I only have two extensions...
... and yet, that alone makes me loathe any other mobile browser that doesn't support them.
this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2025
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I was using a friend's phone for checking something online the other day, and I was horrified at how much screen real estate was wasted on ads. I've become far too used to having adblock on mobile, and I had forgotten how bad it can be.
I always find it jarring, because I'm so surprised that people put up with it and just accept it as normal. I get that I am an extreme outlier when it comes to my willingness to tinker and also my stubbornness that makes me extremely willing to spend a heckton of time to solve problems that are annoying me, but for many people, switching to a different browser and using uBlock would be trivially easy, but they just don't, even if they know that's an option. I don't understand the mindset that leads to it.
The "A" is for "apathy".
"Video Background Play Fix" is also nice if you are a YouTube user. Background playing of Videos without the need for Premium.
Consent-O-Matic is nice too, clicks through cookie popups automatically
Combine with uninstalling all YouTube apps
pipepipe app is much better YouTube client and it comes with ad blocking and sponsorBlock.
Have you tried ReVanced? I love having SponsorBlock, DeArrow thumbnails, and the ability to remove YT Shorts entirely from the app. The YouTube patches are amazing!
And yet the GrapheneOS people recommend their own "Vanadium" hardened version of Chromium instead, for reasons I don't understand.
It is explained here https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing
They don't explicitly mention Firefox but:
"Chromium-based browsers like Vanadium provide the strongest sandbox implementation, leagues ahead of the alternatives. "
and
"Chromium has decent exploit mitigations, unlike the available alternatives. "
Since I myself lack the knowledge and skills to judge this, I have to trust the word of the developers.
Edit, correction. They do mention Firefox
"Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they're currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface."
Merely asserting something and explaining it to my satisfaction (as a developer myself) are two different things. I don't want to have to read through both codebases myself, but I would have liked the Graphene OS devs to cite some examples to prove their point.
Seriously. I've never heard of firefox being more vulnerable than chrome. It could be, but realistically not many groups are looking for exploits in a browser with 3% market share
And the complete inability to block ads is just a non issue. Ok.
vanadium has adblocking
How does that work, without any extensions?
it's just built in
Really? Didn't seem to to me; I just installed latest GrapheneOS on my pixel 9 this weekend, and Vanadium definitely let Google Adsense crap all over many sites I visited.
Is there a way to enable effective ad blocking that I missed?
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It’s a shame they’ve trashed Firefox on iOS. Doing anything involving the home page takes over a second. Closing a tab and reshowing the Home Screen, even just showing the Home Screen without closing a tab takes ages.
they’ve trashed
Maybe blame your shitty iPhone that forces every browser to use Webkit instead of Mozilla/Firefox.
Apple is the one blocking you from having Firefox. Webkit with a different skin is all you ever had to begin with, because apple is a huge bag of cocks
Just stick with safari. All IOS web browsers only use WebKit anyway. You can use extensions on safari like uBlock Lite or AdGuard. Works well for me.
Orion on iOS will let you use uBlock and other extensions. It’s not perfect but it’s the best I’ve found
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Im shocked they haven't banned this.
For a short time Firefox mobile got rid of extensions and man I have not felt so betrayed by a corporation as I did seeing those "update"s.
I swear Mozilla always does its best to ruin any good brand image they have.
It's gotta be a secret term to their default google search contract or something.
Bad time for Firefox.
Atleast they brought back Extensions shortly
If i am not mistaken google say "it's for stability" Stability my ass, if i want my browser being unstable with extensions then i'il do it, fuck google.
laughs in AdGuard
Still love the 🦊 though.
With uBlock you can remove cosmetics and some page elements, the best setup is nextdns/pihole/adguard + uBlock origin
This alone is why it's my main mobile browser but man they could really improve the UI. it's very sluggish with animations and components that aren't material for no good reason. the browser itself is also a bit laggy but i can excuse the page rendering.
it's probably impossible to meaningfully implement, but if I could make a userChrome.css for the mobile app I would definitely enjoy it more
Been using Cromite as my daily driver browser. It doesn't allow "real" extensions, but I guess devs built in Adblock Plus, which is really neat.
Def wish I could have Old Reddit Redirect and my dark reader apps on it tho. Keep a Firefox browser around primarily for that.
There's a native dark mode in Cromite. Go to about:flags The setting is Auto Dark Mode for Web Contents and it has a few different settings to try.
...And while I love dark reader, it's quite chonky, even on desktop.
As for old Reddit, I think you can edit host files on android?
"I think you can edit host files on android?"
Hadn't considered this as a possibility. Thanks for mentioning it — I'll have a look into it when I get a chance to. Even if it doesn't end up being possible, it sounds worth looking into.
FYI you can't edit the hosts file on Android without root
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What's interesting is that Google is developing a special version of chrome on Android that supports extensions
https://www.androidauthority.com/try-new-chrome-for-android-with-extensions-3569268/
After they neutered extensions with manifest v3, why even bother?
But it's kinda useless because it doesn't support the most important extension: uBlock Origin.
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I wish the full page translation works for Taiwan mandarin. It can do China-nese but not Taiwanese or HKnese.
I just installed GrapheneOS on my pixel 9 this weekend, and was surprised the default Vanadium browser doesn't have Google AdSense ripped out or an ad-blocker as default.
(To verify, try visiting slashdot.org with Vanadium, vs. Iron Fox with uBlock Origin).
As a result, I set IronFox to my default browser and am loving it. Why does GrapheneOS not have an ad-blocking solution in the default build? Seems like a big feature they could brag about.
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