In August, Mozilla announced full-fledged browser extensions for Firefox for Android. The company said an open extension ecosystem will be available for its mobile browser app before the end of the year. It has now shared a precise launch date. Firefox users on Android will be able to download more than 400 extensions starting December 14, 2023. A handful of them are already available, giving you a sneak peek at what’s on the way.
Mozilla starts rolling out open extensions to Firefox for Android
While extensions are common in desktop browsers, their mobile versions don’t support the feature or have limited support. Google Chrome is the world’s most popular mobile browser but still lacks extension support on Android. Firefox’s extension ecosystem on Android is poor too. It got smaller since the Fenix redesign in 2020. Mozilla cited security reasons and other compatibility issues for killing mobile extensions.
The firm has revived a few over the past three years, but only a handful of desktop extensions are available on Android. It’s now expanding the ecosystem with hundreds of new open extensions. Earlier this year, Mozilla provided developers with instructions and other technical information for making their extensions ready for Android. It also created guides and resources for developers and hosted webinars to support them during this migration.
It appears the efforts bore fruits. Giorgio Natili, Firefox’s Director of Engineering, says the Android browser app will gain support for more than 400 new extensions at launch on December 14. The company has already started preparations for the launch with an “Explore all Android extensions” section on the addons.mozilla.org (AMO) page. It is a dedicated section for new extensions.
“We’ve been so impressed with developer enthusiasm and preparation,” Natili said in a blog post. “Just a few weeks ago it looked like we might have a couple hundred Android extensions for launch, but now we can safely say AMO will have 400+ new Firefox for Android extensions available on December 14.”
You can already download a few extensions
Ahead of the big launch next month, Mozilla has released a handful of extensions for the Firefox Android app for you to try out. Some of the notable ones include Bitwarden’s password manager, a text-to-speech tool, a reverse image search tool, Web Archives, and an extension to remove tracking elements from URLs. You can find them all on the AMO page. Check back again on December 14 for more.
2023-11-29 15:05:12