I have an idea that could solve add-on restrictions and need people to test it.
since Fennec/Fenix 84, you can replace the allowed list of add-ons with any collection from the Add-ons website. it can be done by enabling debug mode, following this guide. (add-on white lists… the direction that Mozilla took is diseased.)
this would require everyone registering a Firefox account and making their own collection. however, I created an add-on collection exclusively for this purpose. you can access it here. I need people to try to import it to their own Fennec instance to test if it works with many users. after you followed the above guide, add this custom collection:
owner ID:
16575252
collection name:
addonliberator
once done, you will see the contents of the collection in ⋮ → Add-ons → Add-ons manager → Recommended section. it’s short now, I just seeded it with some add-ons based on popularity and requests.
if it works, the next step is to find out how long a list can Fennec deal with, whether a list of hundreds of add-ons can be handled by humans (there’s no search tool, it’s all manual scrolling!), and whether Mozilla will shut it down.
this means that you post add-on requests here (mention me with an @) and I add them to the list. please, try to request only what you actually need, I don’t want to bloat the list to the point where it becomes unusable (see what I said above).
of course, this relies completely on me. for now I can commit to checking this thread once a week and adding any add-on that is not outright destructive/dangerous from a software security perspective. if this catches on, it may become too much work for me or more frequent updates would be desirable, at which point I’d be glad to share the owner account’s credentials with trusted community members who are on board with the neutral and libre approach of this. (@relan, I thought of you first as we already trust you with building Fennec, but it’s your call, no pressure.)
add-ons in the addonliberator collection were selected based on user requests, I DO NOT guarantee that any of them will work on your particular device/operating system/Firefox fork/browser version, or that they won’t cause browser malfunctions, data loss or security or privacy vulnerabilities. this is a volunteer project, provided AS-IS, and in the future I may stop the maintenance of this collection, or pass it on to other maintainers. first always do your own research, make up your own mind and keep backups of everything that is important to you.