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by aucisson_masque 21 days ago
Vivaldi is all about customization but then they categorically refuse to add extension support to their android browser.

Imo extension is the ultimate way to customize your browser experience.

It's not technical difficulties, there are open source projects that have such support.

I also don't believe it's against any TOS because some of these browser are available in the Google play store.

I just don't get why they refuse to do that.

4 comments

Probably it's a very low request priority. I use Vivaldi on Android with the built in blocking at strict. The last thing I remotely have interest in are Extensions in Android Vivalid.
> Probably it's a very low request priority.

Oh no it's requested a lot. You just got to go in their forum to see it.

You also can't import bookmarks on Android. The officially recommended way is to sign up for a sync account and verify it (they don't accept throwaway emails), install on desktop, import on desktop, then sync to mobile.
That's bad, there is no reason whatsoever you shouldn't be able to import bookmark on the phone.

I believe they should just ditch the android version if they don't want to put any effort in it.

I use on desktop Vivaldi, on Android I can recommend Cromite (some people like as well Helium and Ultimatum)
Because of stuff like this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48207660

If you don't have the ability to police extensions you're basically putting your users up for sale?

But they support extensions on desktop.

The problem you linked to also happened on desktop because there is no VSCode for phones.

Your users don't have to use those extensions, so I don't understand how that's relevant? People who do, should be made aware of risks and that's it. This is not a good argument against taking away their option to have that customization.
I'm having a hard time finding a thread where people don't complain about npm when the real issue is packages being compromised.

Swap packages for extensions in the above and let me know how that's different

But what's your argument? That phone-based extensions are more vulnerable somehow than desktop extensions?

If anything, wouldn't a phone extension be more sandboxed than most desktop environments?

No, if that were true, there would be no extension support on non-mobile
How is this an argument when you can use extensions on the desktop version?
They can add support for Chrome and Edge extensions marketplaces.