Privacy @lemmy.world sunset @reddthat.com 4d ago

Recommended Firefox alternative(s) for Android

Recently there has been controversy around Mozilla Firefox.

I've been looking for an alternative but really struggling, seems like every alternative has a downside:

Vivaldi: Uses some proprietary code and likely not doing much better on the user data side of things, also based on Chromium.
Tor: Uses Tor protocol and so is quite slow, my ISP would probably also think I'm a drug lord.
Fennec: Basically looks the same as Firefox but guessing less up to date, F-Droid has a warning about it's using Mozilla services for tracking.

What are you guys using? Have you found anything good?

17 comments

So currently this is my recommendation for web browsers for Android.

Chromium based (best for security on Android)

brave, disable cryptocrap, telemetry sponsor background and you're pretty much good to go.

cromite, an active fork of bromite which is basically an upgrade of ungoogled chromium

Vanadium, if you are using GrapheneOS

Firefox based browser (none support per-site isolation as of today)

IronFox, a active fork of Mull, basically the most harden FF flavor on Android

Fennec, basically a fully libre FF flavor
- How do you feel about DDG browser? It's another chrome based option. I've been using it when the some rare website won't work in a Firefox fork, and I'm curious to hear other people's opinions about it.
  
  I like their free email forwarding service for throwaway accounts. Obviously, the emails aren't private in any way.
  
  I think brave provide a slightly better experience overall, and privacy is a bit stronger too. Cromite might be better in some areas but DDG has better tracking protection against analytics from companies such as Adobe, Faceboo, Google, etc... by default.
  
  DDG mobile browser had a contreverasy with allowing Microsoft tracking (DDG search engine is using MS Bing's back-end) but in other hands brave is also quite contreversial with affiliate link injections, optionnal "private ads" with Web3 advertisement. Cromite seems cleaner but is a community run project and there is no company backing it.
  
  Honestly I haven't used it in years but it's definitely not the worst option you can choose on Android.
The nice thing about Fennec is you don't have to accept a Mozilla license to use it, and those Mozilla services are (AFAIK) disabled by default. In fact, when I look at their settings menu, there is no "data collection" section to speak of.

The not-so-nice thing about Fennec is a little while back, it just didn't receive any updates. For something like a month.

Just about every browser that's based on Firefox is going to be slower to update than mainline Firefox, with perhaps the exception of Tor and Mullvad because they work hand in hand.
Fennec cause it got cute little mascot
I'm using Vivaldi and I'd recommend it. Obviously nothing is perfect, and especially browsers, but I'd implore you to look further in to it.
Iceraven is my go to, been using it for about a year now. It works great
- Interesting, seems you have to download the .apk directly from their repo though, rather than any store. So I'm guessing there's no automatic updates?
  
  Yeah, but I see it as a pro and a con. With previous browsers I used like Mull, Fennec and Bromite, the store versions usually lagged behind, usually due to FDroid shenanigans, and downloading it from the source eliminates the middleman. While it is more work, I do use my browser for many important things, so I feel like it's worth it for my use case.
Just seen another post on Lemmy about it.
Waterfox has been great.

17 comments