I hope this isn't a precursor to removing support for other AdBlock addons(MV2) citing native availability of an AdBlock engine and then gradually shift to acceptable ads etc.
Could definitely be writing on the wall that MV2 support will be deprecated in the future but imo not necessarily a bad thing if it’s not actively developed anyways. Maintaining both MV2 & MV3 support isn’t easily sustainable long term when you factor in the need to prioritize other features.
That said, if this is writing on the wall I’d hope they’ll listen to the community this time and allow the engine to be extended / make it such that a block all ads feature always exists. I’m cautiously optimistic given Mozilla’s track record just over the past year-ish. They have released some great new features that help bring Firefox closer to feature parity with other browsers.
I am a Firefox hopeful and recently switched back to using it as my daily driver when Arc went belly up (but mainly for uBlock Origin support).
>Maintaining both MV2 & MV3 support isn’t easily sustainable long term when you factor in the need to prioritize other features.
There is no feature Firefox provides that is more differentiating than ublock origin. As long as pages load and security issues are patched it is the reason to choose Firefox as a browser. What would they prioritize over it?
I’d like to see more investment in their new profile manager. It feels pretty barebones at the moment. Arc had the ability to link profiles to “spaces” and you could easily switch between them without opening a new window. It was very nice to so easily swap between personal, work, & side business.
And to go one step further, for achieving a profile-per-firefox-window workflow, I suggest to have a look at the underrated extension Sticky Window Containers [0]
While far from being perfect, I find it good enough for keeping things separated, especially when using a desktop/workspace workflow. For example, in workspace/desktop 2 I have a Firefox window opened with the first tab set to "container A", so hitting ctrl-t there opens new tabs with the same container "A", so I'm logged-in for all projects A. In another Firefox window in workspace 3 I work with "business project B" tabs (where I'm logged into different atlassian, github, cloud, gmail, ...)
Then with a Window Manager like i3wm or Sway I set keybinds to jump directly to the window (and workspace), using the mark feature [1]
It's also possible to open websites directly in specific containers so it's flexible. For example on my desktop 8 I have all my AI webchats in "wherever my company pay for it" tabs: `firefox --new-window 'ext+container:name=loggedInPersonnal&url=https://chat.mistral.ai' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessA&url=https://chatgpt.com' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessB&url=https://gemini.google.com' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessB&url=https://claude.ai'`
It's also the only way I found to keep opened multiple chat apps (Teams, Slack, Discord, ...). The alternative electron apps are as resource-hungry, and in my experience never handled multiple accounts well (especially Teams).
What's this supposed to mean ? OP was saying that MV3 is feature-equivalent to MV2 and would like to see MV2 support removed from Firefox just as it was from Chrome. I replied pointing out that's utterly false.
> Maintaining both MV2 & MV3 support isn’t easily sustainable long term when you factor in the need to prioritize other features.
The feature that better adblockers need is one callback that's similar to one that's still in V3. It's not difficult to keep if it's your own codebase.
Zen is great and still mostly Firefox. I use standard Firefox on Android and everything syncs without hassle. The experience is so much better that personally cannot imagine using Chromium anymore. Of course I do wonder if the entire Firefox ecosystem is sustainable long-term funding wise.
Why does everything have to be "actively developed"? Sometimes a program is just done. Better not touch it. I actually do downgrade packages when "actively developing" causes regressions. Not curl or anything sensitive like that, but local programs definately yes.
In case of the extension manifest, that's probably layered on top of the JS engine which does get attention and scrutiny. It's not like an API needs to be updated. If you'd always do that, nothing would ever be interoperable and we'd likely have a hard time trying to communicate.
I'd be genuinely curious what you could switch to that still has MV2 because, AFAIK, Firefox is the last holdout.
Brave still allows you to install uBlock & some other extensions that should technically not be supported under MV3, but they still ship it with support for those.
Just heard about Helium browser, which is just dechromium + uBlock and it's still beta.
> I'd be genuinely curious what you could switch to that still has MV2 because, AFAIK, Firefox is the last holdout.
My last hope is ladybird right now, I don't use Firefox or Chrome as my main browsers anymore, and use them only within temporary sandboxes. Without history, without cookies, without logins for the most part.
For the most part, it doesn't. It's not a consumer ready browser, but a pretty nice little rendering engine. If you use ladybird as bindings, it's a bit unstable right now because they are refactoring a lot of parts in the codebase.
I built my own tools on top of it, mostly to use internet websites and selfhosted kiwix archives with my local agentic env.
I guess what I am saying is that I don't have a primary browser anymore. Not a browser where I just can trust it that it doesn't do shit with my data. Being able to selfhost kiwix is a superb internet experience if you build your own search dashboard for it, I can fully recommend it.
Have to merge my things upstream with ZIMdex when I have the time (probably around June).
It seems to me that --unless you really, strictly compartimentalize your browser usage--, using multiple browsers will only supply your data to more parties.
Why do people say crap like this... Safari was the first browser to completely remove mv2. From all the major browsers Safari has the worse adblocking experience and support for adblocking extensions...
1. Third-party cookie blocking by default — 2003 (Safari 1.0); industry first.
2. Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), using on-device machine learning to identify and limit cross-site trackers — 2017; industry first.
3. Storage Access API prompts for embedded third-party content (e.g., social login widgets) — 2018 (ITP 2.0); industry first (co-developed by WebKit, later adopted as a web standard).
4. Full third-party cookie blocking (no exceptions) — 2020 (ITP in Safari 13.1); industry first for a major browser.
Apple only does things to progress their own business model. Apple failed at becoming an ad business so they pivoted to subscriptions and app revenue. Now they are building an ad business. Just look at their ad revenue.
what's the diff between lite and full? i dont even remember what i use on safari, wipr or something. mostly use firefox but sometimes i casually just let things launch in safari
It may look like it works "just as well" but that's not true. There are numerous things that impact performance and effectiveness that are not possible with chromium-based browsers, or at least have to be done inefficiently, including
Helium still supports MV2, because the upstream hasn't removed related code. They basically turn on/off some macros to enable MV2 again. And this won't last long for sure.
Many people seem to treat it synonymously with "no more procedural request blocking", but that's not a thing Mozilla ever did:
> For Manifest V3 extensions, Chrome no longer supports the "webRequestBlocking" permission (except for policy-installed extensions). Instead, the "webRequest" and "webRequestAuthProvider" permissions enable you to supply credentials asynchronously. Firefox continues to support "webRequestBlocking" in Manifest V3 and provides "webRequestAuthProvider" to offer cross-browser compatibility.
The permission model also seems much more reasonable (less permissions have to be requested upfront at install time) than MV2, so I actually hope Firefox does deprecate it at some point.
The point is that it supports everything that currently matters in any substantial way.
Lots of people have been pointing out that ad companies will figure ways out around it. But they really haven't been.
MV3 and UBOL have been in wide usage for about a year and a half now. And nothing has been changing. Adblocking continues to be great.
The fact of the matter is, the ad block lists were getting so large and the JavaScript functionality was slow and it was significantly impacting page load times. UBOL uses vastly more efficient compiled code that is part of the browser and is just a far better ad blocking experience altogether.
But I guess that just doesn't fit the narrative that people want to believe, where MV3 was part of a big evil plan.
the narrative that google, largest ad company proposed MV3 which limits current functionality of UBO so that UBO Lite can be implemented? Yeah, such a narrative... It's clear google is our buddy here who will never squeeze and exploit any option to push more intrusive and targeted ads and we should totally trust it
Just as one example: Chrome + uBOL on Reddit will show you plenty of "Sponsored" stuff. You can use Inspector to find the offending CSS classes and then use `display: none` on them with something like Stylus[0], but not everybody wants to play that whack-a-mole game on the many sites that push uBOL past its blocking capabilities.
Best is to report the issue using the "Report an issue" in the popup panel while on Reddit site. There could be other issues causing this, for instance if you didn't grant uBOL the permission to inject scripts on the site. Depending on which browser/os the issue occurs, we should be able to narrow down potential causes.
It most definitely is as well. In fact it's better because you don't have the slower page loading times anymore.
And everyone I know who used UBO and switched to UBOL has had no complaints about ads not being blocked.
Whereas people who don't actually use it love to continue to insist that it's this degraded experience that doesn't work as well. And usually when one of them comes up with an example of some ad not being blocked, it turns out because they hadn't configured UBOL to use complete blocking mode.
Everyone who you know is irrelevant. I've tested and see that ads pass through, and tracking passes through with uBo light on Chrome. I can see it in the browser trace, and I can see it in DNS logs.
Your test is irrelevant. There is always going to be some tiny percentage of ads that passed through with any ad blocker. So the fact that you have seen ads passed through with it doesn't actually mean anything.
The only thing that means anything is how well it operates with your average browsing on a daily basis. And it's such a popular extension because it does an amazing job at blocking ads. That's just a fact. The only people who seem to claim otherwise appear to be the ones with an ideological axe to grind. It's silly.
Your opinion is nothingness. I've tested on the same page that uBo on Firefox blocks more than Chrome, and especially it blocks hidden tracking. That's the reality. All else is irrelevant.
Look I'm not an expert in web browsers, but I defer to those extension authors who definitely are. There's some reason uBO doesn't work well in MV3 even though they tried. Whatever technical explanation there is for why MV3 is fine, there's some caveat not mentioned.
As long as MITM proxies still work (which is something that Enterprise customers demand --- even the notoriously-closed Chrome needs to), it will always be possible to filter pages outside of any browser. I've been using one for over 2 decades and it works in any browser.
However, I am also concerned that this is an "embrace extend extinguish" move.
In general, install a proxy which has its own certificate, resign every tls session with those keys, add the certificate of the proxy as a trusted certificate on your device.
I’m not familiar with off the shelf solutions for this that have ad blocking built in. Also ads are injected by JS so you need a mechanism to detect that.
More and more ads are now served from the same domain as the site making it harder to distinguish them from real content.
That's why GP wrote MITM, not just network blocking. MITM implies the middlebox is trusted by the browser in which it has installed a certificate, so can see and modify content.
Hm, you mean basically to edit all HTML, CSS etc. just in time? This seems significantly harder (concepts spread over files being loaded in parallel or being partially cached etc) than to do it in the browser once everything is loaded.
This feels like a betrayal of their ousting of Eich in the first place. I can't imagine a world I would do this and be able to look at myself in the mirror.
You are literally in a thread where 90% of the discussion is surrounding chromium and you think this isn’t a connected idea?
Edit: also crazy that someone who doesn’t want to support the Brave guy would support the browser using the Brave guy’s stuff, but I guess I see lots of chick-fil-a haters shopping in Amazon these days, so who am I to question what’s in vogue?
> Brendan Eich didn't personally write the code, and he doesn't benefit from Firefox using it. If anything this hurts him, since Firefox is catching up to an advantage of Brave without investing their own development resources.
> No matter from what angle I look at this situation, your complaint makes no sense.
Don't assume the positions of people who disagree with you are not thought out. It is a dangerous line of reasoning to go "if only they thought it through for more than five seconds they'd agree with me".
Well the guy running Brave must’ve had absolutely nothing to do with Brave’s Adblock engine going into Firefox, so I can see why you’re acting so smug. After all, why would the guy involved with Brave be involved with Brave’s thing going somewhere other than Brave? Maybe it’s just random evolution! Excellent point, friend. I can tell you thought it out.
If he showed up in the Epstein files I'd stop using Brave. Until then, I'll keep on rolling my eyes whenever someone brings up this stuff from... 2008.
Indeed. I wonder if the folks rejecting Brave have also vetted the political beliefs of everyone that delivers their packages, manufactured their phone, and grown their food.
The injection of politics into absolutely everything is so arbitrary and harmful.
Why should they have to vet everyone? If I learn that the people who deliver my packages, manufacture my phones, or grow my food support practices that I deem fundamentally harmful to society, I change my behavior accordingly. Where does this weird idea come from that I have to vet literally everyone for my rejection of Brave to be valid?
> The injection of politics into absolutely everything is so arbitrary and harmful.
Are you referring to Eich, or the people who react to his political choices?
What exactly is a "technical difference", and why is only that relevant? I am more than my interactions with software and companies, just like every other human. Why should I focus on an arbitrary subset of factors when making decisions?
And the non-technical factors are what my friends and loved ones have to experience due to Brendan Eich's choices. So again, why should I ignore them? I'm more than a user of software.
Because when we decide on a goal for our technical work and decide on an acceptable code of conduct inside the project, our differences outside the project don't matter to our collaboration within the project. This is a core foundation of the Free Software and Open Source movements. (And it's worrisome to me that it's being eroded.)
My point is that this same setting aside of irrelevant (to the technical aspects) differences should apply to use of software in addition to development of software.
I'm not working on a project together with Brendan Eich, I'm choosing not to use a product from which he directly profits. I sincerely hope that we both agree that this is a completely normal and rational choice.
I think I failed to explain my point: Just like OSS contributors don't have to agree on anything but the goal of the project and how to treat each other while working on it, people shouldn't decide what software to use based on anything but the technical merits of the program.
Also, you don't have to benefit Brendan Eich by using Brave. Turn off the crypto and AFAICT Brave gets no money from you.
Not that I actually recommend Brave: I have no opinions on it. I'm just tired and worried by the attitude of judging software by the non-technical opinions of who wrote it.
But why? You haven't given an argument. In our capitalist societies, I have two avenues of influencing public life: my vote and my wallet. Rich people like Brendan Eich have a much more impactful vote due to their capital, so the only real avenue I have left is my wallet.
So please explain: why shouldn't I use my wallet to prevent people like Brendan Eich from shaping society against my friends and loved ones? Why should I add to his capital while he's actively trying to make the lives of the people I care about worse?
> Also, you don't have to benefit Brendan Eich by using Brave. Turn off the crypto and AFAICT Brave gets no money from you.
Or I can use Firefox and strengthen the competition.
Fair enough. My argument is this: as a society we need to live alongside people we disagree with, perhaps even disagree with fundamentally. My ideal is to not judge people's work in one field by their work (or opinions) in another. I think that this way we can get more done in the fields in which we are in agreement. How well do you think the United States would have gone without the Three-fifths Compromise? IMO not well. Do I agree with the slaveholders? No. Do I think the compromise was better than refusing to work with them at all? Yes.
> Why should I add to his capital while he's actively trying to make the lives of the people I care about worse?
Uh, I don't see this as a matter of capital once you turn off BAT crypto stuff. Please enlighten me.
Thanks, with that argument I can better understand where you're coming from. But I would counter: compromise on a social level doesn't require all individuals to compromise too. Boycotts etc. have always been a tool for individuals to make their voices heard, and to influence the exact compromise that is reached.
Since we're apparently still trying to find a compromise on this topic, it seems imperative to me that I continue my boycott of Brendan Eich's companies, so the eventual compromise will have better terms for my friends and loved ones. Unless I see definitive proof that this approach is worse for the people close to me, I won't give up the only social tool I have to protect them.
> Uh, I don't see this as a matter of capital once you turn off BAT crypto stuff. Please enlighten me.
First, Brave has lots more monetization avenues than just the crypto stuff. But even if I turned all of that off, I would increase the usage stats of Brave while decreasing the stats of Firefox. Just because Brendan Eich doesn't profit quite as much off of me doesn't mean he gains no profit.
> Because when we decide on a goal for our technical work and decide on an acceptable code of conduct inside the project, our differences outside the project don't matter to our collaboration within the project.
That's a choice you are free to make. Other people can and will make different choices. Many people never shared that principle, and instead happily exercised freedom of association to not support or spend time around awful people.
Projects are not some magic boundary in which everything outside is left outside. You can't dump piles of money into hurting your colleagues and expect them to see that as a neutral choice.
You're probably going to want to take a look at how your smartphone battery is made. You're taking a principled stand on the basis of not using a browser from a company cofounded by a guy that voted differently than you, but it sounds like you're willfully ignoring the child slave labor used to create the device you're using to type that opinion.
Do as you please, but it makes no sense to me, and doesn't strike me a principled at all: it's basically virtue signaling. But then again, I don't view people that hold different political views as my enemy. They're just people I disagree with, and they can still make a great browser, even though we disagree on some things.
Sorry, but if you think that the issue is that Brendan Eich "voted differently than" me, you're either not understanding or willfully misrepresenting what this discussion is about.
Same. The entire company more or less turned on him. Not picking a side, that's your right. But to then start 'borrowing' from someone you refused to work with feels... hypocritical.
Brendan Eich didn't personally write the code, and he doesn't benefit from Firefox using it. If anything this hurts him, since Firefox is catching up to an advantage of Brave without investing their own development resources.
No matter from what angle I look at this situation, your complaint makes no sense.
I migrated from Firefox to Brave years ago, and it's been incredible. It's easy to turn off the crypto stuff and turn on more advanced privacy protection. Then it's just a fast browser with awesome adblocking.
My favorite recent feature has been Brave Scriptlets, which are just little javascript functions you can run on specific sites. I've replaced most of the add ons I used with small scripts. Pretty nice.
I would prefer an engine not built on Chromium... but I've lost faith in Mozilla. I'm glad that Firefox added a built in adblock engine, but it seems too late too late. Brave has been awesome, and being Chromium based gives them time to keep working on stuff that matters.
I'm doing a goofy thing and buying it, despite knowing I can debloat Brave, because I already do that. I didn't know this existed till I read this thread. I've been benefitting from Brave for many years now; it's great that they've provided a way to pay for this without dealing with the crypto stuff, and I'm extremely happy to do so, because they deserve some of my money.
That's such a weird reaction. There's constantly, for years, people here asking for Firefox to just start offering a paid version to get away from needing support from Google. And yet when someone actually does that apparently it's goofy and we should just be manually stripping that out without paying.
If you can't afford it or don't want to pay, fine. But why are you trying to influence other people to do that by labelling it "goofy"?
How would you strip those things out mobile, by the way?
It's too bad that Mozilla does everything they can to alienate its users, with failed attempts to attract a different but non-existent new user-base. Without them, and with Safari being run by a company that likes to tie its software to its hardware, there's pretty much no reasonable non-Chrome-based web browsers, so it's the new Internet Explorer, and many web pages only work on it, because no one tests their web pages on anything else.
With current standartization the issue of "page not working on non-Chrome browser" is non-existent. Thanks god nowadays everything (pages) work everywhere in very similar manner, I am using chrome, firefox, safary and opera and have zero problems last 5+ years. Old days are gone.
People online rant about Firefox all the time for adding stuff Google and Microsoft shoved into their Chromium forks a few years ago, but when they do it the response is always "well what did you expect from <x>" while when Mozilla does it, the response is "this is an outrage, I'm switching to <some browser that already has the shitty feature anyway>".
I don't think there is or ever will be a "new internet explorer". If your page works in Chrome, there's a 99% chance it'll work in Firefox and Safari. Web standards have been unified to the point painting and layout algorithms are now part of the spec. It's why Ladybird managed to get a decently compatible engine in an extremely short time frame.
And people treat Mozilla like the devil when while they make mistakes, they routinely fix them too. E.g: when people had concerns about the AI stuff, they added a general opt out with a feature-by-feature opt-in.
To make an obviously unproven and not universal observation: I feel like it's people who just like the google integration in Chrome and want an excuse to run it, even though they feel like they should use Firefox because it's more compatible with their world view, so they latch onto any issues Firefox has to go "see, they are all the same anyway", and then just repeat vague "Mozilla sucks" stuff.
> I feel like it's people who just like the google integration in Chrome and want an excuse to run it, even though they feel like they should use Firefox because it's more compatible with their world view
What world view is this? Considering that Mozilla is a puppet Google basically owns if you look at where the funding comes from.
People build on chromium for the same reason they build on Linux. I’d personally prefer if they built on illumos or bsd but at a certain point people would rather spend their innovation budget higher up the stack and benefit from the platform that has the most open source engineers working on it.
uBlock Origin was and is the BEST adblock. And it was one of the fist suggested add-ons when you get in the add-ons page. It should have been integrated.
i've never known what to think about brave because it was being pitched by cryptocurrency bros so i've always ignored its existence. who are these guys and is it genuinely good software?
Brave has probably the most comprehensive and transparent page of any browser available about what features it supports, how it makes money, and who is behind it.
There is a single toggle to turn this off, if it makes people rage so much for something you get for free (I realize not free beer/freedom) then I don't know what else to say.
To be clear, the toggle is to turn off the 'wallet' feature that isn't even enabled until you use it. So you are just disabling seeing the thing at all... with a simple toggle.
I also have to disable the "acceptable ads", with a simple toggle.
And the AI bullshit from their builtin search engine, I'd guess that too is a simple toggle.
Without googling, I'd put good money that there's a thing called "Brave VPN" in the homepage by default, and I have to disable that with a simple toggle.
In two years I may have to disable the crypto-miner, still with a simple toggle, of course, very user convenient.
This is the entire industry in a nutshell. Everyone, from every direction, at all times, is trying to squeeze you for a few cents with antagonistic "features" enabled by default. I have very little patience for this.
"But it's a simple click." Have some self respect, we can do better than this.
Correct. You have to spend a while in settings disabling stuff.
The browser does not re-enable the things you have disabled, but they keep implementing new stuff that you have to disable too.
It’s annoying, although that’s how most software works nowadays (and I include Firefox unfortunately). You have to disable a lot of stuff to make it usable.
What's the alternative if you want full ad-blocking in a Chromium browser? I use Firefox normally and wouldn't trust Brave, but there are some sites FF doesn't work with, so it's understandable why some people wouldn't use it.
It's surprising, and disappointing that this hasn't happened sooner. A real shame that it took a browser company other than Mozilla to make (In Rust no less!) adblock-rust. I wonder if this could've been a native Firefox feature and selling point years ago if Eich wasn't kicked out.
I'm so glad Brave arose from all this overblown mess. What a solid product, one you disable the web3 crap. Using Firefox and derivatives feels like using a Java application on the desktop years ago. Every interaction seems foreign. Meh.
I think people are reading into this too much - I don’t think Mozilla would ever implement an actual full spectrum ad blocker (although who knows with the new direction Firefox is headed), this will likely be used as an improvement/replacement for the current tracking protection implementation.
Weirdly enough, the same time this was added to Geckko is when I started implementing the adblock-rs library for Waterfox - I stumbled across the bindings by accident when using searchfox on the main branch instead of esr140! Quite the coincidence doing it at the same time.
If this means that they release a iOS version with the same Adblock features as brave then I’m sold.
I use essentially all OSs and I want a browser with basic features like adblocking/custom filters on all the platforms and currently Firefox fails this on iOS devices.
Still I believe the Firefox sync is much more robust than eg. Brave one , among various platforms.
But then I will also need Firefox to fix keyboard shortcuts on Android which they had until the Fenix rebase some years ago and still haven’t fixed since
What is the use case for keyboard shortcuts on handheld devices?
On desktops/laptops, keyboard shortcuts save reaching for a mouse, aiming (on the relativley large screen), and clicking. On handhelds, I don't think it's faster to use a shortcut than to simply tap something an inch away.
Also, on handhelds, the keyboard blocks a significant part of the screen. And keyboard shortcuts typically use accelerator keys, which are hard to use on handhelds.
I use an Android tablet with detachable keyboard and works great also with Samsung DEX if you want something more for basic multitasking and there i want the shortcuts, I actually used it a lot, before firefox switched to Fenix base, for navigating tabs, opening closing them really really smooth but then....
Ultimatum - Chromium, MV2 extensions, not so good new tab page similar to original Chrome with only like 4 shortcuts without swiping, limitec customization, no password manager AFAIR
Former Kiwi Browser, then for about year IceRaven (Firefox) user up until recently when they fckd up already bad illogical UI and made it even worse, which was the last drop to again give up on this users hating browser (will never forget users begged for 10 years so dear devs will implement simple pull down to refresh).
On desktop the recommendation is much easier:
Vivaldi - Chromium, MV2, no AI, amazing customization compared to primitive Brave, faster than FF
Firefox for Android supports extensions just fine. I use Firefox with uBlock Origin as my only browser on both mobile and desktop, and use Firefox Sync to send tabs between them. I literally disable the preinstalled Chrome on Android.
Why do people still have hope in / clinge on Firefox when projects like Librewolf and Waterfox exists? Yes those are still dependent on Mozilla's upstream changes, but users not trusting them have still options.
Same reason people want Chromium to stay around: their forks will collapse within months if the free work from upstream stops happening.
Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Tor Browser, Librewolf, they're all little more than reconfigurations and reskins of Chromium when you look at the entire code base. Yes, the Brave as block engine and Operas power saving modes are non-trivial, but the engine they're built on is the size of an operating system.
> The Firefox team is experimenting with ways to improve the built-in Enhanced Tracking Protection feature in Firefox. This is one of the libraries we're going to experiment with.
> - We are not, and have no plans to abandon MV2 extensions. This will ensure certain types of add-ons, like ad-blockers, continue to work best in Firefox.
> - Firefox supports several ad-blockers as add-ons on Desktop and Android, including uBlock Origin.
> - We are not bundling Brave's ad-blocking system, we're testing one of their open source Rust components to improve how Firefox processes tracker lists.
> This will ensure certain types of add-ons, like ad-blockers, continue to work best in Firefox.
Oof, so even people that should really know better are now equating MV3 with "no more ad blocking"? I think at this point the entire thing just needs to be renamed.
(Only Chrome removed the request blocking API from their MV3 implementation; Firefox did not.)
Of course everything based on Chromium will inherit most of Chrome's decisions, including this one. (Unless they fork their entire web extension implementation and maintain the fork forever.)
Safari isn't exactly non-major. By the way, it seems like WebKit Embedded (~resource-efficient Linux port) has regained some steam due to Igalia's work over the last two years or so.
Non-Chrome Chromium browsers should band together and support request blocking for Mv3 at this point. It would be one compelling feature that differentiates them from Chrome.
The people who know better should also know that tech social media was flooded with people not knowing what they were talking about mentioning manifest versions.
It wouldn't be the first time tech gossip rags would take something Mozilla did out of proportion to make outrage videos about that become a hit on Reddit.
When Mozilla added some weird AI thing (I think it was page summaries?) I was asked by people whose algorithm picked up this nonsense whether it'd be better for their privacy to switch back to Chrome or Edge.
> It wouldn't be the first time tech gossip rags would take something Mozilla did out of proportion to make outrage videos about that become a hit on Reddit.
Sounds like the issue here is paid social media platforms, where everybody is looking for ways to differentiate their slop from the rest. It would be weird to expect a different outcome.
> However, DeclarativeWebRequest is limited in the number of rules that may be set, and the types of expressions that may be used.[336] Additionally, the prohibition of remotely-hosted code will restrict the ability for filter lists to be updated independently of the extension itself. As the Chrome Web Store review process has an invariable length, filter lists may not be updated in a timely fashion.[337][338]
We shouldn't equate it with "no more ad blocking" because it didn't ship with an attempt to make ad blockers less effective or because that's not all it shipped with?
"This will ensure certain types of add-ons, like ad-blockers, continue to work best in Firefox" clearly means that MV3 makes ad blocking worse, not entirely disabled. How can you get "no more ad blocking" out of that ?
Memory-safe code can make a huge difference in trust and software risk. Google has said that a 70% of Chrome vulnerabilities are related to memory (un)safety. This is in the browser with dominant marketshare.
Great. Coming just in time when people think the "main stream" browsers are too boring.
I'm actually glad to see Mozilla has grown a little bit "predatorial" if it can bring good to the users. The implementation is polite too, as it lets you know there was an ad been muted.
There's a lot of things that can still be done in the browser space. For example, one-click login even without entering email, easy purchase without the website ever collecting your card number (or other financial detail beyond necessary), etc etc. Ads can also be improved too, by making them not violating nor annoying.
The possibilities are still great, I hope Mozilla can figure out a way to tap into it.
I stopped paying attention when the major browsers started to act somewhat against the interests of ad-blocking add-ons, some years ago.
Would anyone who has kept up let me know what would be the 2026 "industry standard" in terms of an ad-blocking and privacy stack?
I primarily use Chrome on Mac and Safari on iPhone but I'm willing to change browsers for better ad-blocking and privacy.
I would also be interested in solutions that scale beyond a single machine, for when I'm at home (e.g. should I get a little box and use it as an ad blocker between my internet my router and my network or something?)
Open source doing what it's meant to. Brave built a solid engine, Firefox gets to use it. Hoping Firefox maintainers contribute back upstream too, rather than making it a one-way street.
I recently switched from Android to iOS... no comment except all of the browsers just being a wrapper for Safari is really limiting. I love Firefox and still use it on desktop but I couldn't handle it without extensions on mobile and switched to Brave. Somehow Brave on iOS can do content blocking really well. Will this change make it to the iOS version? I would love to switch back to Firefox where all my stuff is synced.
nextaccountic | a day ago
Maybe uBlock Origin for Firefox could be updated to make use of this
toofy | a day ago
though it doesn’t seem to work as well as ublock, the ad slots are still there with just the ad missing so there’s a giant ugly blank spot.
fabrice_d | a day ago
SadTrombone | a day ago
devsda | a day ago
zephyreon | a day ago
That said, if this is writing on the wall I’d hope they’ll listen to the community this time and allow the engine to be extended / make it such that a block all ads feature always exists. I’m cautiously optimistic given Mozilla’s track record just over the past year-ish. They have released some great new features that help bring Firefox closer to feature parity with other browsers.
I am a Firefox hopeful and recently switched back to using it as my daily driver when Arc went belly up (but mainly for uBlock Origin support).
charleslmunger | a day ago
There is no feature Firefox provides that is more differentiating than ublock origin. As long as pages load and security issues are patched it is the reason to choose Firefox as a browser. What would they prioritize over it?
zephyreon | a day ago
collabs | a day ago
gawa | a day ago
While far from being perfect, I find it good enough for keeping things separated, especially when using a desktop/workspace workflow. For example, in workspace/desktop 2 I have a Firefox window opened with the first tab set to "container A", so hitting ctrl-t there opens new tabs with the same container "A", so I'm logged-in for all projects A. In another Firefox window in workspace 3 I work with "business project B" tabs (where I'm logged into different atlassian, github, cloud, gmail, ...)
Then with a Window Manager like i3wm or Sway I set keybinds to jump directly to the window (and workspace), using the mark feature [1]
It's also possible to open websites directly in specific containers so it's flexible. For example on my desktop 8 I have all my AI webchats in "wherever my company pay for it" tabs: `firefox --new-window 'ext+container:name=loggedInPersonnal&url=https://chat.mistral.ai' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessA&url=https://chatgpt.com' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessB&url=https://gemini.google.com' 'ext+container:name=loggedInBusinessB&url=https://claude.ai'`
It's also the only way I found to keep opened multiple chat apps (Teams, Slack, Discord, ...). The alternative electron apps are as resource-hungry, and in my experience never handled multiple accounts well (especially Teams).
[O] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sticky-window...
[1] https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#vim_like_marks
lxgr | a day ago
curt15 | a day ago
[1] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
andrewaylett | a day ago
ragall | 21 hours ago
tyushk | 20 hours ago
ragall | 19 hours ago
lxgr | 18 hours ago
Dylan16807 | a day ago
The feature that better adblockers need is one callback that's similar to one that's still in V3. It's not difficult to keep if it's your own codebase.
striking | a day ago
pjjpo | a day ago
tosti | a day ago
In case of the extension manifest, that's probably layered on top of the JS engine which does get attention and scrutiny. It's not like an API needs to be updated. If you'd always do that, nothing would ever be interoperable and we'd likely have a hard time trying to communicate.
OsrsNeedsf2P | a day ago
pogue | a day ago
Brave still allows you to install uBlock & some other extensions that should technically not be supported under MV3, but they still ship it with support for those.
Just heard about Helium browser, which is just dechromium + uBlock and it's still beta.
cookiengineer | a day ago
My last hope is ladybird right now, I don't use Firefox or Chrome as my main browsers anymore, and use them only within temporary sandboxes. Without history, without cookies, without logins for the most part.
pogue | a day ago
cookiengineer | a day ago
I built my own tools on top of it, mostly to use internet websites and selfhosted kiwix archives with my local agentic env.
I guess what I am saying is that I don't have a primary browser anymore. Not a browser where I just can trust it that it doesn't do shit with my data. Being able to selfhost kiwix is a superb internet experience if you build your own search dashboard for it, I can fully recommend it.
Have to merge my things upstream with ZIMdex when I have the time (probably around June).
[1] WIP https://github.com/cookiengineer/exocomp
[2] WIP https://github.com/cookiengineer/zimdex
tgv | a day ago
el_io | a day ago
laserbeam | a day ago
nuker | a day ago
Nope, FF is being infiltrated by adtech for last year or two. Last holdout is Safari now :)
rs_rs_rs_rs_rs | a day ago
Why do people say crap like this... Safari was the first browser to completely remove mv2. From all the major browsers Safari has the worse adblocking experience and support for adblocking extensions...
nuker | a day ago
1. Third-party cookie blocking by default — 2003 (Safari 1.0); industry first.
2. Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), using on-device machine learning to identify and limit cross-site trackers — 2017; industry first.
3. Storage Access API prompts for embedded third-party content (e.g., social login widgets) — 2018 (ITP 2.0); industry first (co-developed by WebKit, later adopted as a web standard).
4. Full third-party cookie blocking (no exceptions) — 2020 (ITP in Safari 13.1); industry first for a major browser.
nottorp | a day ago
Ad/tracking blocking is one of the things that can only be trusted if it's open source, i.e. uBlock Origin.
By the way, does this Adblock Engine actually block trackers? Or it just stops the ads from displaying?
saagarjha | a day ago
potatoproduct | a day ago
ThePowerOfFuet | a day ago
16bitvoid | a day ago
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id674534269...
mort96 | a day ago
trueno | a day ago
hurfdurf | a day ago
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
trueno | 7 hours ago
fsflover | 23 hours ago
Pay08 | a day ago
skeeter2020 | a day ago
* pre-fetching
* html filtering
* use of WebAssembly
* data compression and private/incognito mode
Pay08 | 22 hours ago
feverzsj | a day ago
raudette | a day ago
ximm | a day ago
TiredOfLife | a day ago
lxgr | a day ago
the_gipsy | a day ago
Narushia | a day ago
the_gipsy | a day ago
Ygg2 | a day ago
HauntingPin | 23 hours ago
https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/197#issueco...
lxgr | a day ago
Many people seem to treat it synonymously with "no more procedural request blocking", but that's not a thing Mozilla ever did:
> For Manifest V3 extensions, Chrome no longer supports the "webRequestBlocking" permission (except for policy-installed extensions). Instead, the "webRequest" and "webRequestAuthProvider" permissions enable you to supply credentials asynchronously. Firefox continues to support "webRequestBlocking" in Manifest V3 and provides "webRequestAuthProvider" to offer cross-browser compatibility.
The permission model also seems much more reasonable (less permissions have to be requested upfront at install time) than MV2, so I actually hope Firefox does deprecate it at some point.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/firefox-manifest-v3-adbl...
michaelt | a day ago
Running an adblocker is the defining feature of the extensions API. ublock origin has 5x as many users as the second-most-popular extension [1]
Supporting ublock isn't just a nice-to-have add-on feature for an extension API, it's literally the only thing most users care about.
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/search/?promoted=re...
crazygringo | 23 hours ago
Which, in my experience, blocks ads just as well, but also lets pages load significantly faster.
MV3 supports uBlock.
Moldoteck | 23 hours ago
crazygringo | 18 hours ago
Lots of people have been pointing out that ad companies will figure ways out around it. But they really haven't been.
MV3 and UBOL have been in wide usage for about a year and a half now. And nothing has been changing. Adblocking continues to be great.
The fact of the matter is, the ad block lists were getting so large and the JavaScript functionality was slow and it was significantly impacting page load times. UBOL uses vastly more efficient compiled code that is part of the browser and is just a far better ad blocking experience altogether.
But I guess that just doesn't fit the narrative that people want to believe, where MV3 was part of a big evil plan.
Moldoteck | 6 hours ago
lxgr | 18 hours ago
brycewray | 21 hours ago
[0]: https://github.com/openstyles/stylus
gorhill | 20 hours ago
brycewray | 20 hours ago
EDIT: I did have it set to `Complete,` so perhaps I have something else going on.
gorhill | 18 hours ago
theturtletalks | 17 hours ago
brycewray | 16 hours ago
Bingo. That was it. Again, thanks.
ragall | 21 hours ago
crazygringo | 18 hours ago
And everyone I know who used UBO and switched to UBOL has had no complaints about ads not being blocked.
Whereas people who don't actually use it love to continue to insist that it's this degraded experience that doesn't work as well. And usually when one of them comes up with an example of some ad not being blocked, it turns out because they hadn't configured UBOL to use complete blocking mode.
ragall | 15 hours ago
Everyone who you know is irrelevant. I've tested and see that ads pass through, and tracking passes through with uBo light on Chrome. I can see it in the browser trace, and I can see it in DNS logs.
crazygringo | 15 hours ago
The only thing that means anything is how well it operates with your average browsing on a daily basis. And it's such a popular extension because it does an amazing job at blocking ads. That's just a fact. The only people who seem to claim otherwise appear to be the ones with an ideological axe to grind. It's silly.
ragall | 13 hours ago
lxgr | 13 hours ago
breve | 11 hours ago
No. uBlock Origin works best in Firefox: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
uBlock Origin Lite can't do everything uBlock Origin does: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as...
If Lite is working for you then good. If you want fuller capability then you want uBlock Origin in Firefox.
ben-schaaf | 12 hours ago
Not sure about page load, but CPU time is about the same between the two: https://x.com/gorhill/status/1792648742752981086/photo/1
Hizonner | 22 hours ago
MarsIronPI | 21 hours ago
jim33442 | 19 hours ago
lxgr | 18 hours ago
globalnode | a day ago
userbinator | a day ago
However, I am also concerned that this is an "embrace extend extinguish" move.
6ak74rfy | a day ago
I use uBlock Origin in Firefox and network ad blocker. Wondering what other options are there.
spockz | a day ago
I’m not familiar with off the shelf solutions for this that have ad blocking built in. Also ads are injected by JS so you need a mechanism to detect that.
More and more ads are now served from the same domain as the site making it harder to distinguish them from real content.
kotaKat | 23 hours ago
But then you're using ZScaler and that just feels all nice and icky.
lxgr | a day ago
ajb | a day ago
lxgr | 13 hours ago
gtrevorjay | a day ago
yborg | a day ago
It's an entirely different management team.
Paul-Craft | a day ago
kulahan | a day ago
JoshTriplett | a day ago
kulahan | a day ago
Edit: also crazy that someone who doesn’t want to support the Brave guy would support the browser using the Brave guy’s stuff, but I guess I see lots of chick-fil-a haters shopping in Amazon these days, so who am I to question what’s in vogue?
JoshTriplett | 16 hours ago
> Brendan Eich didn't personally write the code, and he doesn't benefit from Firefox using it. If anything this hurts him, since Firefox is catching up to an advantage of Brave without investing their own development resources.
> No matter from what angle I look at this situation, your complaint makes no sense.
Don't assume the positions of people who disagree with you are not thought out. It is a dangerous line of reasoning to go "if only they thought it through for more than five seconds they'd agree with me".
SadTrombone | a day ago
kulahan | a day ago
jasonvorhe | a day ago
rpdillon | 23 hours ago
The injection of politics into absolutely everything is so arbitrary and harmful.
Timon3 | 22 hours ago
> The injection of politics into absolutely everything is so arbitrary and harmful.
Are you referring to Eich, or the people who react to his political choices?
MarsIronPI | 21 hours ago
Timon3 | 21 hours ago
MarsIronPI | 20 hours ago
Timon3 | 19 hours ago
MarsIronPI | 18 hours ago
My point is that this same setting aside of irrelevant (to the technical aspects) differences should apply to use of software in addition to development of software.
Timon3 | 17 hours ago
MarsIronPI | 17 hours ago
Also, you don't have to benefit Brendan Eich by using Brave. Turn off the crypto and AFAICT Brave gets no money from you.
Not that I actually recommend Brave: I have no opinions on it. I'm just tired and worried by the attitude of judging software by the non-technical opinions of who wrote it.
Timon3 | 17 hours ago
So please explain: why shouldn't I use my wallet to prevent people like Brendan Eich from shaping society against my friends and loved ones? Why should I add to his capital while he's actively trying to make the lives of the people I care about worse?
> Also, you don't have to benefit Brendan Eich by using Brave. Turn off the crypto and AFAICT Brave gets no money from you.
Or I can use Firefox and strengthen the competition.
MarsIronPI | 9 hours ago
Fair enough. My argument is this: as a society we need to live alongside people we disagree with, perhaps even disagree with fundamentally. My ideal is to not judge people's work in one field by their work (or opinions) in another. I think that this way we can get more done in the fields in which we are in agreement. How well do you think the United States would have gone without the Three-fifths Compromise? IMO not well. Do I agree with the slaveholders? No. Do I think the compromise was better than refusing to work with them at all? Yes.
> Why should I add to his capital while he's actively trying to make the lives of the people I care about worse?
Uh, I don't see this as a matter of capital once you turn off BAT crypto stuff. Please enlighten me.
Timon3 | 3 hours ago
Since we're apparently still trying to find a compromise on this topic, it seems imperative to me that I continue my boycott of Brendan Eich's companies, so the eventual compromise will have better terms for my friends and loved ones. Unless I see definitive proof that this approach is worse for the people close to me, I won't give up the only social tool I have to protect them.
> Uh, I don't see this as a matter of capital once you turn off BAT crypto stuff. Please enlighten me.
First, Brave has lots more monetization avenues than just the crypto stuff. But even if I turned all of that off, I would increase the usage stats of Brave while decreasing the stats of Firefox. Just because Brendan Eich doesn't profit quite as much off of me doesn't mean he gains no profit.
JoshTriplett | 16 hours ago
> I'm just tired and worried by the attitude of judging software by the non-technical opinions of who wrote it.
And I'm thrilled that it continues to happen more and more.
JoshTriplett | 16 hours ago
That's a choice you are free to make. Other people can and will make different choices. Many people never shared that principle, and instead happily exercised freedom of association to not support or spend time around awful people.
Projects are not some magic boundary in which everything outside is left outside. You can't dump piles of money into hurting your colleagues and expect them to see that as a neutral choice.
rpdillon | 19 hours ago
Do as you please, but it makes no sense to me, and doesn't strike me a principled at all: it's basically virtue signaling. But then again, I don't view people that hold different political views as my enemy. They're just people I disagree with, and they can still make a great browser, even though we disagree on some things.
Timon3 | 17 hours ago
dlcarrier | a day ago
prox | a day ago
You have to walk the walk too Mozilla! Saying that as a FF for years.
silisili | a day ago
Timon3 | a day ago
No matter from what angle I look at this situation, your complaint makes no sense.
Steve6 | a day ago
My favorite recent feature has been Brave Scriptlets, which are just little javascript functions you can run on specific sites. I've replaced most of the add ons I used with small scripts. Pretty nice.
I would prefer an engine not built on Chromium... but I've lost faith in Mozilla. I'm glad that Firefox added a built in adblock engine, but it seems too late too late. Brave has been awesome, and being Chromium based gives them time to keep working on stuff that matters.
esperent | a day ago
pogue | a day ago
To sell for $60 a web browser that technically has all the features removed is a pretty goofy move.
cr125rider | a day ago
pogue | a day ago
Brave Just Released a Paid Browser: Here's What You Need to Know https://youtube.com/watch?v=3i5KH0l895o
tjoff | a day ago
I don't trust Brave though and don't want to use chromium.
topspin | a day ago
I'm doing a goofy thing and buying it, despite knowing I can debloat Brave, because I already do that. I didn't know this existed till I read this thread. I've been benefitting from Brave for many years now; it's great that they've provided a way to pay for this without dealing with the crypto stuff, and I'm extremely happy to do so, because they deserve some of my money.
chappi42 | a day ago
esperent | a day ago
If you can't afford it or don't want to pay, fine. But why are you trying to influence other people to do that by labelling it "goofy"?
How would you strip those things out mobile, by the way?
armada651 | a day ago
I'm living under a rock, but my first thought was that you turned off TLS.
the-grump | a day ago
devsda | a day ago
dlcarrier | a day ago
abdullahkhalids | a day ago
[1] https://www.greasespot.net/2005/03/
halapro | a day ago
Brybry | a day ago
Chrome also used to natively support userscripts back in 2010 [2] but they mostly killed it off
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Userscript
[2] https://lifehacker.com/chrome-4-supports-greasemonkey-usersc...
dlcarrier | a day ago
unethical_ban | a day ago
search_facility | a day ago
jeroenhd | a day ago
I don't think there is or ever will be a "new internet explorer". If your page works in Chrome, there's a 99% chance it'll work in Firefox and Safari. Web standards have been unified to the point painting and layout algorithms are now part of the spec. It's why Ladybird managed to get a decently compatible engine in an extremely short time frame.
Latty | a day ago
To make an obviously unproven and not universal observation: I feel like it's people who just like the google integration in Chrome and want an excuse to run it, even though they feel like they should use Firefox because it's more compatible with their world view, so they latch onto any issues Firefox has to go "see, they are all the same anyway", and then just repeat vague "Mozilla sucks" stuff.
swed420 | a day ago
What world view is this? Considering that Mozilla is a puppet Google basically owns if you look at where the funding comes from.
vachina | a day ago
eduction | a day ago
MarsIronPI | 21 hours ago
Markoff | a day ago
charcircuit | a day ago
Markoff | 7 hours ago
even less reason to use it on desktop
jasonvorhe | a day ago
Daedren | a day ago
Zardoz84 | a day ago
trueno | a day ago
rpdillon | 23 hours ago
https://brave.com/about/
nananana9 | a day ago
Fantastic first impression. I'm good, thanks.
aucisson_masque | a day ago
NoboruWataya | a day ago
homebrewer | a day ago
wallst07 | a day ago
To be clear, the toggle is to turn off the 'wallet' feature that isn't even enabled until you use it. So you are just disabling seeing the thing at all... with a simple toggle.
silver_silver | a day ago
nananana9 | a day ago
And the AI bullshit from their builtin search engine, I'd guess that too is a simple toggle.
Without googling, I'd put good money that there's a thing called "Brave VPN" in the homepage by default, and I have to disable that with a simple toggle.
In two years I may have to disable the crypto-miner, still with a simple toggle, of course, very user convenient.
This is the entire industry in a nutshell. Everyone, from every direction, at all times, is trying to squeeze you for a few cents with antagonistic "features" enabled by default. I have very little patience for this.
"But it's a simple click." Have some self respect, we can do better than this.
ndisn | 23 hours ago
The browser does not re-enable the things you have disabled, but they keep implementing new stuff that you have to disable too.
It’s annoying, although that’s how most software works nowadays (and I include Firefox unfortunately). You have to disable a lot of stuff to make it usable.
PufPufPuf | a day ago
jim33442 | 18 hours ago
type0 | 17 hours ago
fishgoesblub | a day ago
jasonvorhe | a day ago
MrAlex94 | a day ago
Weirdly enough, the same time this was added to Geckko is when I started implementing the adblock-rs library for Waterfox - I stumbled across the bindings by accident when using searchfox on the main branch instead of esr140! Quite the coincidence doing it at the same time.
gbil | a day ago
mmooss | a day ago
On desktops/laptops, keyboard shortcuts save reaching for a mouse, aiming (on the relativley large screen), and clicking. On handhelds, I don't think it's faster to use a shortcut than to simply tap something an inch away.
Also, on handhelds, the keyboard blocks a significant part of the screen. And keyboard shortcuts typically use accelerator keys, which are hard to use on handhelds.
Do you use Android with a physical keyboard?
gbear605 | a day ago
JoshTriplett | a day ago
catlikesshrimp | a day ago
gbil | a day ago
CapricornNoble | 22 hours ago
As someone who bought an HTC Dream / Android G1 when it was new, and wishes more handhelds had a similar form factor, this comment depresses me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Dream
ihutgckmig | 20 hours ago
bartvk | a day ago
Pay08 | 23 hours ago
Hizonner | 22 hours ago
ihutgckmig | 20 hours ago
gmokki | 6 hours ago
Markoff | a day ago
Cromite - Chromium, MV2 extensions, good new tab page with 4x4 shortcuts (2x4 pinnable) with direct access to bookmarks
https://github.com/uazo/cromite/releases
Ultimatum - Chromium, MV2 extensions, not so good new tab page similar to original Chrome with only like 4 shortcuts without swiping, limitec customization, no password manager AFAIR
https://github.com/gonzazoid/Ultimatum/releases
Helium - Chromium, only MV3 extensions, built in browser from Graphene
https://github.com/jqssun/android-helium-browser/releases
Elixir - Chromium, only MV3, tabbed interface suitable for tablets
https://github.com/SF-FLAM/ElixirBrowser/releases
Former Kiwi Browser, then for about year IceRaven (Firefox) user up until recently when they fckd up already bad illogical UI and made it even worse, which was the last drop to again give up on this users hating browser (will never forget users begged for 10 years so dear devs will implement simple pull down to refresh).
On desktop the recommendation is much easier:
Vivaldi - Chromium, MV2, no AI, amazing customization compared to primitive Brave, faster than FF
https://vivaldi.com
FireInsight | a day ago
MarsIronPI | 21 hours ago
JoshTriplett | 20 hours ago
poisonborz | a day ago
lxgr | a day ago
jeroenhd | a day ago
Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Tor Browser, Librewolf, they're all little more than reconfigurations and reskins of Chromium when you look at the entire code base. Yes, the Brave as block engine and Operas power saving modes are non-trivial, but the engine they're built on is the size of an operating system.
lightdot | a day ago
"Tor Browser is based on Mozilla Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release) but has been heavily modified for use with the Tor network."
Those are direct quotes from their respective web pages. Neither of them has anything to do with Chromium.
jeroenhd | 23 hours ago
I would edit my comment above to clarify, but the limited edit time window for HN seems to have passed.
evilpie | a day ago
> - We are not, and have no plans to abandon MV2 extensions. This will ensure certain types of add-ons, like ad-blockers, continue to work best in Firefox.
> - Firefox supports several ad-blockers as add-ons on Desktop and Android, including uBlock Origin.
> - We are not bundling Brave's ad-blocking system, we're testing one of their open source Rust components to improve how Firefox processes tracker lists.
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1sttf82/firefox_wi...
This is what the official Firefox account had to say when this came up on reddit.
lxgr | a day ago
Oof, so even people that should really know better are now equating MV3 with "no more ad blocking"? I think at this point the entire thing just needs to be renamed.
(Only Chrome removed the request blocking API from their MV3 implementation; Firefox did not.)
stavros | a day ago
lxgr | a day ago
stavros | a day ago
ahartmetz | a day ago
lxgr | a day ago
topranks | a day ago
jim33442 | 19 hours ago
zarzavat | a day ago
stavros | a day ago
jeroenhd | a day ago
It wouldn't be the first time tech gossip rags would take something Mozilla did out of proportion to make outrage videos about that become a hit on Reddit.
When Mozilla added some weird AI thing (I think it was page summaries?) I was asked by people whose algorithm picked up this nonsense whether it'd be better for their privacy to switch back to Chrome or Edge.
swed420 | a day ago
Sounds like the issue here is paid social media platforms, where everybody is looking for ways to differentiate their slop from the rest. It would be weird to expect a different outcome.
msla | a day ago
> However, DeclarativeWebRequest is limited in the number of rules that may be set, and the types of expressions that may be used.[336] Additionally, the prohibition of remotely-hosted code will restrict the ability for filter lists to be updated independently of the extension itself. As the Chrome Web Store review process has an invariable length, filter lists may not be updated in a timely fashion.[337][338]
Is that not true?
lxgr | 22 hours ago
DangitBobby | a day ago
ragall | 21 hours ago
heresie-dabord | a day ago
> The browser now ships adblock-rust, Brave's open source Rust-based ad and tracker blocking engine.
It makes sense that Mozilla would test this. The amount of Rust code in Firefox is already at 12%.
https://4e6.github.io/firefox-lang-stats/
Memory-safe code can make a huge difference in trust and software risk. Google has said that a 70% of Chrome vulnerabilities are related to memory (un)safety. This is in the browser with dominant marketshare.
https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/memory-safet...
gib444 | 23 hours ago
nirui | a day ago
I'm actually glad to see Mozilla has grown a little bit "predatorial" if it can bring good to the users. The implementation is polite too, as it lets you know there was an ad been muted.
There's a lot of things that can still be done in the browser space. For example, one-click login even without entering email, easy purchase without the website ever collecting your card number (or other financial detail beyond necessary), etc etc. Ads can also be improved too, by making them not violating nor annoying.
The possibilities are still great, I hope Mozilla can figure out a way to tap into it.
elros | a day ago
Would anyone who has kept up let me know what would be the 2026 "industry standard" in terms of an ad-blocking and privacy stack?
I primarily use Chrome on Mac and Safari on iPhone but I'm willing to change browsers for better ad-blocking and privacy.
I would also be interested in solutions that scale beyond a single machine, for when I'm at home (e.g. should I get a little box and use it as an ad blocker between my internet my router and my network or something?)
maleldil | 23 hours ago
8cvor6j844qw_d6 | 20 hours ago
mzmzmzm | 17 hours ago
emirdw | 12 hours ago
gnabgib | 12 hours ago