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mozilla-mobile
fenix
Kotlin2018–2024
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
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

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…

2T1Qka0rEiPr used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 8:03:49 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.

010203040502018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 49 mentions; 1 submissions, 48 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 42 mentions; 3 submissions, 39 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 24 mentions; 5 submissions, 19 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 27 mentions; 2 submissions, 25 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 12 mentions; 3 submissions, 9 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 1 submissions, 3 comments2024

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC49148
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC42339
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC24519
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC27225
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1239
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC413

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 GitHub

What Hacker News says

27 sources
Setting up an RSS reader was the best thing that happened to my browsing habits in years. Can't recommend it enough. Constant refreshing of half a dozen sites was replaced by occassionally looking into one program. Literally all the sites I read had an RSS feed, even if they didn't advertise it (maybe they don't even realise it). And a while ago I added an RSS feed for replies to my comments here[1], which I thought I might implement myself, but of course somebody already did (thanks!). In addition, it helps keeping up with blogs I do read, but I don't read immediately, e.g. ACOUP. It also solved the problem of Firefox Android's atrocious tab handling ([2], basically because I took Firefox out of the equation). 1 https://hnrss.org 2 https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/20090
In Vivaldi integrates Mastodon in its desktop browser
zaat·Aug 26, 2022Submission

Tell HN: Firefox on Android Clear data on exit doesn't delete site data

As the title say, I have noticed some time ago that using Firefox on android, when I enter text on google site, past searches are been suggested. It wasn't the case in the past and it got me wondering, tested the same using other mobile browsers and none had the same behavior. So it isn't like Google's showing off that they identify you and your device without cookies, but rather Firefox issue. Found today an open github issue from two months ago, using colorful language, but there's no progress. Personally, a privacy breech from Firefox always hurts more, this one is a blocker for me and I will not be able to continue using Firefox on my mobile until it is fixed. https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/25787
5 points · Open discussion
Mozilla's silence on expanded add-on support for Firefox for Android is incomprehensible. Their lack of communication in response to user feedback is eroding what remains of their user base. - GitHub issue: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/20736 - Mozilla Connect idea: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/expand-add-on-compatibi... TFA mentions containers, which are also missing from Firefox for Android. But while containers would take time to implement on mobile, most of the add-ons from https://addons.mozilla.org are fully usable on Firefox for Android today, via the nightly channel,[1] via forks such as Mull,[2] and via other GeckoView implementations such as SmartCookieWeb-Preview.[3] Mozilla's decision to completely block all but 18 of these add-ons from the stable and beta channels of Firefox for Android makes absolute
Read the rest
ly no sense, and looks like self-sabotage at this point. [1] Expanded extension support in Firefox for Android Nightly: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio... [2] Mull: https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/mull-fenix [3] SmartCookieWeb-Preview:https://github.com/CookieJarApps/SmartCookieWeb-preview
In How Firefox’s Total Cookie Protection and container extensions work together
The same story here. I had started in 1999, and have been editing the same page since then. I can also search Google, Wikipedia, etc., directly from the same home page. The only core difference that I maintain that page locally on each device and use local file sync. Firefox on Android stopped opening local HTML files, without them giving a clear reason why, and I stopped using it. [1] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/7546
In Ask HN: Why are bookmarks second class citizens in browsers?
I've closely been following Mobile Firefox development over the past year - this browser is dead, like totally dead. Bug reports pile up, nothing is really fixed, a ton of commits about telemetry, some commits here and there changing certain UI elements, some refactoring, almost nothing else. Go check its revision history all you want: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/commits/main Mozilla has seemingly totally given up on it. It's incredibly sad.
In Add-on support in new Firefox for Android (2021)
Well, I'm trying out Vivaldi on Android. I've been using Firefox for, well, forever, but the tab handling[1] is bad enough that I'm willing to jump ship. So far it's... different? The tab handling is better, and I think I like having actual tabs in a mobile browser. I'm disappointed that the tab groups don't work as well as in Chrome. I like the link preview feature, in fact I could imagine all links opening like that by default (but that's not an option). I don't find it all that customizable, that only seems to be true for the desktop version. For example, I can't get seem to rid of the history button (which is styled like a sidebar button despite opening full screen). There is no reader mode. There are page actions, which let you apply all kinds of nonsensical CSS effects such as blur. But no reader mode. The built-in content blocker d
Read the rest
oesn't remove cosmetic annoyances as effectively as Ublock does, which makes me miss reader mode all the more. There don't seem to be any add-ons. Overall, not entirely convincing. 1. https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/20012#issueco...
In Vivaldi Mail 1.0: Email client built into the browser

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