Honest question; is there any potential downside to switching to LibreWolf from Firefox? e.g. should all my addons/browser Extensions still work?
From a usability perspective it's not as good as Firefox. But from a privacy stand point it's much better.
What I mean about usability is that due to it trying to prevent you from being fingerprinted it opens the browser in the same size window everytime, regardless of whether you prefer maximised or not. It has dark mode turned off. It doesn't remember cookies unless you explicitly manually add an exception. From a privacy perspective these are all good things but for convenience they're not.
All of these mild inconveniences can however be turned off if you wish. Just be aware you won't be browsing as securely then though.
As a Firefox replacement in all other regards, it's pretty much the same software. No, it is the same software.
If you use Linux and a password manager you may have an issue getting flatpaks to speak to each other and you also may have to move a folder from .mozilla to .librewolf to get them to speak to each other. These are easily searchable issues if you have them with simple fixes though.
Tap for spoiler
DM me for more details if you run into this issue and need help
In all other regards, to me at least, it feels just like Firefox
Thanks for the in-depth reply, I truly appreciate it! I’ve loaded a Bazzite installer onto a flash drive over the weekend - but ran out of time, before I could switch NVME drives to install..
More privacy is a good thing, so happy to roll with some minor inconveniences - but Dark Mode is definitely a relatively high priority for me; so I’ll have to figure that one out once I get up and running.
Already prepared to run a secondary (Chromium) browser for compatibility and Vivaldi seems to be getting recommended a lot recently — at least from a de-Google / de-US perspective.
Doesn't this make one stand out as "the person with the unmaximized/weird screen resolution"?
The point is to make everyone have the same size window therefore nobody stands out. We're all Spartacus as it were. Of course you can just click maximise if you want.
When maximised the size and resolution of your screen can be determined and used as a piece of data among many to uniquely identify you and attempt to figure out your identity. Depending on what you're doing and which sites you're using this may or may not be a concern.
For example, when I use my university's website, they already know who I am. I log in with an email address uniquely tied to me. So maximising the window then, to me, doesn't really matter. But if I'm browsing news articles from websites hell bent on bombarding me with adverts, cookies, and trackers then I'll stick with the default Librewolf sizing in an attempt to blend in.
As I understand it Librewolf is basically Firefox without Mozilla and almost all extensions I care about and use work perfectly.
I also believe you can import your Firefox configs into Librewolf without any hassle.
Does sync work? I am guessing it won't if every Mozilla part is removed.
https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/#can-i-use-firefox-sync-with-librewolf-is-it-safe-to-do-so
(things change quickly though, given Mozilla Corp decisions)
Damn, that was the only reason I didn't make the switch long time back. Ig I heard wrong or assumed it wouldn't, thanks for the link.
Yes. There's a toggle in about: config (fxaccount sync or something similar) that allows FF account sync. Will do everything from extensions, to bookmarks to history if you're keeping that.
My banks website won't login on Lirbrewolf. Tried disabling every setting imaginable.
Does it work with Firefox? Have you had any luck spoofing your UserAgsnt to Chrome?
I know I already have issues logging into a SAP-based system with Firefox to view/download my payslips, so I already need to use a Chromium-based on occasion as a back-up.
Yes, works fine in Firefox
What's the error you get? Perhaps someone has dealt with it before. What overrides have you tried?
There are several things that might affect some sites and are more troublesome than others, for example:
ublockOrigin can give trouble to some sites, a quick test is to temporarily disable it and see if the site works. It can be investigated further what specific filter might be affecting the site.
If you care about usability, I'd recommend Zen browser. Not as hard as Librewolf, though, it's not owned by Mozilla.
been using it for half a year now. you can log into your account, all the extensions are compatible, ublock is installed by default. ff store themes also work.
has no google search by default but can be added (still the best for searching pictures, otherwise im fine with qwant)
by default it deletes cookies, but that can be changed.
drm is also disabled by default, but turns out music streaming sites are just whinin, they dont really need it.
It’s a bitch to use with 1Password. I didn’t experience downsides otherwise so far.
Luckily, I am my own password manager - so that shouldn’t be an issue!
Huh, can you elaborate? I settled on Vivaldi for now but I don’t love that it’s Chromium
How does Mullvad stack up to librewolf? I set up portable builds on all of my Windows desktops.
I wanna make the switch from Firefox as my daily, but damn it, the syncing is fucking glorious. I've got two PCs and two Android devices. And it really is great.
I am so goddamn finished with this enshittification.
@kooltechlord I was just looking into this, as I just changed following the whole Mozilla fiasco. Wonderful!
Well @[email protected] used to post in here, and he was an active Librewolf developer, see his first post on this very same community, and he still is one of the moderators, though I believe he's no longer around, 🙁
Good news! I don't use it much, but Mastodon is indeed better suited for organizations / individuals to broadcast project updates.
Okay, so how do you install it on an android phone? No fdroid, no playstore entry...
There's no mobile version, use Ironfox instead; they're both FF-based so you can sync between them.
Desktop only. Use this one for android IronFox (A privacy and security-oriented Firefox-based browser for Android.) https://f-droid.org/packages/org.ironfoxoss.ironfox/
Or Fennec
FrozenFennec on the work, a fork closer to Mull in some settings I believe.
what is the difference with IronFox then?
IronFox is done by the phoenix developers I believe, and FrozenFennec, which hadn't been released, it more actually based on Mull. If you care IronFox is not part of official f-droid, but offers its own f-droid repo, FrozenFennec is being developed as an extended/special Fennec and it'll be released on official f-droid
thx for the context
also yeah, they also distribute it on Accrescent, which is miles better than F-Driod in terms of security
not everything is a smartphone app...
Unfortunately when it comes to the web browser itself, it's a must. You cannot have a browser that is actually just a webpage.
It's for Desktop not for android.
@hmmm @bountygiver @Valmond I use #LibreWolf on desktop and #DuckDuckGoBrowser on Android.
I would heavily recommend on using Ironfox through Accrescent on Android. DDG browser is suboptimal at best
"The developer doesn't plan to develop for mobile" would have been appropriate response instead of that sass response.
And you wonder why mainstream users have problems with FOSS community.
What? It was normal a response. I just said "It's for Desktop not for Android" like normally.
In context to the earlier response I replied to
Welcome to the official community for LibreWolf.
LibreWolf is designed to increase protection against tracking and fingerprinting techniques, while also including a few security improvements. LibreWolf also aims to remove all the telemetry, data collection and annoyances, as well as disabling anti-freedom features like DRM. If you have any question please visit our FAQ first: https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/
To learn more or to download the browser visit the website: https://librewolf.net/
If you want to contribute head over to our Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/librewolf