Mozilla Firefox Finally Comes to iOS

Mozilla announced this week that its flagship Firefox web browser is now available on iPhone and iPad. What took so long is unclear: Firefox has been available on Android for over four years.

“Firefox for iOS lets you take your favorite browser with you wherever you go with the Firefox features you already love including smart and flexible search, intuitive tab management, syncing with Firefox Accounts and Private Browsing,” the Mozilla announcement notes. “You can use Firefox Accounts to sync your browsing history, tabs and passwords and bring bookmarks from your other devices to Firefox for iOS.”

This, to me, is the point. As many know, Apple doesn’t allow browser makers to ship their own rendering engines on top of iOS, ostensibly because of potential performance/battery life issues (but really because Apple). So when you run Chrome, or now Firefox, on iOS, what you’re really getting is a wrapper around the Safari browser.

Seriously, that’s not an issue. I think most users of Chrome or Firefox are really just looking for cross-platform settings/bookmarks/passwords sync and, perhaps, a somewhat familiar UI. And this release absolutely delivers on all that.

It also provides:

• Search suggestions predict what you’re looking for in your favorite search engine.
• Visual Tabs allow you to easily manage multiple tabs on the same screen.

• Private Browsing gives you the ability to browse the Web without saving history or sharing existing cookies with the sites you visit.

I installed Firefox on my iPhone 6S Plus during my long day in New York yesterday, but really haven’t spent much time with it yet. But I will do so going forward. (I switch between Chrome and Firefox in Windows 10.)

You can get Firefox for iOS from the Apple App Store.