this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2025
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LibreWolf

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Welcome to the official community for LibreWolf.

LibreWolf is designed to increase protection against tracking and fingerprinting techniques, while also including a few security improvements. LibreWolf also aims to remove all the telemetry, data collection and annoyances, as well as disabling anti-freedom features like DRM. If you have any question please visit our FAQ first: https://librewolf.net/docs/faq/

To learn more or to download the browser visit the website: https://librewolf.net/

If you want to contribute head over to our Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/librewolf

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Finally people will no longer be confused with this Lemmy community and accidentally post here.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Good news! I don't use it much, but Mastodon is indeed better suited for organizations / individuals to broadcast project updates.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

How does Mullvad stack up to librewolf? I set up portable builds on all of my Windows desktops.

I wanna make the switch from Firefox as my daily, but damn it, the syncing is fucking glorious. I've got two PCs and two Android devices. And it really is great.

I am so goddamn finished with this enshittification.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

I assume you're specifically talking about Mullvad Browser, not just Mullvad in terms of, say, their VPN standalone.

I'd recommend you check out Privacy Tests for the specific details on things like tracking prevention, but to summarize, it's nearly identical to Librewolf in most common categories. However, since it's a fork of the Tor Browser, keep in mind that:

  • There will be weird borders/spacing around sites, making them smaller than your browser, since that makes most Mullvad Browser users all appear to have an identical aspect ratio, which further prevents tracking, but can make sites a bit less usable.
  • There's no built-in password manager, so you need to use your own.
  • They don't support Firefox sync. (although unofficial bookmark syncing services do exist, such as Floccus)
  • Some sites can look blurry because of some fingerprinting protection features
  • Some third party extensions may fail to work properly, because they rely on the non-available Sync services.
  • There's no mobile app.
  • Your time zone is always spoofed to UTC so the way a site that depends on your current time could cause issues for you.
  • Many fonts and hardware APIs are removed, so some sites that interact with peripherals may fail, and some sites may display incorrectly.
  • All cookies are cleared between sessions. If you want to stay signed into sites without signing in every time you re-open your browser, you're out of luck.
  • Some default extension functionality that normally comes bundled with Firefox is removed. (e.g. the screenshot tool)

If you're cool with getting a little extra protection in exchange for those sacrifices, go with Mullvad. If you just don't want to use Firefox, but want a more private variant you can still use relatively easily in everyday life, go with Librewolf.

And remember, it's always okay to have more than one browser, where you use the more privacy-preserving one for sensitive tasks when needed, then drop to the less privacy-preserving one for more everyday work. You can always have both.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Honest question; is there any potential downside to switching to LibreWolf from Firefox? e.g. should all my addons/browser Extensions still work?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

It’s a bitch to use with 1Password. I didn’t experience downsides otherwise so far.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Huh, can you elaborate? I settled on Vivaldi for now but I don’t love that it’s Chromium

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Luckily, I am my own password manager - so that shouldn’t be an issue!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

From a usability perspective it's not as good as Firefox. But from a privacy stand point it's much better.

What I mean about usability is that due to it trying to prevent you from being fingerprinted it opens the browser in the same size window everytime, regardless of whether you prefer maximised or not. It has dark mode turned off. It doesn't remember cookies unless you explicitly manually add an exception. From a privacy perspective these are all good things but for convenience they're not.

All of these mild inconveniences can however be turned off if you wish. Just be aware you won't be browsing as securely then though.

As a Firefox replacement in all other regards, it's pretty much the same software. No, it is the same software.

If you use Linux and a password manager you may have an issue getting flatpaks to speak to each other and you also may have to move a folder from .mozilla to .librewolf to get them to speak to each other. These are easily searchable issues if you have them with simple fixes though.

Tap for spoilerDM me for more details if you run into this issue and need help

In all other regards, to me at least, it feels just like Firefox

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Doesn't this make one stand out as "the person with the unmaximized/weird screen resolution"?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

The point is to make everyone have the same size window therefore nobody stands out. We're all Spartacus as it were. Of course you can just click maximise if you want.

When maximised the size and resolution of your screen can be determined and used as a piece of data among many to uniquely identify you and attempt to figure out your identity. Depending on what you're doing and which sites you're using this may or may not be a concern.

For example, when I use my university's website, they already know who I am. I log in with an email address uniquely tied to me. So maximising the window then, to me, doesn't really matter. But if I'm browsing news articles from websites hell bent on bombarding me with adverts, cookies, and trackers then I'll stick with the default Librewolf sizing in an attempt to blend in.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

As I understand it Librewolf is basically Firefox without Mozilla and almost all extensions I care about and use work perfectly.

I also believe you can import your Firefox configs into Librewolf without any hassle.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Does sync work? I am guessing it won't if every Mozilla part is removed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)
[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Okay, so how do you install it on an android phone? No fdroid, no playstore entry...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

not everything is a smartphone app...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Unfortunately when it comes to the web browser itself, it's a must. You cannot have a browser that is actually just a webpage.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It's for Desktop not for android.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

"The developer doesn't plan to develop for mobile" would have been appropriate response instead of that sass response.

And you wonder why mainstream users have problems with FOSS community.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

What? It was normal a response. I just said "It's for Desktop not for Android" like normally.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

In context to the earlier response I replied to

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

There's no mobile version, use Ironfox instead; they're both FF-based so you can sync between them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Desktop only. Use this one for android IronFox (A privacy and security-oriented Firefox-based browser for Android.) https://f-droid.org/packages/org.ironfoxoss.ironfox/

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

FrozenFennec on the work, a fork closer to Mull in some settings I believe.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

what is the difference with IronFox then?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

IronFox is done by the phoenix developers I believe, and FrozenFennec, which hadn't been released, it more actually based on Mull. If you care IronFox is not part of official f-droid, but offers its own f-droid repo, FrozenFennec is being developed as an extended/special Fennec and it'll be released on official f-droid

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

thx for the context

also yeah, they also distribute it on Accrescent, which is miles better than F-Driod in terms of security