Rich Felker
PSA: On stock mobile Firefox, you can bypass Mozilla's lockout of about:config using the alternate URL:
chrome://geckoview/content/config.xhtml
Note that "chrome" here has nothing to do with the Google browser. Google stole the name from what was previously the Mozilla-internal name for "browser UI components".
Rich Felker
@draeath They admitted the reason was that they were worried normie newbs would change something that bricks their browser and that'd make Firefox look bad. 🙄
draeath
@dalias I don't understand why they did it this way. The last time I saw words on it on bugzilla was something about the UI.
That this special page exists and works says otherwise.
Brian Campbell
@dalias Any settings you find useful to set here? I haven't noticed any annoying antifeatures on mobile firefox, but maybe there are some that I should turn off that I don't know about.
Rich Felker
@unlambda As an example, https://hachyderm.io/@dalias/114870743527476830 to fix referer leaks. There's all the phone-home stuff to nuke too. And I use firstparty-isolate, but that's a big hammer you want to understand before you do it (and it will effectively lose all your existing cookies/sitedata if you switch, by changing the scoping it's stored under).
Rich Felker
@unlambda You may also want to adjust scrollbar accessibility with stuff like https://hachyderm.io/@dalias/114773215748553833, albeit tuned a bit to mobile/touch.
Rich Felker
@ltning There's no such thing as Firefox on iOS. The "Firefox" app is just using the OS browser engine but integrating with Mozilla Firefox account services for sharing your data between devices. It's not actually Firefox.
ltning
Rich Felker
@nazokiyoubinbou If you're already using Firefox on Android, where there's no non-expert (maybe even no non-rooted?) way to transfer your profile from one app identity's storage to another's, switching to a different fork when you find you need about:config is kinda a non-starter. Unless you already have strong other reasons you want to and are willing to rebuild from scratch.
Nazo
@dalias Though certainly better just to use Ironfox, this is great for those who are for whatever reason not doing so.
Rich Felker
Note: it looks like based on @catsalad's https://infosec.exchange/@catsalad/115267961741040364 Firefox is doing something nasty where it removes the "chrome://" prefix from anything you paste into the URL bar. So you need to manually re-type it after pasting. Or paste it into bookmark contents and use the bookmark, if that works.
Rich Felker
@ekg Nightly doesn't have it blocked afaik.
Zoe
When you say stock do you exclude Nightly?, because I have no problem with accessing about:config.
jomo
@dalias @catsalad interesting. When you copy it with a leading space included it is not filtered and works without having to remove the space.
" chrome://geckoview/content/config.xhtml"
You can then toggle the setting general.aboutConfig.enable to true to enable about:config again.
The Fennec build (available on F-Droid) does not have this limitation, you can just visit about:config right away.
The Turtle
@dalias interesting... I run the beta on mine and it reports that general.aboutConfig.enabled is "true," but trying to then go to about:config it rejects as an invalid protocol.
Mozilla, stop trying to be Apple. If I wanna fuck up my browser, you WILL NOT stand in my way.
And this is the beta, mind you!
Nazo
@dalias I feel like having to log into a few sites is definitely worth the improved security/privacy/etc.
But I'm sure there are more extreme reasons some people may not be making the switch.
Just, I worry the main reason is most just don't know it exists...
Rich Felker
@nazokiyoubinbou It's not just logging in but reconstructing your configuration, set of extensions & configuration for them, saved credentials and form data, etc.
Yes it's probably worth it if you have a strong understanding of which fork you can trust to work for you and to be around and up-to-date long-term.
This is not the situation most people are in the first time they encounter something shitty stock Android Firefox is doing, like blocking about:config.
Turre
@jomo @dalias @catsalad To add to the insult of this about:config farce, that aboutConfig flag appears to get reset on each Firefox update, so it's less useful than it initially seems.
Bookmarking the chrome:// based URL ftw.
Rich Felker
@masukomi @catsalad Mechanically about:config is an alias for the chrome:// thing. They probably just forgot to lock the latter or didn't care to because it wasn't widely known.
They locked about:config because changing things can "brick" your browser and they were worried that would "make Firefox look bad". 🙄
masukomi
@dalias @catsalad why did they lock about:config? And why do that bs with chrome:// ?
Like seriously. What am i missing here? Why bother having a dev do this work?
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