Get FireFox on the iPad (Sort Of) with Foxbrowser

Sep 7, 2012 - 8 Comments

Firefox for iPad aka Foxbrowser

Foxbrowser is a new web browser for iPad that’s basically Firefox for iOS – though not officially – thanks to an open source fork broken off from Mozillas abandoned FireFox Home app. It’s surprisingly fast and best of all has full support for the convenient Firefox Sync feature, keeping your tabs, bookmarks, and history the same across all your Firefox browsers be them on the desktop in OS X, at work in Windows or Linux, or right on the iPad in Foxbrowser.

Other nice features of Foxbrowser include:

  • Start screen shows the most visited websites from history
  • Up to 8 simultaneous open tabs
  • See and access open tabs from other browsers equipped with Firefox Sync
  • Real time search of browser history, tabs, and bookmarks

Some of these features are also in Safari for iOS so long as you use Safari 6 on a Mac, but for those of us who also use Firefox on a PC or Mac the FireFox Sync support is extremely useful.

Foxbrowser is for iPad only and offers a good solution until Mozilla gets back onboard with a full-fledged Firefox for iOS app. Nice find by LifeHacker!

.

Related articles:

Posted by: Paul Horowitz in iPad, Tips & Tricks

8 Comments

» Comments RSS Feed

  1. kirstine says:

    where is the toolbar on foxbrowser? can’t find it anywhere, it is very important! please reply

  2. demoniid says:

    quite simple , with the advent of google tablets and other stuff . Firefox will be just for them !

  3. Zack says:

    I simply hit cancel on the initial setup and ignored the syncing. It will come in handy when Safari is doing dumb things.

  4. Max says:

    Concept is interesting, but you need to re-pair your device every time you restart the App. When you open a bookmark, you need to close the bookmark drop down, quite annoying.

    In a nutshell, this is an unfinished and buggy App. If they fix it, it would be worth using it.

  5. me says:

    Does it support flash ?

  6. Zoli says:

    Why bother?

  7. Patel says:

    Why on earth did Mozilla abandon building Firefox for iOS? Seems very shortsighted! I think in not too long, we will get an option to change the default browser in iOS, and Firefox will be missing a big piece of history here.

    • Dave says:

      They abandoned it after Apple made it clear they wouldn’t allow another full web browser on iOS. All the ‘browsers’ on the iTunes Store all use the same engine as Safari. Mozilla wanted to use their own engine instead. That wouldn’t be allowed and whilst they could write it, they couldn’t distribute it without Apples seal of approval.

      Microsoft have taken the same stance with Window RT.

Leave a Reply

 

Shop on Amazon.com and help support OSXDaily!

Subscribe to OSXDaily

Subscribe to RSS Subscribe to Twitter Feed Follow on Facebook Subscribe to eMail Updates

Tips & Tricks

News

iPhone / iPad

Mac

Troubleshooting

Shop on Amazon to help support this site