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It's never been a better time to switch to Firefox
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this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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No home button is absolutely pathetic. I never stopped using FF on desktop, but until FF mobile gets a home button it's not going to be installed on my phones.
In the meantime Kiwi has been the better browser on mobile by far in my opinion. It has access to more extensions and it was the first browser to do things like the bottom address bar among other things. Oh, and it has a fucking home button like every other browser except for FF mobile for some dumbass reason.
It's still there, it's just off by default since people rarely use it these days.
Go to Customize Firefox controls, buttons and toolbars. Pick the Home button or whatever else you want on the toolbar, and just drag it up there. Some items might be in the overflow menu on the right.
What's the use case for a home button? Why not just set the default url for new tabs?
I guess, it's so you can make your current tab navigate to the home-page rather than closing the tab and opening a new one...
You can't set it to a custom URL... I have a selfhosted dashboard that I want to load by pressing the home button. Having a "home" button that forces you to use their dumb start page isn't really a home button. That isn't how any home buttons on any other browsers work including FF desktop.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-to-set-the-home-page
You realize that there is difference between FF mobile and FF desktop, right? This has been a known issue for a long time now. I'm not mistaken and I'm not mentioning it because I just glanced over some settings.
Doesn't let you set the homepage to a custom URL in FF mobile...
Damn, you sure are mad for being correct
And you're annoying... it would have taken you 5 seconds to open FF on your phone if you use it to see that you were wrong instead of trying to incorrectly correct me.
I can't comprehend how someone can be able to self host something but not able to find literally the first configurable option on the "home" settings page.
I can't comprehend how you fail to understand that on FF mobile you do not get an option to set a custom URL for the home button. But yes, please open your FF mobile right now and show me how you can set the home button to something like dashboard.home.lan or a local IP address, I can't wait!
Tell you what, you show me how to set a custom URL to the homepage button on Firefox Mobile in the current build and I'll send you $2000... let me know when you're ready to admit you're wrong.
This is one of the reasons I still use Chromium primarily. Firefox fanatics are just too much like cult members. You can point out real issues to them, like that Firefox was slow to implement hardware-accelerated video decoding on Linux, or that Firefox also enables a bunch of telemetry by default... but half of their identity is based on using Firefox, so they take it personally. I'd love to have a technical discussion with some of these Firefox cultists, but to be honest most of them will just resort to ad-hominem attacks because that is the only argument they have.
For real... I got downvoted into oblivion for a valid criticism.
And listen, I'm a huge FOSS nerd... I only use linux on my computers. I selfhost a shitload of FOSS services to maintain control and privacy. I run LineageOS on my phones and 90% of my apps are from f-droid. I say all that because obviously I would love to use Firefox mobile instead of another chromium based browser, but it's a turd... it doesn't have a functioning home button for fucks sake, it's been a known issue for over 5 years, and they haven't fixed it.
And why is something so seemingly simple not been fixed? Is it spaghetti code? Is it on purpose to force you to use their start page? I don't know, but I know there is no way around it. There are no extensions that fix it and none of the forks have added the functionality... despite plenty of people wanting it.
It's time to go to bed grandpa.
Nah, it's time for you to wake up son. I would rather have software that is customizable instead of the turd that is firefox mobile right now.
You can literally customise it to show the home button. I know because I have done this.
You can't set the home button to a custom URL in Firefox mobile... that "home" button forces you to use the Firefox start page. That's not really a home button. I need the home button to take me to my selfhosted dashboard because that's where everything I ever want to get to is and it's something I can control and customize to my liking. I shouldn't be forced to use Firefox's shitty start page... that's a start page button, not a home button despite what they call it.
Ah I see what you mean. Yeah I even had a quick look at the beta version where you are able to access the about:config and I couldn't find an obvious config setting for this either. Firefox on mobile definitely isn't perfect and especially if you have a specific use case. Just a suggestion that may be an alternative for you: if you press settings then add to home screen, does that hone screen shortcut work for you?
Yeah, but that's still an extra step to have to click home and then click on my dashboard shortcut that I don't want to do. I want to press home and be instantly on my dashboard which I spent a lot of time customizing for myself. I don't want to see Firefox's shitty dashboard/start page before I get to mine. Also because I do it all the time, dozens of times a day.
Kiwi works, I realize it's based on chromium. But it works perfectly and is far more customizable with far more extensions. But if Firefox ever adds a real home button, I'd likely switch to it.
There are also no extensions that allow for this customization of the home button. It's honestly fucked. I looked and looked for a way around it. There is no way to do it, it's a known problem.
https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/7551
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1807866
Yeah I understand. For something you use so actively you want it to be as seamless as possible. Maybe have another look at the "install to home screen" option though! I think you can do it on Chrome too btw. But I believe it should actually open as a seperate "app" on your phone.
So instead of having 1 browser app that contains whatever you're browsing + your dashboard, you could have 1 app for browsing + 1 "app" for your dashboard. It would allow you to even close down your browsing while always having an open dashboard. Maybe it doesn't fit your flow but it seems like an option worth considering if you haven't already.
That doesn't work for me, I need a home button in the browser to take me to the dashboard.
My workflow is open browser and I'm on my dashboard and I select something like my selfhosted paperless-ngx and now I want to get back to my dashboard again to go to sonarr. Right now that is one button press on home. Then I'm done with sonarr and I want to open my to do list, again just press home button. Every other method is more than one button press and less efficient. I shouldn't have to be less efficient because Firefox doesn't have a basic feature that every other browser has had since the beginning of time.
This has been a known problem with Firefox for 5+ years. And what's worse is that at one point in the past, Firefox mobile did have the ability to add a custom URL to the homepage but at some point they broke it. Which is why I stopped using it. And they have very little care to fix it. Just look at the comments in the github issue, plenty of people care about it.
Yeah it's incredibly annoying. I can't remember the exact details but a while ago they removed about:config from the stable build and I was using a setting in there. Okay well I can just use the beta build right? Except the beta build took away another different feature that the stable build had!