Mozilla rolls out Firefox 79 for Android with a year’s worth of changes

Update 1 (08/25/2020 @ 1:06 PM ET): Mozilla has officially announced the rollout of the new Firefox for Android experience. Scroll to the bottom for more information. The article as published on July 29, 2020, is preserved below.

Mozilla Firefox is among the most popular alternatives to Google Chrome for both — mobile devices and desktops. Despite competition from Chrome, Mozilla Corporation — the organization behind Firefox — has been rolling out several updates over the years to keep their desktop and mobile apps relevant. After overhauling their desktop browser, known by its interim name “Firefox Quantum,” Mozilla has been working to upgrade the mobile browser — temporarily recognized as Fenix — for about a year. The new version has been available in the Preview channel (which was recently merged with the Nightly channel) for quite some time and is finally rolling out to the stable channel as Firefox 79 for Android (via AndroidPolice), albeit without one key feature.

In July 2018, Mozilla for Android entered the maintenance phase to focus on developing an entirely new version without a new codebase instead of updating the existing one. Firefox for Android hasn’t received a major update since July last year and is now making a jump straight from version 68 to 79.

Among the new feature, Firefox 79 for Android brings a clean and modern UI. The codebase and thus, the functionality is the same as the Preview builds but one feature that’s lacking on the stable build is proper support for add-ons (a.k.a. extensions). Mozilla only starting adding support for add-ons on Firefox Preview/Nightly back in February this year. It added five more add-ons in April, and then another three earlier this month. As of now, the total number of add-ons supported on the stable as well as the Nightly channels is only nine. This means that Firefox for Android loses access to thousands of extensions that were supported on the previous versions.

While it is understandable that the complete migration of add-ons to the new codebase requires time, release without proper support is bound to disappoint those who like to use specific extensions avidly. If you want to continue using those add-ons, you may have to stick to the older version of Firefox for Android. But if you’re among those who want a cleaner and faster browser experience, you can go ahead and either update the app from the Google Play Store or download the latest version from APK Mirror.

Download Firefox 79 for Android from APK Mirror

Firefox Browser: fast, private & safe web browser (Free, Google Play) →

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Update: Official Announcement

In a blog post, Mozilla announced that the new version of Firefox for Android is rolling out widely for users in Europe starting today and will roll out for users in North America on Thursday. The new update, which has version number 79, brings a new, cleaner UI with improved one-handed use, Collections, an automatic dark theme toggle, Enhanced Tracking Protection, an improved Private Mode, initial support for 9 extensions/add-ons, and most importantly, Mozilla’s new GeckoView browser engine. Mozilla has dubbed this release “Firefox Daylight” since it marks a new beginning for the company’s Android browser.

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