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MSids , to Technology in 10 Reasons You Should Switch From Chrome to Firefox.

I wish the password autofill feature was more robust for Firefox on Android. Using it as my default password provider but it regularly does not pick up on password fields.

Hadriscus ,

I've had this happen with obscure government sites that look like they were made in the 90s, I manually add the login & password for these

bcgm3 ,

Dunno if this helps you at all, but I've been using BitWarden to manage my passwords since I made the switch from Chrome to Firefox (both on PC and my Android phone). It doesn't fill passwords automatically in either case, but it's not much extra work to invoke BitWarden to fill those fields as-needed on either device, and it works very consistently. It's also (I'm told) much more secure. Just thought I'd share that here!

Rai ,

BitWarden is adding autofill!

Appoxo ,

Personally I prefer ctrl + l

niisyth ,

So, I've been using Bitwarden as an autofill service in Android and that works just as well I feel.
Atleast for login details.

lovesickoyster , to Technology in 10 Reasons You Should Switch From Chrome to Firefox.

The only reason I have chrome even installed is because I am forced to use it for chromecast every once in a while.

Psythik ,

I use Ungoogled Chromium exclusively for YouTube, cause my graphics card csn upscale videos and convert them to HDR, but not in Firefox. The moment I get those features in Firefox, I'm done with Chrome for good.

Silentiea ,
@Silentiea@lemm.ee avatar

There's a video service my therapist uses that refuses to run in Firefox. I expect it probably could, but it's a lot less work to just launch chrome for that one use case.

stoly ,

Install a user agent switcher. There are several for Firefox and you can spoof chrome.

Silentiea ,
@Silentiea@lemm.ee avatar

Welllll I also have the other use case of my partner refuses to switch, so she wants chrome on the computer too.

stoly ,

Use different user accounts. Do you own thing. You can have both installed.

Silentiea ,
@Silentiea@lemm.ee avatar

I do have both installed, but it's easier to use chrome for the one use case I have since it's going to be installed anyway for her

Edit: oh you mean a user agent switcher too... Well, that seems like work 😛

stoly ,

I'm saying that you log in as "jojo" to the computer and another account is called "jojo's gf". You can do whatever you want in each and won't bother the other. Computers are designed for muiltiuser use.

Silentiea ,
@Silentiea@lemm.ee avatar

It doesn't bother either of us to be using the same login on the computer. And it doesn't really bother her that firefix is installed nor me that chrome is.

And since chrome is sitting right there, it's the easiest way to use my therapist's video service.

sherlockholmez , to Technology in 10 Reasons You Should Switch From Chrome to Firefox.

TAB GROUPS, FIREFOX, BRING BACK TAB GROUPS.

And no, extensions aren't helping, their UX is so much worse.

That's just a make or break feature for me.

harsh3466 ,

I would love tab groups

jh34 ,
@jh34@lemmy.world avatar

So I tried to find what tab groups are but most of the results are feature request threads so apologies if this isn't what you want.

Waterfox will soon be adding some sort of tab grouping feature akin to what tree-style-tab extension does.
Here's the blogpost about it https://www.waterfox.net/blog/waterfox-x-treestyletab/

Again I'm not sure if that type of grouping is what you're looking for but if it is consider watching out for the feature release. Longtime waterfox user and haven't had many complaints, Alex has quickly responded to the two issues I made in the github including a feature request that got added within a week (ability to unload tabs with right click).

ilinamorato ,

Not OP, but this is one of my long-time desires too. I'm pretty sure they mean Tab Groups implemented in the way Chrome does natively. Currently no extension on Firefox can do it on the tab bar because no extension can modify the tab bar.

limelight79 ,

When I right click on a tab in Firefox, I can reopen it in a container. The containers (at first glance) seem to be limited to Personal, Work, Banking, Shopping, and Facebook (which is probably there because I have Facebook container installed). In settings I can modify the container tabs available. (And turn the feature on or off, but it's already on because of Facebook container.)

Is that what that is? It looks a lot like the example you linked. Firefox 123.0, but it's been there for quite a while.

ilinamorato ,

Not really, though the functionalities are adjacent and I could see how one would make that mistake. I do indeed use container tabs, and they're a killer feature.

Tab groups are merely organizational, allowing you to reference, store, close, and save groups of tabs en masse; by contrast, container tabs don't do ANY organization at all; you can't group them all together, move them all to a new window as one, bookmark them all, close them all, etc.

limelight79 ,

Interesting, thanks. Seems like the containers could be expanded into the tab group functionality without too much trouble.

ilinamorato ,

True, and I would love the ability to link them, but I think having them linked by default would be confusing to users who don't need containerization. "Wait, I already logged in to that!"

sherlockholmez ,

Yes, albeit like Vivaldi/Arc.

mellowheat , to Technology in 10 Reasons You Should Switch From Chrome to Firefox.

How many of these apply to ungoogled-chromium?

omnomed ,

A lot of the privacy aspects mentioned in the article would apply but the extra features(like facebook container) would not. The extension support is also an issue since the extensions themselves have their own privacy policies, so if you get any which are hosted on google owned chrome web store all your privacy cautiousness goes down the drain unless you're using a vpn.

Firefox addons also have their own privacy policies but you can simply choose the ones with open source licenses so it should be rather simple to be more protected.

sherlockholmez , to Technology in 10 Reasons You Should Switch From Chrome to Firefox.

Look at how Vivaldi and Arc do tab management.

Yankee_Self_Loader , to Technology in 10 Reasons You Should Switch From Chrome to Firefox.

You guys switched away from Firefox?

DrQuickbeam ,

Switched away to Vivaldi and Opera on desktop years ago due to better design and ability to swap between workspaces. Trying to migrate back to Firefox for ethical reasons. Desktop design still lags behind but privacy is great.

CH3DD4R_G0BL1N ,
@CH3DD4R_G0BL1N@sh.itjust.works avatar

Been with the fox since before the quantum update. I never realized it was as obscure as it apparently is.

amorpheus ,

It wasn't, popularity waned slowly over the years.

odelik ,

Years ago Firefox had a massive memory leak that would wind up crashing FX randomly or just crushing your system resources. The bug persisted for years. and I swirched to Chrome to get away from that poor experience. A few years back, a random community contributer, that was also fed up, dug in and fixed several issues responsible for the leaks. I remeber thinking that I should give FX a go again, but didn't until relatively recently.

daddyjones , to Technology in 10 Reasons You Should Switch From Chrome to Firefox.
@daddyjones@lemmy.world avatar

Does anyone have any experience with Firefox on Android?

RunAroundDesertYou ,

For me it is great on a smartphone but pretty underwhelming on my android tablet. It doesn't scale websites properly on the larger screen and doesn't support a tab list on top anymore (like Firefox on desktops).

antihumanitarian ,

It runs great now. Most importantly, it supports extensions like ublock.

Drummyralf ,

Works mostly great. Addons like uBlock Origin and Super Agent (auto reject all cookies) is great for your mobile experience.

I noticed Youtube site sometimes has weird framerates. But since Google removed premium lite subscription, I refuse to use the Youtube app and just view with uBlock in browser, even with the framerate issues.

laughterlaughter , (edited )

Yes. It used to suck, say, 10 years ago. My baseline was Youtube and Reddit (back then, okay?) Could I watch Youtube videos the same way as with Chrome or Android browser? No? Then, not ready. Did i.reddit.com open fine? No? Not ready.

Then it happened. And I switched and it has been wonderful ever since.

The only thing that I miss is the "pull down page to reload" gesture [EDIT: THANK YOU ALL! I'VE ENABLED IT - GREAT!!!!]. Not sure why Firefox hasn't implemented that yet. Patents? And also, when a video is in an iframe, it won't respect the "block autoplay" feature. The rest is dandy.

camelbeard ,

I don't really visit reddit anymore, but still end up there sometimes because of a google search. Anyway there is an extension for Firefox Android to always show old Reddit. So you don't have to log in or install the app.

laughterlaughter ,

Yup. I know all that. But I was talking about back then when Mobile Firefox simply didn't render reddit correctly. As soon as it did, I switched.

eatfudd ,

Settings > customize. Pull to refresh is there

laughterlaughter ,

You change my life. Thanks!

cujo255 ,

You can enable the refresh gesture in the settings in Firefox

laughterlaughter ,

Thanks!

Blackmist ,

Yeah, it's alright.

You can install an ad blocker in it, so it's automatically better than Chrome.

With that and a few cookie popup removers, it's almost like the web is usable again.

Toribor ,
@Toribor@corndog.social avatar

Firefox on Android is great. I migrated that first before I actually migrated back to Firefox on desktop.

maniac ,
@maniac@lemmy.world avatar

Using use daily. Only problem I sometimes have is the inability to upload images, so I just use duckduckgo's browser

DrQuickbeam ,

I recently made the switch. Make sure to install whatever add-ons you need, turn on the "open links in apps" setting, and turn on the "pull to refresh" setting. Import your bookmarks and you can still use the Android password manager. It's not 100% as smooth, but it's pretty close.

DrQuickbeam ,

The main problems I have with it now are sometimes there are still issues with loading between browser and apps. Like it might open multiple tabs trying to open an app, and it leaves the app redirect pages open in your tabs list. Additionally, sometimes (like 3% of the time) website scaling doesn't always work, especially on older sites or those made with janky CMS's, and I've also rarely had problems with some dynamic content like inline forms and graphs.

rob_t_firefly ,
@rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world avatar

Firefox on Android is fine, except they insist upon disabling about:config on the main branch of the browser for some damn stupid reason. You have to use a nightly or beta build to be trusted with your own config that much.

Personally, I ended up switching to the Fennec fork over this.

markpaskal ,

Its ok but I regularly have to swipe the app away and re open it when it displays a blano screen instead of the website.

Thermal_shocked ,

with ublock origin plugin, it's amazing

Delusion6903 ,

It is my default. I use ublock and Dark Background Light Text extensions. And the reader view is better than any chromium phone browser.

bitwolf ,

It's great but they are two, reported, bugs that annoy me.

First, it sometimes gets stuck half way between dark and light mode.

Second, sometimes it gets stuck starting to load a page. The webciew gets stuck but not the chrome. If you switch tabs the same page will appear. If you enter a new page it will never load.
A force close fixes it but it's annoying.

Using beta is imperative since it enables add-ons . However the bugs are also in stable.

Sheldan ,

I am, sometimes there is an issue with videos in Fullscreen, where the video plays just somewhere to the top and off screen, besides that it's fine.

Kedly , (edited ) to Technology in 10 Reasons You Should Switch From Chrome to Firefox.

I feel like anyone on Lemmy who isnt yet using Firefox is the kind of person who isnt going switch now because an article told them they should

edit: it seems I had a stroke (not seriously) while writing this message, and have since edited it so it makes sense

pathief , to Technology in 10 Reasons You Should Switch From Chrome to Firefox.
@pathief@lemmy.world avatar

I've been moving away from Google in the last year and moving to Firefox was one of my first moves. It's honestly a downgrade in usability but I guess that applies to all alternative products.

I just wish I could sync my bookmarks between desktop and mobile. Seems like no one has this problem but firefox sync just does not work for me. It just says last update was never. Let me know if you know how to fix it.

ExperimentalGuy ,

What was the downgrade in usability you saw? I used to be an avid chrome user turned Firefox, but I would say the opposite.

pathief ,
@pathief@lemmy.world avatar
  • Tab Grouping would be my first pick.

  • When I first started using Firefox on Linux, dragging tabs was really reallyyyyyy bad but they have heavily improved it. UI just feels more polished on chrome

  • Sync doesn't work for me, though it seems to work for everyone else. It doesn't give me any error or a hint to what the problem might me, which is just bad UX.

  • Chromecasting an entire tab doesn't work, though I guess can't we can't blame Firefox for that, can we?

  • My unit tests take at the very least twice as long to run on Firefox

  • Pinned tabs occasionally just disappear and I have to create everything again. Extensions exist to prevent this but don't work with multi containers, which is honestly Firefox best feature.

ExperimentalGuy ,

What stops you from finding extensions that implement similar functionality? I know tree style tabs are pretty popular instead of tab grouping. This also so the first time I've heard of sync or pinned tabs not working. I'm kinda curious ab ur setup if youd be cool with sharing that? I feel like it might be a setup problem instead of a software one.

pathief ,
@pathief@lemmy.world avatar

Firefox extensions can't mess with Firefox tabs. Sure you have extensions such as tree style tabs but they don't really change the tab bar, they add side-panel with your tabs in a tree style format. This means you end up with a tab bar and a tab panel, which is a bit clunky. There are ways to hide the tab bar by messing with the userChrome file but that's not user friendly at all.

I don't have any particular setup that is too outrageous or different from anyone else. I just use Firefox, whatever is the most recent version in the arch repository. Ocasionally I open the browser and I don't have any pinned tabs, I don't know why. It's not a frequent event or something tied to anything I can think off, it just appears to be random.

The sync problem has been reported here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1879022

ExperimentalGuy ,

Damn I was wrong my b. Haha at least now I know Firefox doesn't work everywhere, I appreciate it.

pathief ,
@pathief@lemmy.world avatar

It still works and is my daily driver! On both mobile and desktop!

I think it's extremely important to support Google alternatives and I will continue to do so. Firefox still has pain points and recognizing them is also important.

cuchilloc ,

Just log out and log back in, and make sure you use the same account on both machines .

pathief ,
@pathief@lemmy.world avatar

I've done that several times.

Delusion6903 ,

Sync works great over here. It even syncs history which is great because I use an extension on the laptop to limit history to 28 days and that becomes synced with Android without an additional extension.

werefreeatlast , to Technology in 10 Reasons You Should Switch From Chrome to Firefox.

And one thing that irks is that you can't have a local file be your homepage and new tab page. I want to have all my work related links in a local immutable HTML page and every new tab or every time I open the browser it goes there for me to choose what of 5 links to pick....time sheet, team site, hr site, all the vendors sites etc...npr, my home servers etc. c'mon man! The only way to make it happen is to serve it on a local server that I am not allowed to install, or a server at home that I don't actually want to do.

mac ,
@mac@infosec.pub avatar

Host it on Netlify or something similar, it's free.

JaY_III ,

Extensions are your friend
My new tab has all my sites pinned. Have a look at the add-ons I am 99% sure what you want has already been made

werefreeatlast ,

Add-ons have no access to the local system anymore:

https://mastodon.social/@werefreeatlast/112004523925195688

You know, for security reasons.

nao , to Technology in 10 Reasons You Should Switch From Chrome to Firefox.

using chrome in 2024

5opn0o30 , to Technology in 10 Reasons You Should Switch From Chrome to Firefox.

I love Firefox. Been enjoying DDG browser on iOS.

latetolemmy , to Technology in 10 Reasons You Should Switch From Chrome to Firefox.

Thanks but I'm sticking to Brave

Delusion6903 ,

Forgetting politics, I liked Brave. But sometimes they do seem a little shady. I'm loving Librewolf even more, though there's no Android version. It does sync with Firefox and Mull though.

phreekno , to Technology in 10 Reasons You Should Switch From Chrome to Firefox.
@phreekno@lemmy.world avatar

Firefox Multiaccount Containers, the thing that can't be beat by even the best chrome derivatives

odelik , to Technology in 10 Reasons You Should Switch From Chrome to Firefox.

I switched on my personal devices (need to use chrome for gsuite integrations at work).

On desktop, it's great and I'm loving it. And kicking myself for not switching back sooner after the massive-years-long-memory-leak was finally fixed a few years back

On mobile, it's mostly great. The privacy focus, ad block support, and plug-in support is a plus. But I realllly want the tab groups that mobile Chrome introduced a while back. That had such a great mobile UX that I've found myself still loading up chrome now and then when I find myself wanting that UX. I looked to see if there were plugins that could make that possible, but was disappointed to see none and let down that it seems impossible with the current tab implementation.

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