14 DAY TRIAL // Firefox is currently one of the world’s top browser on the desktop, and parent company Mozilla wants the experience to expand to mobile devices too.
This is why the company is trying to provide Android users with capabilities inspired by the desktop sibling, including support for extensions.
Mozilla has announced that beginning with Firefox 85, users are provided with access to the AMO extension repository for a more straightforward experience overall.
“Starting with Firefox 85, which will be released January 25, 2021, Firefox for Android users will be able to install supported Recommended Extensions directly from addons.mozilla.org (AMO). Previously, extensions for mobile devices could only be installed from the Add-ons Manager, which caused some confusion for people accustomed to the desktop installation flow. We hope this update provides a smoother installation experience for mobile users,” the company explains.
In case you’re wondering why this is such a big deal for Android users, it’s because extensions are one neat way to expand the functionality of Firefox beyond the standard feature lineup.
More extensions possibly coming
Mozilla has put a lot of effort into getting extensions right on mobile devices, and the company explains in a statement that this particular announcement is one of the last steps of its project to bring add-ons to Firefox for Android.
“As a quick note, we plan to enable the installation buttons on AMO during our regularly scheduled site update on Thursday, January 21. These buttons will only work if you are using a pre-release version of Firefox for Android until version 85 is released on Tuesday, January 25. This wraps up our initial plans to enable extension support for Firefox for Android. In the upcoming months, we’ll continue to work on optimizing add-on performance on mobile. As a reminder, you can use an override setting to install other extensions listed on AMO on Firefox for Android Nightly,” it says.
It remains to be seen how many extensions end up going live for Firefox on Android, but for now, the options in this regard are pretty limited.