this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2025
394 points (99.0% liked)

LibreWolf

3525 readers
87 users here now

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

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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

top 38 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] pedroapero@lemmy.ml 1 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

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

[–] thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 day ago (6 children)

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

[–] Landslide7648@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 19 hours ago

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

[–] thisismyname@lemm.ee 12 points 1 day ago (2 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

[–] thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

Thanks for the in-depth reply, I truly appreciate it! I’ve loaded a Bazzite installer onto a flash drive over the weekend - but ran out of time, before I could switch NVME drives to install..

More privacy is a good thing, so happy to roll with some minor inconveniences - but Dark Mode is definitely a relatively high priority for me; so I’ll have to figure that one out once I get up and running.

Already prepared to run a secondary (Chromium) browser for compatibility and Vivaldi seems to be getting recommended a lot recently — at least from a de-Google / de-US perspective.

[–] f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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

[–] thisismyname@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day 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.

[–] kepix@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

been using it for half a year now. you can log into your account, all the extensions are compatible, ublock is installed by default. ff store themes also work.

has no google search by default but can be added (still the best for searching pictures, otherwise im fine with qwant)

by default it deletes cookies, but that can be changed.

drm is also disabled by default, but turns out music streaming sites are just whinin, they dont really need it.

[–] tpyoman@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day 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.

[–] RogueBanana@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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

[–] kixik@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)
[–] RogueBanana@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago

Damn, that was the only reason I didn't make the switch long time back. Ig I heard wrong or assumed it wouldn't, thanks for the link.

[–] vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

Yes. There's a toggle in about: config (fxaccount sync or something similar) that allows FF account sync. Will do everything from extensions, to bookmarks to history if you're keeping that.

[–] superglue@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My banks website won't login on Lirbrewolf. Tried disabling every setting imaginable.

[–] thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Does it work with Firefox? Have you had any luck spoofing your UserAgsnt to Chrome?

I know I already have issues logging into a SAP-based system with Firefox to view/download my payslips, so I already need to use a Chromium-based on occasion as a back-up.

[–] superglue@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes, works fine in Firefox

[–] kixik@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

What's the error you get? Perhaps someone has dealt with it before. What overrides have you tried?

There are several things that might affect some sites and are more troublesome than others, for example:

  • security.OCSP.require
  • webgl.disabled (if changed to false it's recommended to use the CanvasBlocker extension)

ublockOrigin can give trouble to some sites, a quick test is to temporarily disable it and see if the site works. It can be investigated further what specific filter might be affecting the site.

[–] fin@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

If you care about usability, I'd recommend Zen browser. Not as hard as Librewolf but it's not owned by Mozilla.

[–] sevenoverthree@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day 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.

[–] ArchRecord@lemm.ee 4 points 1 day 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.

[–] petrescatraian@libranet.de 4 points 1 day ago

@kooltechlord I was just looking into this, as I just changed following the whole Mozilla fiasco. Wonderful!

[–] kixik@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Well @fishonthenet@lemmy.ml used to post in here, and he was an active Librewolf developer, see his first post on this very same community, and he still is one of the moderators, though I believe he's no longer around, 🙁

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world -4 points 1 day ago (3 children)

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

[–] zdhzm2pgp@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 day ago

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

[–] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

not everything is a smartphone app...

[–] bountygiver@lemmy.ml -4 points 1 day 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.

[–] hmmm@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It's for Desktop not for android.

[–] bountygiver@lemmy.ml -2 points 18 hours 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.

[–] hmmm@sh.itjust.works 2 points 14 hours ago

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

[–] cortsenc@mastodon.economiasocial.org 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)
[–] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago

I would heavily recommend on using Ironfox through Accrescent on Android. DDG browser is suboptimal at best

[–] dekaneos@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day 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/

[–] pumpkinseedoil@mander.xyz 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] kixik@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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

[–] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

what is the difference with IronFox then?

[–] kixik@lemmy.ml 2 points 15 hours 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

[–] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

thx for the context

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