread. It’s interesting that when presented with evidence contrary to your beliefs you question the evidence and not your beliefs.
HN is a bubble. I know zero people outside of my circle of friends and family that know what an ad blocker is.
So are you saying that the majority of people are against paying creators for their work? You mean deep down they believe people should work for free? I'm interested in the evidence you mention.
For me the reason is not supporting YT censorship. Not just the random strikes on accounts, or video de-monetization, but doing things like removing the dislike button, and poking people about “misinformation”.
It used to be you could see the ratio of likes to dislikes on videos, but they forcefully removed that from all videos. YT claimed it was to prevent bullying, but it was always possible to disable likes on your own videos. I think the real reason was: All the major news networks had extreme dislike ratios on their videos, and they wanted to promote that over alt sources of information.
With regards to being compensated, if I want to support a creator, I will just donate to them. Many creators ended up using Patreon due to de-monetization.
If you don't need those features, then its another app to install and take space up on your phone. Firefox is useful anyway for other sites so you'd still have it installed whether you install new pipe or not.
I also don't like ads. And I understand everyone needs to eat. I value some content on YouTube and I respect their right to receive revenue for their good work. I think changing me money straightforward is the most respectful and honest way for everyone.
Absolutely, and I agree. I am a YouTube premium subscriber, and while nothing is perfect, YT does a fairly good job. Heck, they actually publish how much they pay their creators (45% - 55% of ad revenue).
Sure, it could be more, it could be less. At least it's light years ahead of what TikTok even pretends to do.
I don't use YouTube enough to justify a subscription. I paid for one briefly when my kids used to watch songs on it early in the morning (on our shared TV, not a personal device), so I didn't have to skips ads in a sleep deprived state.
While I find the ads a little long and too frequent, I don't mind too much. The reason is that I think YouTube is such a great facility, up there with Wikipedia and Google maps.
The about of virtually boundless information. Guides, Conference talks, old kids shows from my childhood, tutorials on how to fix cars, maintain bikes etc.
It's one of the few things online where I feel a paid subscription or ads are justified.
uBlock Origin with Firefox for Android is the only way to fly when it comes to having a fast and secure browsing experience on mobile. Looking forward to even more extensions coming in future.
Ah yep I was just referring to the group, there's an umbrella checkbox to enable the whole thing.
I also don't get much popup pain on desktop but I have always assume it's because I visit very different sites. Will be interesting to keep an eye out and see, maybe it's broken on Android.
It used to be that all scripting engines were off limits, because you could easily write a commercial app that didn't give Apple 30% of all revenue. And Firefox is pretty obviously a big scripting platform which you can do anything with.
But since then they've made so many exceptions to that policy, where the applications are important to keep people in the Apple ecosystem, that it's hardly a strict rule anymore. So while they probably could make yet another exception, they probably feel a general purpose browser such as Firefox would risk being the last exception they make.
this is the false choice we get presented by these evil companies: we have a duopoly where you choose between surveillance but having control (Android), or having no control but no surveillance (Apple). Both are horrible in their own right, but there’s no open alternative that’s viable for mobile at the moment.
For my part, I bought a Linux phone recently. Hopefully at some point I can find the chance to find places to contribute and make some contributions, although first impressions are… unideal. I would’ve hoped it would move past Android 2.x era performance - but then again it’s in need of people to contribute and improve it, so I oughta do that. As should others interested in carving out a better mobile option!
yeah, I should say less. you can thankfully opt out of it - and I do - but it’s pure enshittification and with the premiums Apple charges, the fact that they layer in ANY kinds of advertisements and related tracking mechanisms is an insult to customers.
Pinephone Pro. Absolutely not usable for everyday use as far as I can tell - missing camera support, constant app crashes and hangups, web browsing is a decent but hacky version of Firefox with drawbacks associated to that, inputs are not consistent, and overall performance is shockingly poor and inconsistent.
However, some good notes - the Phosh/GNOME interface is nice, hardware privacy switches are included on the device, and there’s a particular joy in seeing a terminal up and running and realizing you’ve got a full desktop OS on a slab :)
Wow, if that happens I can really see myself getting an iPhone. Haven't used one for must be 8 years now, but the disrespect from Google towards the open internet has been pretty galling, and the voice commands and speech to text are absolutely fucked, and the exclusive presence of uBlock Origin on Android (of all systems!) is the only thing keeping me on it at this point.
Other browsers on iOS are already supporting extensions, with WebKit limitations, including ones like uBO. iOS is not a priority for Mozilla at this point, or we’d have seen _some extension support_.
Return to mobile, to be more accurate. This isn't a few feature users are being given. This is a feature that was taken away from users, then promised to be returned, then Mozilla did nothing for years, and now finally we're getting back some of the functionality we had before. Not all, but some.
Should be clarified that it was taken away in a complete rewrite of all of the Android-specific code. They believed ripping off the bandaid would help with security issues and legacy cruft. So they didn't just cut out add-ons without any improvements.
It did take far too long to return, though. Given that it's Firefox, the browser known for its add-ons, I would have heavily prioritized shipping addons with the initial launch of the rewritten Firefox. It's not some optional feature.
And sadly all android webviews are Chrome (and with a lot of additional effort at least Chromium based). Mozilla should release a webview and fight for signature inclusion.
I'm not an Android expert but when I click a link in an email it opens the preview via Firefox (I've set it as the default browser). Is it another thing?
That's a feature called Custom Tabs. It's essentially a small barebones Firefox app and yes it is using Gecko.
The parent poster is talking about system webviews. They're used when any app wants to show web content embedded inside their apps, and yeah there's no Firefox option for those.
Android allows for Gecko web views (1) and Firefox Custom Tabs. It’s just that the Chrome Webview is available by default and does not need to be embedded, thus reducing app size and load times.
Not strictly related to the current thread but I used apps (now uninstalled for that specific reason) that insisted on trying to open Chrome's Custom Tabs and just crashed if that wasn't possible; never found a way to redirect those that didn't require rooting.
LinkSheet [1] can do that. It's a small app that you set as the default browser and shows a prompt when you open a link to allow you to choose what to do (eg. open in browser, open in app, share link, remove tracking URL parameters, etc.).
If you don't care about any of the extra functionality, you can configure it to always open your preferred browser and convert Custom Tabs intents to regular ones. No root access required.
If you have nightly, you can go on the normal Firefox addon site and install any addons that have already added mobile support. You used to have to manually make a collection and add addons to it, then add that collection to Firefox. But now you can just install addons directly from the usual addons site (instead of the limited mobile Firefox one).
Apparently the "Add to Firefox" button is clickable on FF 119, but it just downloads the xpi and you can't do anything with it. On nightly it installs directly.
If you're interested in browser extensions on mobile, we're building a way to deliver any extension to any mobile device, without any download.
The way it works is the extension runs on a browser on the server, which is then streamed to the device, and usable through any regular mobile browser, such as Safari, Chrome, Brave, Firefox, etc.
This browser technology removes the restriction on extensions on mobile, as well as limits some (but not even close to all) of the security risks of extensions. In a real sense it enables: cross-browser extensions.
While it sounds promising, it suffers from at least four major drawbacks.
2. Rather than having many extensions on a single browser, this effectively serves a single extension from a given web endpoint, but crucially permits you to browse anywhere from there with that extension loaded.
3. While he have future plans for a "store", there is currently no store. This means there is no central place to discover extensions, and also no central authority to vet and restrict them regarding security.
4. You have to consider infrastructure, at least for now before we launch a managed service for this. While the application is easy to set up, maintaining a large fleet could bring additional workload that may limit your distribution, or increase your costs.
If you believe there is something worthwhile in exploring these avenues beyond existing browser technologies, and pushing the applications of the browser and the web further than they have been pushed before (at least in this meta sense), I encourage you to come get involved. We're open source and happily accept contributions that align with the project's goals: https://github.com/BrowserBox/BrowserBox
But it's good to see Firefox is finally implementing their long held goal to do this! This will probably cause other vendors to do the same, I imagine? What would be the reasons that vendors would resist bringing extensions to mobile?
Exactly! The lack of privacy and inherent security risks involved in trusting a SaaS provider such as Cloudflare Browser Isolation, or Ericom, or any of the other RBI providers is a real and valid concern.
That's one of the reasons we created BrowserBox, and what distinguishes BrowserBox from all its competitors:
it is self-hosted, and open source.
So not only can you run it on infra you trust, but you can vet all the source code to ensure it meets your privacy and security needs.
That being said the privacy/security & trust vs convenience trade off of using SaaS is acceptable for some customers, and we are opening up a SaaS version of our product soon, diversifying away from only "on-prem" deployments.
You're suggesting that it's made as a comment dishonestly, and that you can decide what's too long or where it should be placed?
Well, luckily you can't. But, anyway, it's not a little long, it's perfect! Hahaha :)
I get if you feel that way about it, but it's not how it is. So, it's good that you don't get to decide that for me! Hahahaha :)
In other words: "Should" may be that way for you, but not for me. More generally, you could consider that the comment you're replying to adds value to the discussion, but yours doesn't.
I mean, I get if you don't like promotion and that's ok -- but this is less that and more exploring some technical possibilities that are highly relevant to the OP.
But anyway, if you dislike it, that's not about me at all, that's just about you. You don't need to pretend it's "should" about somebody else, now do you, right? :)
What's the difference with desk/laptop plugins? The article mentions payment and personal details, but why isn't that a consideration for desktop? Different user base?
As I understand, the codebase is quite different. It's an Android app that wraps around GeckoView, with most of the UI is custom code written in Android-specific Kotlin code. This includes a lot (but not all) of the code used to implement WebExtensions.
I don't think this has any specific unique security implications other than that of introducing a lot of new code and an extensions runtime that a lot more people will suddenly be writing code for. The article mentions in the next sentence that malware extensions also plague the desktop browsers.
I don't really know much about it, but there is already GeckoView, allowing you to package a better browser in your app: https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview/
I have noticed it in Allan Wang experimental/toy repo https://github.com/AllanWang/GeckoView-Playground and with a few changes, I created a trivial "app" for Facebook Messenger (wrapping its web version to a mobile app).
Since Fenix's first release they've been saying that the absurd limitations on add-ons support were only temporary, and they would have quickly increased the number of supported ones.
And instead absolutely nothing changed for three years.
Furthermore the insane bugs from which Fenix suffers from its release (https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/12731) (and make it unbearable) have been left hanging, focusing the few resources on dumb ui experiments.
So everything suggested that Mozilla did not care of its Android browser, or actually that they were deliberately sabotaging it.
This news instead represents a huge improvement, hence my bewilderment.
I don't know what people who downvoted my message thought I meant.
Anyways, the real headline here is that they are giving away free t-shirts to the first 200 people to submit a well-tested extension and enable Android support in their AMO listing.
Hopefully the free t-shirts leads to great extensions rather than sloppy jobs. I was able to qualify for it pretty easily, but I nit picked the quality of my extension's experience myself before submitting it, and didn't end up getting any feedback other than "looks great" -- so not actually sure what the quality assurance would have been like if it were a crappier extension.