In my previous post, I mentioned that I now use Firefox as my main browser and you should too. Firefox’s strength is its extensions, with many available on Android devices as well. Here’s a list of my favorites.

On both the desktop and in Firefox for Android 🤖:

• Dark Reader: an extension that modifies the styles of websites to make them dark-themed. It can also auto-switch depending on the system’s theme (light vs. dark), or detect the theme of the website in order to not interfere. It’s the best at what it does.
• LeechBlock NG: an extension that helps me with building healthy habits by blocking distracting websites during certain hours of the day, or how long I’ve spent on those websites.
• SponsorBlock - Skip Sponsorships on YouTube: as the name suggests, it skips the sponsorships. I already pay for YouTube Premium, I’d rather not watch any ads, even when embeded in the video.
• Stylus: Helps with modifying the styles of websites. I rarely need it, but it’s so nice to have when I do.
• uBlock Origin: The best ad-blocker, period. Chrome stopped supporting it, now it’s only available on Firefox. For example, it’s the only one that attempts ad-blocking Facebook.
• Web Archives: View archived and cached versions of web pages on various search engines, such as the Wayback Machine and Archive․is.
• Yang!: An extension that brings client-side search bangs (which first appeared in DuckDuckGo). You can keep using your favorite search engine (e.g., Google), it avoids an extra server roundtrip (which may be problematic for privacy as well), it’s faster, and it’s supported on Android.

For the desktop only:

• 1Password: The best password manager, kind of expensive, though.
• Activate Reader View: Sometimes Firefox’s Reader View can’t be activated due to it not detecting an article on the page. This extension forces the “reader view” to be activated.
• AudioContext Suspender: This fixes an issue with Firefox due to how websites wrongly use AudioContexts, preventing battery drain.
• Auto Tab Discard: Inactivates tabs that haven’t been used in a while, freeing up memory and CPU. Chromiums started adding this as a feature, but this extension has customization options, like what tabs should never be discarded.
• Clickbait Remover for Youtube: Replaces thumbnails and modifies titles on YouTube to remove clickbait. It works.
• Close Tabs Shortcuts + Toggle Pin Tab: I need Alt-P for (un)pinning the current tab, and Alt-W for “close other tabs”. Firefox, unfortunately, doesn’t allow for adding or customizing shortcuts for such tab actions, out of the box, but there’s nothing that an extension can’t fix.
• Floccus: This can sync your bookmarks between browsers, so for example, you can maintain the same set of bookmarks between Firefox and Chromium. It can use a GitHub repository as the backend.
• LanguageTool: I’m not a native English speaker, so this helps me with grammar and spelling. The server is FOSS and can be installed offline, but I pay for Premium. The company is from the EU, so that’s a plus.
• Linkding extension + SingleFile: I have my own Linkding server, that works like Pinboard, a repository of searchable links, some of which are shared. The Linkding extension also has integration with “SingleFile”, which is another extension that can save a copy of the page you’re viewing as a single HTML file, such that it’s archived on the Linkding server.
• Old Reddit Redirect: Redirects Reddit links to old.reddit.com because the new UI sucks.
• RSSPreview: Finds and previews RSS feeds on websites. Useful if you use a feed reader.
• Sideberry: Vertical tabs tree. I don’t use “tree style tabs” all the time, but (compared with tab groups) trees are automatic, and when I need this sidebar, it’s one Ctrl-E away.
• StreetPass for Mastodon: Discover people you’d like to follow on Mastodon, by the websites you visit. It’s based on the WebFinger protocol. So if you’re vising my website, you should get a suggestion for @alexelcu@social.alexn.org.
• Substitoot — improved Mastodon federation: This extension loads missing replies and stats for posts on Mastodon. My instance is a small one (it’s only me on it) and without this extension I wouldn’t see the replies of the posts from my feed, which is somewhat of a flaw in the distributed nature of Mastodon.
• Tabliss: New Tab page with beautiful backgrounds and a clean design.
• Vimium: Vim-like keybindings for Firefox. With it, you can discard the mouse or touchpad, and use just the keyboard to navigate the web. It’s great and very addictive.

What are your favorite Firefox extensions? Any goodies I should try?