Development status Active Operating system | Written in C, Objective-C, Swift Type Mobile browser | |
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Initial release November 12, 2015; 15 months ago (2015-11-12) Stable release 6.1 / February 16, 2017; 23 days ago (2017-02-16) | ||
Firefox for iOS is a browser from Mozilla, for the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod touch mobile devices. It is the first Firefox branded browser to not use the Gecko layout engine as is used in Firefox for desktop and mobile. Due to iOS security restrictions chosen by Apple (specifically the inability to set writable pages executable which is essential for just-in-time compilation), Firefox has to use the built-in iOS WebKit-based rendering framework instead of Gecko. Firefox for iOS supports Firefox Sync and is able to sync Firefox's browsing history, bookmarks, and recent tabs.
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History
In December 2014, Mozilla announced it was designing a version of Firefox for iOS. In September 2015, it released a limited preview of the app available only in the New Zealand iOS App Store. In November 2016 Firefox Focus was published in the Apple App Store. Focus is a stripped down version of their full browser with a specific focus on incognito browsing.
Firefox Home
Firefox Home was a previous project for a companion app for the iPhone and iPod Touch based on the Firefox Sync technology. It allowed users of either device to access their Firefox browsing history, bookmarks, and recent tabs. It also included Firefox's "Awesomebar" location bar. Firefox Home is not a browser; the application launches pages in either a Webkit Web viewer or in Safari. Mozilla pulled Firefox Home from the App Store in September 2012, stating it would focus its resources on other projects. The company subsequently released the source code of Firefox Home's underlying synchronization software.