What you need to know
- Mozilla has announced that extensions are coming to Firefox for Android on December 14.
- Extensions were largely removed from the Android version back in 2020 when the app design was overhauled.
- The company claims there will be "400+ new Firefox for Android extensions available" and you can test some of these now.
Back in August, Mozilla announced that it would be bringing back extension support for the Android version of Firefox. According to a recent blog post, the company is releasing its next stable version of the app on December 14, complete with the ability to install and use extensions.
To help celebrate this announcement, Mozilla has also launched a dedicated landing page for you to see what extensions are compatible. Since August, Mozilla has been working to get developers on board with making their extensions compatible with Android. The company also claims that when the next version launches, it "will have 400+ new Firefox for Android extensions available."
Notably, when Mozilla overhauled the Firefox for Android app back in 2020, it removed compatibility with the majority of extensions. Since then, you have only been able to install and use a handful of options. However, this decision essentially removed any enticing reasons to use Firefox over Chrome since the latter doesn't support them anyway.
At the time of this writing, there are currently only 18 extensions listed within the "Explore all Android extensions" section. Of course, that's quite a far cry from the 400+ that are expected to be available in just two weeks. However, it's just as likely that developers are still working to make their extensions compatible ahead of the final release.
What makes this particularly exciting is that there just aren't very many mobile browsers that offer the ability to install extensions. The number gets even smaller if you try to find a browser that you trust enough to use daily. One example of a good browser with extension support is Samsung Internet, but even that has limited support, and there aren't more than 400 to choose from.
Browsers, in general, are pretty robust in the features that they offer, but I literally wouldn't know what to do if I couldn't use extensions. As someone who tends to work from a foldable phone from time to time, extension support has been something I've wanted for a long time. If implemented correctly, I might just say goodbye to Chrome on my phone and personal desktop computer and make the switch to Firefox.
While there are still two weeks to go until the next major update arrives, you don't have to wait that long. If you want to try and see whether the grass is greener, just download the latest version of Firefox Nightly from the Play Store. We don't recommend making the switch just yet, as this is an unstable version and is primarily designed to be a "development platform." Nevertheless, you can install Firefox Nightly and then download and try out some of the extensions that are already listed.
