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mozilla-mobile
firefox-ios
Swift2014–2026
mozilla-mobile / firefox-ios

firefox-ios

Firefox for iOS

38Distinct people
47Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
13.1KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Firefox for iOS

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

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

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 7:02:50 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 year47 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2014-12-05 00:29:43 UTC to 2026-08-16 17:14:08 UTC.

0369122014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 1 submissions, 3 comments20142015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 11 mentions; 0 submissions, 11 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

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
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC413
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC11011
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
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 UTC202
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
Firefox for iOS and Focus iOS Download Firefox iOS and Focus iOS on the App Store. Firefox iOS Focus iOS Building the code This is a monolithic-repository, containing both the Firefox and Focus iOS projects. As this is an iOS project, it is required to have Xcode on your system, and you should check that xcode-select -p points to /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer (or however you've named your Xcode.app). Automatic Installation (Recommended) Steps: Automated Project Setup with FXIOS Manual Installation Clone the repo locally For their related build instructions, please follow the respective project readmes: Firefox for iOS Focus iOS Getting involved We encourage you to participate in those open source projects. We love Pull Requests, Issue Reports, Feature Requests or any kind of positive contribution. Please read the Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines and our Contributing guidelines first. You can file a new issue or research existing bugs If more information is required or you have any questions then we suggest reaching out to us via: Chat on Element channel #fx-ios and #focus-ios for general discussion, or write DMs to specific teammates for questions. Open a ticket with your question. Want to contribute on the codebase but don't know where to start? Here is a list of issues that are contributor friendly, but make sure to read the Contributing guidelines first. License This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this file, You can obtain one at https://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

5 sources
[Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on developing browsers] It depends on what exactly you'd want to implement, since a (modern) browser is really a huge piece of software with several aspects and components in it. Looking at it from one angle, you could split it into chrome (not Google Chrome, but the UI, like tab bar, bookmarks, menus, extensions management, etc.) and content (the rendering engine). You'd most likely get bogged down if you start writing your own rendering engine (processing HTML, CSS and JS, and processing image formats, video and sound formats, even not including any plugins), unless it's a very limited scope toy browser that can handle some simple stuff. In this case, start with base HTML support, including handling incomplete tags and quirks like that have been carried over for decades (the amount of cruft in rendering en
Read the rest
gines for backward compatibility and handling undocumented but accepted quirks would itself take a long time to develop). Then try a little bit of CSS support. I'd assume JS support could be quite challenging since that moves out of the already challenging "paint the screen" part into an even more challenging part on interpreting code, running it, optimizing it, etc., which is a lot more complex when you consider there would be several JS files loaded on most websites. Something a little more easier (only comparatively) would be developing the chrome around an existing rendering engine and seeing how to handle tabs, background loading, foreground loading, bookmarks, private/incognito browsing, etc., and if you feel adventurous enough, adopt a particular process or threading model for a multi-tab browser. Another alternative here is to create a WebView application and see which parts you could improve. For example, Chrome on iOS and Firefox on iOS are just the chrome for the built-in rendering engine in iOS, but address many things like tabs, networking, incognito mode, bookmarks, sync and other features. You could try creating a similar one on iOS, latching on to the work done by FoxBrowser [1] or Firefox for iOS [2]. On Android, you could try building on top of Firefox for Android [3]. If you'd like to work on a web browser rendering engine that's a bit more closer to "from scratch", I'd recommend working with the Servo [4] team and seeing how you can help. It's a long drawn project that has already made huge strides, but you'd get an inside view of the complexity of developing a browser engine. What's more, you could also learn Rust while doing this. [5] [1]: https://github.com/graetzer/Foxbrowser [2]: https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios [3]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Developer_g... [4]: https://servo.org/ [5]: https://www.rust-lang.org/
In Ask HN: If I wanted to make a web browser, where would I start?
From a quick glance: 1) Desktop browser is an electron app with ad tracking injected into your app via http://cdn.brave.com/ (via https://sonobi.com/welcome/index.php which promises "EFFECTIVELY PLAN AND SOURCE MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES WITH QUALITY AND VIEWABILITY FROM PREMIUM PUBLISHERS" 2) iOS browser is a fork of Firefox iOS - https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios 3) Android browser is a fork of https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.linkbubble...
In Brave: Brendan Eich's clean-ads browser startup

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