Firefox Focus - weird but good, standalone mobile browser and ad blocker

The best ad blocker around (uBlock Origin [0]) is not available on iPhone iOS.  That's essentially because Firefox and other browsers on iOS do not have the ability to load plugins as sophisticated as uBlock Origin.

A good substitute is Firefox Focus [1].  It's a content blocker on iOS, and can be set up that way so that Focus will block ads from showing when you use Safari!

A weird thing though is that Focus will not block ads on the main Firefox browser.  Again, something to do with iOS restrictions on iPhones.

That's ok, because Firefox has ad blocking built in (though as an obscure feature).

Another weird thing is that Firefox Focus also functions as a weird mobile web browser.  Weird because although Focus is "Firefox" branded, it doesn't have any of the account and password syncing features of the actual Firefox browser.

Oh, and Focus doesn't have tabs.  You literally have to focus on one web page at a time.

 

[0] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_Focus

Ad blocking in Firefox on iPhone iOS

uBlock Origin [0] is a plugin for the best ad blocking available, and it's available for Firefox on Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux.

However, Firefox on iPhone iOS (FF-iOS) does not have any plug-in support, so uBlock Origin is not available for it.

FF-iOS doesn't support plug-ins apparently because it's actually using Safari's rendering engine underneath (a choice forced by Apple, apparently).

What to do about ad blocking in FF-iOS then?

Turns out FF-iOS has ad blocking built-in! You just need to go into "Settings" > "Tracking Protection". Then enable "Enhanced Tracking Protection", and set "Protection Level" to "Strict".

This feature is frustratingly [1][2] not well publicized [3]!

Another very popular plug-in is "dark mode", and that too is built into FF-iOS! It's very prominently publicized in the app's "more" menu though.

[0] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/jwi1r9/firefox_ios_should_integrate_with_ublock_to_make/
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/n9jfui/firefox_ios_and_lack_of_content_blockers/
[3] https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-ios/issues/5198#issuecomment-575617840