It does not mean Firefox can no longer be installed or run on non-certified or rooted Android devices, but it might mean that users on non-certified or rooted devices can’t access all AI features in Firefox for Android.
this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2026
77 points (96.4% liked)
Technology
86178 readers
3779 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
I've moved to Fennec and I'm very happy with it. If only it had Zen's workspaces it would be absolutely god-like
What does Fennec even do?
When I tried to look into it a few weeks ago I found very little information. The links on the f-droid page went to Mozilla repo's.
It's Firefox Android with the proprietary bits and tracking stripped out.
This is the repo. It has a very small description of the project. https://gitlab.com/relan/fennecbuild
The F-Droid page is, for better and for worse, the place with the most information about the project. https://f-droid.org/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/
I see, so that really is just all there is. Oh well, thanks for the info.
The reason I first used it was they had a way to bypass the limited list of extensions that Mozilla allowed to be installed but this is no longer an issue so no real idea what the benefit is anymore. I'd guess at disabled telemetry but don't quote me on that.
I switched to Ironfox a while back but still keep fennec around for the occasional site that Ironfox breaks.
Do you know much about the development of Fennec, is it an official Mozilla thing? There's such scarce information out there.
The F-Droid page source code link goes to https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/tip/mobile/android
fennec off vpn
ironfox on vpn
It does not mean Firefox can no longer be installed or run on non-certified or rooted Android devices, but it might mean that users on non-certified or rooted devices can’t access all AI features in Firefox for Android.
For those curious it's just used for ai features. Plenty of valid reasons to be frustrated with Mozilla anyway though (its valid even just to be unhappy they implemented it at all, even in a limited way. It still normalizes the usage of the integrity check)
Enough people just need to wrestle Android away from Google by any means necessary.