Firefox on Android recently released the newly designed browser which brought newly designed tab switcher, search bar location customization, tab collections, and access to limited add-ons. These changes, as compared to old version of Firefox left some users in anger because the new Firefox took away the ability to use thousands of other Firefox add-ons. Meanwhile Firefox said that full add-on support will come again in future. For now they are focusing on improving other things.

With Firefox For Android Version 81.0 beta 2, Firefox is bringing some major changes which you will surely appreciate. Here are some noticeable changes in the recent beta update.  


Improved search bar

The first thing I want to highlight is the improved search experience. In earlier version, when bottom toolbar was enabled the search bar went to top when we wanted to search for anything. This behavior is changed a little and the bottom bar stays on bottom while we type anything for search.

External download manager support

When Firefox rolled out new version with overhauled design, one thing was surely missing - Download Manager. Firefox finally added a Download Manager section which can be easily accessed by three dot menu. As a bonus, they have also added support for external download managers. Apps like ADM and IDM on Android will surely benefit from this which are more advanced download managers as compared to default download managers of Android.

Suggested logins

With suggested logins, Firefox is making it easy to login from different accounts on a website. Suggested logins is a nice addition to Firefox, it adds an "Suggested Logins" strip on top of your keyboard whenever you are about to sign in on a website. If you have multiple accounts on a website, you can choose which account information you want to be auto-filled for signing in.


Other improvements 

  • In app review prompt for leaving a review for Firefox.
  • Notification controls. You can enable/disable notifications from different categories through the "Notifications" setting in the app info of Firefox.
  • Close tabs automatically after a certain period of time. You can choose between 1 day/1 week/1 month or you can keep closing tabs manually.
  • Top sites suggestion now have two pages and you can swipe between them.
  • Unlock previously set Primary Password, if set.
  • Other bug fixes.

Firefox is improving its user experience with all these new changes and we can see it catching up with old Firefox features as well as addition of new features.