Firefox is the last remaining browser with its own rendering engine, giving it an important role in keeping the internet open and standardized. Following the release of a completely rewritten and redesigned version of the browser on Android, Mozilla has been sticking to regular release schedules over the last year, and that's not changing with the latest version, Firefox 88, either. The new release is now rolling out via the Play Store, but you can also get it from APK Mirror straight away.

Mozilla reports that it fixed a bug in Firefox for Android that prevented some fullscreen videos from working correctly on websites using a desktop viewport, something that shouldn't occur too often but can be incredibly annoying if you do run into it.

As you start typing, your search engines will pop up as suggestions.

A more interesting change is related to search engines. When you start typing the name of one of your custom search engines (as defined under the Firefox search settings), a suggestion to use that engine will pop up at the top of your screen. Tap it, and you can start searching Wikipedia for an article or Amazon for a product, for example. Alternatively, you can still use the "Search engine" shortcut on top of the address bar to select what you want to search with from a list.

Version 88 is also the first Firefox release to completely disable FTP by default, and Mozilla is looking to remove support for the File Transfer Protocol altogether in Firefox 90, a process Google has already finished in Chrome. You'll need a dedicated FTP browser to access remote servers in the future. There are also a few more changes mostly relevant to developers, like support for new CSS classes and JavaScript improvements.

Unfortunately, we haven't spotted support for any new add-ons in the Android version of the browser, so you'll have to keep using the Nightly release of the browser if you need more than the small amount of greenlit extensions. Meanwhile, the desktop release is getting a neat new privacy-conserving change revolving around data leaking from website to website.

Firefox 88 for Android is slowly becoming available on the Play Store for everyone now that the official launch date, April 19, has come and passed. If it's not available for you yet, you can download it from APK Mirror.

UPDATE: 2021/04/20 9:09am PDT BY MANUEL VONAU

Search engine shortcut

Updated with Firefox' new custom search engine trigger on Android.

Firefox Fast & Private Browser Developer: Mozilla
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