Can Firefox be your Android browser?

Mozilla Firefox may be a beloved desktop browser, but on Android, its market share looks like nothing more than a rounding error. This could be one of the many reasons why Mozilla decided to rewrite its mobile browser from scratch with a new rendering engine, a revamped interface, better performance and more privacy features. Now that Mozilla had more than half a year to adjust the product, I decided to test this new Firefox on my Android phone to see how it compares to the standard that most people follow, Google Chrome.

User interface and experience

Firefox allows you to choose between an interface based on the bottom and one on the top. Depending on which one you choose, you’ll find the address bar, the tab switcher and the menu button at the bottom or top of the screen. As with Chrome, you can switch between tabs by swiping left and right over the address bar or instead of using the dedicated button.

I’m not the biggest fan of the tab-switching user interface that Firefox has chosen. No matter the position of the toolbar you choose, the tab switcher button opens in a sliding menu at the bottom of the screen, displaying all of your tabs as a list with a small preview of the content on the left. In contrast to a previous tabbed design on the new tab page, it looks like it was added and as a last minute decision. Regardless, open guides can be slid left or right. If you prefer a grid view, you can activate it in the settings.

The new tab page provides a quick overview of your most visited sites, their collections (a place where you can group and save tabs) and a quick switch to open incognito mode. The address bar has a convenient QR code reader built in and you can select your preferred search engine right away – none of the features are available in Chrome. You can also enter your queries by voice. When visiting a website, you will see a shield icon next to your address. Touch it to enable or disable Firefox’s crawl protection. There is also a link to the settings that allow you to adjust the protection level in a granular way.

In the floating three-point menu, you’ll find quick access to your downloads, history, favorites, synchronized tabs and add-ons, which we’ll expand on later. The application settings (also accessible from the drop-down menu) provide access to the usual entries for deleting data, website permissions, data collections, notifications, enabling synchronization, storing passwords, etc. You can customize Firefox to your liking here and even change the interface to another language.

Overall, the Firefox interface is easy to navigate, so you are unlikely to experience any problems if it comes from Chrome.

The last redesign of Chrome happened a long time ago and still depends exclusively on a top toolbar that is getting harder and harder to reach as our phones get taller. Google tried out some other solutions like Chrome Duet, but the tests were dropped.

I’m not a fan of how Firefox integrates with other applications when you use it as your default browser. Like Chrome, it is capable of displaying custom tabs, but when you choose to have the address at the bottom, you’ll also find the custom tab action bar at the bottom. I would love to have independent options. Then there is a super small complaint: animations for opening and closing custom tabs are missing or not as fluid as in Chrome.

Additional Features

Firefox has some extra features up its sleeve, like a reading mode. When the browser detects that you are reading an article, it offers a simplified version, without an image and free of distractions from it in the address bar.

Collections are a way of replacing favorites that I don’t use much (just as I don’t use favorites). You can add guides to them in the tab switcher. It is probably good for saving something you would like to read later and it is not intended to be a permanent storage solution like bookmarks, but it looks like the concept is not fully developed. Probably because the original idea was diluted – collections should be created automatically based on your last browsing sessions.

Synchronize allows you to select your Firefox browsing session on another device, just like Chrome does. The feature ensures that bookmarks, history and passwords are shared across Firefox installations on phones and desktops. With Firefox Lockwise, you can even automatically fill in your passwords on Android apps outside of Firefox.

AN Search widget offers quick access to the address bar right from the home screen, like Chrome.

Firefox also has a dark mode that respects your preference for the entire system.

In contrast to Chrome, Firefox supports extensions. Unlike the legacy version of the Mozilla browser, only a few are officially available at the moment, but the company is working to bring back the full package of add-ons in a future update. You can already try any extension on the Nightly unstable version of Firefox, but if you want to stay with the stable version, you are limited to this selection for now:

Automatic password filling of third-party password managers seems strange to me with the pop-up not often appearing, but this is also an issue I have with Chrome. If you are a Bitwarden user, you can mitigate any problems by installing the browser extension and using it for autofill.

I really miss pulling to update, a gesture available in almost any other Android app you can imagine, but Mozilla is working on adding it. Firefox also hasn’t added a tablet interface to the redesigned app yet, so using the browser on a tablet or Chromebook (like an Android app) is a terrible experience.

acting

The new Firefox is based on Mozilla’s rewritten Gecko rendering engine, and is much faster than the old application, especially when you enable the strictest crawler lock level. Still, it is still not as fast and consistent as Chrome. That’s because the Google product is the most used browser and everyone optimizes their websites for it. Google itself is particularly to blame for this – the company specifically adjusts its sites for its own browser and rendering engine and, in addition, distributes an older search user interface for Firefox. You can at least get the Chrome-like search UI with Google Search Fixer extension, although this does not resolve performance issues due to poor optimization.

Scrolling used to be another weakness, but it has gotten a lot better in recent versions. Compared to Chrome, scrolling inertia used to appear unstable on Android, with unexpected jumps following small movements. But this is mostly a thing of the past. Scrolling is not yet 100% aligned with Chrome, but it is predictable and smooth and without major obstacles to entry.

Privacy

Mozilla says that “Firefox products are designed to protect your privacy” and your browser remains true to that motto. Firefox blocks online trackers and invasive ads by default, and you can even activate a strict mode that blocks most third-party cookies and trackers entirely. In Chrome, Google only allows you to optionally block third-party cookies and some ads with many features, a feature that you still need to enable manually.

The latest version of Firefox (85) introduced additional measures that help against so-called supercookies that can track you on websites, even when you disable third-party cookies. The browser also allows you to delete browsing data on exit, which you can activate in the settings. You can choose which data should be deleted each time you click “exit” in the drop-down menu.

Unfortunately, Mozilla collects some usage data by default. You will have to manually turn this off in the settings under “Data collection”. There are “Technical and usage data” and “marketing data”. You can use the F-Droid Fennec alternative based on the same code, but without all the tracking.

If you want to separate your life from Google a little, Firefox for Android is a viable alternative. The experience is still not as consistent as Chrome, but it is close enough – and you get some features that are not available on Google’s mobile browser, such as extensions, reading mode and advanced privacy protection. Therefore, you will have to ask yourself what you value in a browser. The easy choice is to use the pre-installed app without having to configure anything else, and if you don’t worry too much about blocking crawlers or extra privacy, there’s probably no reason to change. But if you’re interested in what Firefox allows in terms of features and privacy, it may be worth trying to iterate over Mozilla’s latest browser, despite the peculiarity of occasional performance.

You can download Firefox from the Play Store, F-Droid (the Fennec version with the proprietary bits and telemetry removed) or APK Mirror.