Mozilla is working on a new Firefox version for Android, and today the company released an update that allows users to enable extensions in the Nightly build of the browser.
The first extension that can be activated in Firefox Preview on Android is also one of the most popular: uBlock Origin is available right now for anyone installing the early version of the Firefox.
Mozilla announced extension support for Firefox Preview back in October 2019, promising that selected add-ons from the Recommended Extensions program would be added to the new browser in early 2020.
“GeckoView is currently building support for extensions through the WebExtensions API. This feature will be available in Firefox Preview, and we are looking forward to offering a great experience for both mobile users and developers,” Mozilla said at that point.
“Bringing GeckoView and Firefox Preview up to par with the APIs that were supported previously in Firefox for Android won’t happen overnight. For the remainder of 2019 and leading into 2020, we are focusing on building support for a selection of content from our Recommended Extensions program that work well on mobile and cover a variety of utilities and features.”
Today, users can install the very first extension in Firefox Preview on Android, and doing this isn’t at all rocket science.
The first thing you need to do is update to the latest version of Firefox Preview Nightly – one thing that you must keep in mind is that the Nightly build is an experimental release, so certain features might not work exactly as expected; this is the same as on desktop computers, where the Nightly version of Firefox is only used for testing and isn’t recommended for daily use.
Then, in Firefox Preview Nightly, follow this path to enable uBlock Origin in the browser:
Firefox Menu (three-dot icon in lower right corner) Settings Add-ons uBlock Origin Install
The process shouldn’t take more than a few seconds, after which you should see a notification that uBlock Origin has been installed successfully. The same addons screen then lets you configure each extension, if a settings screen is indeed offered.
As some users on reddit point out, Firefox Preview could crash when accessing certain uBlock pages, albeit for the time being this appears to be just an isolated problem. I installed the browser and enabled uBlock Origin on my Samsung Galaxy Note9 running Android and everything seems to be working correctly, although loading uBlock’s settings indeed feels a little bit slow.
But as I said earlier, you really shouldn’t be too surprised if the browser isn’t working as expected, as the Nightly version of Firefox is specifically supposed to be used for experiments like this.
Mozilla hasn’t yet announced when extension support would roll out for everyone, but expect more add-ons to be added in the coming weeks and months in these testing builds of Firefox on Android. Mozilla previously said more extensions would be…
https://news.softpedia.com/news/how-to-install-firefox-preview-with-ublock-origin-on-android-529101.shtml