There is a bug report for that. It's not been moving at all since it was opened https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/2371
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fenix
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mozilla-mobile / fenix · Archived
fenix
⚠️ Fenix (Firefox for Android) moved to a new repository. It is now developed and maintained as part of: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-android
112Distinct people
159Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
6.4KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
⚠️ Fenix (Firefox for Android) moved to a new repository. It is now developed and maintained as part of: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-android
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
I love all of the work that Mozilla do to make the web a better, more privacy focused place. A little time tinge of disappointment though, is that the new Firefox for Android…
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 6:36:16 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year159 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2018-11-10 16:40:14 UTC to 2024-08-29 17:38:28 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 49 | 1 | 48 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 42 | 3 | 39 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 24 | 5 | 19 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 27 | 2 | 25 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 12 | 3 | 9 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 1 | 3 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 12, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
Firefox for Android
Fenix (internal codename) is the all-new Firefox for Android browser, based on GeckoView and Mozilla Android Components.
Getting Involved
Please read the Community Participation Guidelines and the Bugzilla Etiquette guidelines before filing an issue. This is our professional working environment as much as it is our bug tracker, and we want to keep our workspace clean and healthy.
Guide to Contributing (New contributors start here!)
Browse our current Issues, or file a security issue.
Matrix: #fenix:mozilla.org channel (We're available Monday-Friday, GMT and PST working hours). Related channels:
#mobile-test-eng:mozilla.org channel: for UI test automation
#perf-android-frontend:mozilla.org channel: for front-end (JVM) performance of Android apps
#android-tips:mozilla.org channel: for tips on Android development
Check out the project wiki for more information.
See our guide on Writing Custom Lint Rules.
Localization happens on Pontoon. Please get in touch with delphine (at) mozilla (dot) com directly for more information.
Beginners! - Watch out for Issues with the "Good First Issue" label. These are easy bugs that have been left for first timers to have a go, get involved and make a positive contribution to the project!
I want to open a Pull Request!
We encourage you to participate in this open source project. We love Pull Requests, Bug Reports, ideas, (security) code reviews or any other kind of positive contribution.
Since we are a small team, however, we do not have the bandwidth to review unsolicited PRs. Please follow our Pull Request guidelines, or we may close the PR.
To make it easier to review, we have these PR requirements:
Every PR must have exactly one issue associated with it.
Write a clear explanation of what the code is doing when opening the pull request, and optionally add comments to the PR.
Make sure there are tests - or ask for help on how the code should be tested in the Issue!
Keep PRs small and to the point. For extra code-health changes, either file a separate issue, or make it a separate PR that can be easily reviewed.
Use micro-commits. This makes it easier and faster to review.
Add a screenshot for UX changes (this is part of the PR checklist)
As a small team, we have to prioritize our work, and reviewing PRs takes time. We receive lots of PRs every day, so if you can keep your PRs small, it helps our small team review and merge code faster, minimizing stale code.
Keep in mind that the team is very overloaded, so PRs sometimes wait
for a very long time. However this is not for lack of interest, but
because we find ourselves in a constant need to prioritize
certain issues/PRs over others. If you think your issue/PR is very important,
try to popularize it by getting other users to comment and share their point of view.
I want to file an issue!
Great! We encourage you to participate in this open source project. We love Pull Requests, Bug Reports, ideas, (security) code reviews or any other kind of positive contribution.
To make it easier to triage, we have these issue requirements:
Please do your best to search for duplicate issues before filing a new issue so we can keep our issue board clean.
Every issue should have exactly one bug/feature request described in it. Please do not file meta feedback list tickets as it is difficult to parse them and address their individual points.
Feature Requests are better when they’re open-ended instead of demanding a specific solution -ie “I want an easier way to do X” instead of “add Y”
Issues are not the place to go off topic or debate. If you have questions, please join the #fenix:mozilla.org channel.
Please always remember our Community Participation Guidelines
Please do not tag specific team members to try to get your issue looked at faster. We have a triage process that will tag and label issues correctly in due time. If you think an issue is very severe, you can ask about it in Matrix.
Please keep in mind that even though a feature you have in mind may seem like a small ask, as a small team, we have to prioritize our planned work and every new feature adds complexity and maintenance and may take up design, research, marketing, product, and engineering time. We appreciate everyone’s passion but we will not be able to incorporate every feature request or even fix every bug. That being said, just because we haven't replied, doesn't mean we don't care about the issue, please be patient with our response times as we're very busy.
Build Instructions
Pre-requisites:
Android SDK
To run command line tools, you'll need to configure Java: see our how-to guide.
Clone or Download the repository:
git clone https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix
Import the project into Android Studio or build on the command line:
./gradlew clean app:assembleDebug
If this errors out, make sure that you have an ANDROID_SDK_ROOT environment
variable pointing to the right path.
Make sure to select the correct build variant in Android Studio. See the next section.
Make sure to select "Default APK" under Installation Options inside Run/Debug configuration: see this bug.
Build Variants
For general development, we recommend the debug build variant. Here's an explanation of each variant:
debug: the default for developers, similar to most other Android apps. It is debuggable, uses a Nightly GeckoView with debug symbols, adds tools like LeakCanary for troublingshooting, and does not strip unused code.
nightly: what we ship to the Firefox Nightly channel, using GeckoView Nightly.
beta: what we ship to the Firefox Beta channel, using GeckoView Beta. It is more stable than nightly.
release: what we ship as Firefox for Android, using GeckoView Release. It is the most stable.
nightly, beta, and release are unsigned and debuggable=false by default. If
you want these variants to be:
automatically signed, see Automatically signing release builds
debuggable=true, see Building debuggable release variants
Performanc
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
24 sourcesapparently you didnt bother you read my comments on the linked issue, as well as the multiple issues I linked to it, including one that I opened myself [1]. My own issue was closed as wont fix.
1. https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/20647
In Chrome users beware: Manifest v3 is deceitful and threateningTo anyone saying "just use Firefox", I would think again. I think Firefox is (marginally) better than Chrome, but they are also pulling some of the same bullshit:
https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/20736
In Chrome users beware: Manifest v3 is deceitful and threateningI'd also say it's integration with Firefox on Android is just a broken, miserable experience. (I mostly blame FF for this, because it used to be great)
https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/9773
In End of Support for Firefox LockwiseStill doesn't work on Firefox Mobile: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/4343
In Lots to See in Firefox 93On desktop, Firefox Developer Edition, Nightly, and ESR still allow unsigned extensions after setting xpinstall.signatures.required to false in about:config.[1]
Firefox for Android doesn't allow sideloading,[2] and only has an advantage because Chrome for Android doesn't support extensions at all in its official relases.
[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Add-ons/Extension_Signing#FAQ
[2] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/11308 (closed without adequate resolution in https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/14034)
In Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to changeYeah, the Save as PDF feature was handy and its absence from the current Firefox for Android feels like a regression. I hope they add it back.
- GitHub issue for printing: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/10217
- GitHub issue for Save as PDF: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/3709
In Firefox for Android is a mess, and something needs to change> About the only significant feature in my mind that Fenix has which Chrome for Android does not is WebExtension support, and even though this is indeed a very significant feature, for a user who doesn't particularly care about privacy it is practically the only feature that makes Fenix worthy of consideration over Chrome.
100% on the money. Note the caveat that a number of the key, vital, privacy preserving extensions are available on Firefox for Android, because otherwise, even users who do care about privacy would be shit-out-of-luck.
I'm glad to hear that Nightly is in a better spot though[1]! This makes me hope that eventually, improvements are coming. But right now it seems like a number of features seem to get disabled before release, such as about:config.
I hope some-day Chrome reconsiders this ancient old policy of providing zero
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user-agency on the web. Extensions are the system by which users can opt to modify their web experience, and not having extensions available on the most restricted, most constrained, most in-need-of-help modality is cruel. A decade ago there might have been sufficient cause to believe the "mobile devices aren't fast enough," but today it just feels like Google doesn't want to allow users to do good things for themselves.
[1] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/19594
> The pull-to-refresh implementation is a prime example of a buggy feature that was pushed out too early and only underwent sufficent testing only after it reached users.
I found out that this may not be accurate. Looking at https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/21175, pull-to-refresh is simply absent from release builds, and only present in nightly builds. I wish it worked properly there though.
In Google Docs in a clean-room browserIn any case, I reported it at https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/21405.
In Google Docs in a clean-room browser> I saw this too, has it been reported?
I believe it was fixed a while ago, but I had pull to refresh disabled as a workaround at the time (when they finally made it configurable).
The pull-to-refresh implementation is a prime example of a buggy feature that was pushed out too early and only underwent sufficent testing only after it reached users. Some of the issues stemming from it still weren't fixed even a year afterwards, and they appeared in places as critical as Google's search results page.
https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/9766
> What's the issue URL? I want to read the history and maybe complain too.
It's the GitHub link in my previous comment.
In Google Docs in a clean-room browserAgree about Mozilla's engineering culture, in their mobile division at least. It's startling to think that literally the only alternative to a Blink monoculture on Android is a poorly-managed alternative. I now see myself as a holdout of Firefox on desktop, because the constant issues and quagmire of inexplicable UI changes compelled me to move to Brave on mobile.
As an example, the GeckoView ticket[1] that #17716 depends on has been constantly pushed back from v88 to possibly v93 or later over the past year. Being able to save an image that I am able to see on a webpage is what I consider basic functionality, but there does not seem to be much of an acknowledgement from the GeckoView team about its importance.
Another example is this[2] issue report I submitted. It was closed because they "couldn't address it", and even after providing a
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video showing the exact problem, my report was still ignored. The issue is that it does not matter whether or not they consider it a problem, because I do, and Chromium does not have the same problem. That only makes me more likely to choose Chromium over Firefox. Compound that a dozen times over, and for me, practicality wins out over principle.
I'm also worried about the long-term stability of their mobile division - not only because of Servo, but because issues related to the mobile team being understaffed and overworked had come to light in at least once instance in the past. Mobile web browsers are becoming far too important to get wrong in the present day, and after realizing this fact, I have to wonder why Mozilla's financial structure still prevents direct contributions to their development teams for Firefox, and why they are still using what resources they do have on far less important projects like Mozilla VPN or Relay.
[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1690037
[2] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/17525
I'm using Firefox Nightly, but many of the issues are present on release too:
- Saving images doesn't send the cookies, so you can't save images gated behind a login. (over 1 year old, not fixed, #17716)
- Switching tabs (by swiping the address bar) sometimes shows the old tab's contents/interaction, with the new tab's address bar. (unsure if reported, I should report it.)
- The menu shows a "sign in to sync" or similar prompt. When I click it, the settings screen shows me as logged in. When I close the settings screen, the menu shows me as logged in. (#19657, possibly #19036 too)
- Reopening a tab moves it to the very top of the list, before your oldest open tab. (fixed in nightly, #10986)
- Opening the tab menu scrolls you to a random place, rather than the currently open tab. (got fixed a few days ago. #20637, possibly #20960 too.)
- R
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eader mode randomly switches to default theme (fixed a few months ago, #17865)
The tracker is at https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues.
The impression I get is that Firefox Mobile is shipping broken code and unwanted redesigns, and testing in production. Perhaps it's from a lack of engineering culture and management. Looking at issues like https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/pull/21038, I feel Mozilla is more interested in marketing, design, and analytics, than solid engineering. It's nauseating and depressing to see Mozilla fall so far.
Closed: Install Android extension without registering #20647 (Firefox)
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