Your web browsing environment in 2025 - self-hosted Firefox sync?

cracauer@

cracauer@

Developer
May I ask what everybody is doing for syncing their bookmarks and "search engines" (aka keywords), passwords and so on? I used to be full-on Google with Chrome and its sync, but Chrome has stopped to be a viable browser this month.

Switching to Firefox (previously know as Fired Fox to me) is painful. One thing I need to make up my mind about is whether to use Mozilla's hosted sync or whether I want to host my own sync server https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncstorage-rs . Hey it has been re-written in Rust, so it must work, right? Is anybody here doing that?

What are you folks doing? Or do you not bother with sync since you mostly browse from the same computer and profile? Are there other browsers that have full sync?
 
i keep my bookmarks in an emacs org file on github
which i pull down on different computers

i then open the bookmarks org file in emacs
and use a keyboard shortcut on the bookmark url which works with xdg to open the link in Firefox

the advantage is you have all your bookmarks in a plain text file which you can search through
instead of a sql lite database in Firefox

github.com

bookmarks/bookmarks.org at master · NapoleonWils0n/bookmarks

web bookmarks. Contribute to NapoleonWils0n/bookmarks development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com

i use the Firefox multi account container addon
and create different containers for the sites i log into

addons.mozilla.org

Firefox Multi-Account Containers – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-GB)

Download Firefox Multi-Account Containers for Firefox. Firefox Multi-Account Containers lets you keep parts of your online life separated into color-coded tabs. Cookies are separated by container, allowing you to use the web with multiple accounts and integrate Mozilla VPN for an extra layer of...
addons.mozilla.org addons.mozilla.org

i set Firefox not to remember passwords and clear all cookies
except the sites i sign into

it does mean having to sign into the sites on each computer
but only once and after that it doesnt clear the cookies so you stay signed in

20250324_17h53m02s_grim.png


20250324_17h53m08s_grim.png
 
cracauer@ said:
May I ask what everybody is doing for syncing their bookmarks and "search engines" (aka keywords), passwords and so on? I used to be full-on Google with Chrome and its sync, but Chrome has stopped to be a viable browser this month.

Switching to Firefox (previously know as Fired Fox to me) is painful. One thing I need to make up my mind about is whether to use Mozilla's hosted sync or whether I want to host my own sync server https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncstorage-rs . Hey it has been re-written in Rust, so it must work, right? Is anybody here doing that?

What are you folks doing? Or do you not bother with sync since you mostly browse from the same computer and profile? Are there other browsers that have full sync?
Click to expand...
Im in the same boat as you but vice versa - im retiring FF as my main and going towards chromium ( not ungoogled chromium )... but looking for something with sync ( laptop,pc) or self host with VPS.
May i ask why Chrome is off and FF is on ? Im keeping FF just for one website for VPN as Librewolf is no good for my VPN app.
 
GlitchyDot said:
May i ask why Chrome is off and FF is on ?
Click to expand...

Google followed through with killing Manifest v2, which disables Ublock Origin, StopHTML5autoplay and a few other extensions I used.

After a few days it was clear that this is a dealbreaker for me. The web just becomes unusable.

I am not 100% sure FF is on, but I am running out of alternatives. Sync is important for me as I am device hopping a lot.
 
I stopped using this firefox sync service the moment I stopped using Windows (for several reasons.)

For years I simply keep a central copy of my ~/.mozilla on my file server, which is daily rsynced. My laptop (also FreeBSD) rsyncs this from the server when I 'check it out', and vice versa, when I check it in, again, plus afterwards my desktop is rsynced (automatically by sh-scripts.)
It may not the most beautyful, but a dirty, 'brute force' solution, to have one firefox directory (= idenfiatcion) on every machine, but it works (at least for me.)
 
Google followed through with killing Manifest v2, which disables Ublock Origin
Click to expand...

Thats correct

You have to use Ublock Origin Lite with Chromium

chromewebstore.google.com

uBlock Origin Lite - Chrome Web Store

An experimental, permission-less content blocker. Blocks ads, trackers, miners, and more immediately upon installation.
chromewebstore.google.com chromewebstore.google.com

which as you can see from the following screen shot has no options just a slider

Chromium Ublock Origin Lite

20250324_19h51m30s_grim.png



Compared to Firefox with Ublock Origin

20250324_19h53m21s_grim.png
 
cracauer@ said:
May I ask what everybody is doing for syncing their bookmarks and "search engines" (aka keywords), passwords and so on? I used to be full-on Google with Chrome and its sync, but Chrome has stopped to be a viable browser this month.

Switching to Firefox (previously know as Fired Fox to me) is painful. One thing I need to make up my mind about is whether to use Mozilla's hosted sync or whether I want to host my own sync server https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncstorage-rs . Hey it has been re-written in Rust, so it must work, right? Is anybody here doing that?

What are you folks doing? Or do you not bother with sync since you mostly browse from the same computer and profile? Are there other browsers that have full sync?
Click to expand...
I used to use Firefox Sync but not anymore. I use KeepassXC for passwords and TOTP, recovery codes, etc, and i pretty much don't bother with sync anymore. I've been adopting a more minimalist browsing experience so the bookmarks I need are few and the rest of the websites I visit on-demand. Using Sync for bookmarks is fine, but I would rather use KeepassXC or other offline methods for storing passwords.

I used to also mix Sync passwords with Keepass but the logistics are worse than choosing only one of them.
 
I use sync in firefox. Only one is esr (in Windows) but I can sync it with the others (I read somewhere it's not possible but... it works).
 
cracauer@ said:
May I ask what everybody is doing for syncing their bookmarks and "search engines" (aka keywords), passwords and so on? I used to be full-on Google with Chrome and its sync, but Chrome has stopped to be a viable browser this month.

Switching to Firefox (previously know as Fired Fox to me) is painful. One thing I need to make up my mind about is whether to use Mozilla's hosted sync or whether I want to host my own sync server https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncstorage-rs . Hey it has been re-written in Rust, so it must work, right? Is anybody here doing that?

What are you folks doing? Or do you not bother with sync since you mostly browse from the same computer and profile? Are there other browsers that have full sync?
Click to expand...
Hi
Sync passwords ?
Never of life, too paranoid😎
 
I think some of the posts between my first one and this lead me to ask:
What data is important to sync?
Bookmarks I can get, but export and import covers that.
Passwords: This I get squemish on. I can see usefulness, but security-wise is it good.
Maybe across devices (phone and desktop) yes, but in general I'm not sure.

I would be more interested in the synch mechanism:
Is there a public/private keypair used to encrypt the the data that is stored up in the "sync server" and then pushed to all devices associated with a user. If so how would the keys be shared?

So even though I don't have a need for synch, I can understand it would be useful, but the specific mechanism used would be interesting.
 
mer said:
I think some of the posts between my first one and this lead me to ask:
What data is important to sync?
Bookmarks I can get, but export and import covers that.
Passwords: This I get squemish on. I can see usefulness, but security-wise is it good.
Maybe across devices (phone and desktop) yes, but in general I'm not sure.
Click to expand...

For me the most important thing to sync is the "search engines", aka keywords. I am currently struggling exporting them out of Chrome and back into Firefox. It used to be trivial because they were included in a HTML dump of your bookmarks.

I put only medium security passwords into password managers (sync or no sync). But everything for travel.
 
NapoleonWils0n said:
Thats correct

You have to use Ublock Origin Lite with Chromium

chromewebstore.google.com

uBlock Origin Lite - Chrome Web Store

An experimental, permission-less content blocker. Blocks ads, trackers, miners, and more immediately upon installation.
chromewebstore.google.com chromewebstore.google.com

which as you can see from the following screen shot has no options just a slider

Chromium Ublock Origin Lite

View attachment 22003


Compared to Firefox with Ublock Origin

View attachment 22004
Click to expand...

Slider on maximum blockage is fine for me, I never used the options in the original uBlock. I have multiple browser profiles open at the same time and they have different levels of ad blocking, or none.

I wonder whether the light versions blocks YouTube ads.
 
Amongst other things, I use Vimium-C for searches and vim-like browsing

addons.mozilla.org

Vimium C - All by Keyboard – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)

Download Vimium C - All by Keyboard for Firefox. A keyboard shortcut tool for keyboard-based page navigation and browser tab operations with an advanced omnibar and global shortcuts
addons.mozilla.org addons.mozilla.org

Sure you need to export/import though once you have your config how you like it, it becomes rarer that you need to import the config
 
thinman said:
I've been happy using floccus and keepassxc-browser with Nextcloud.
Click to expand...

I'm also using floccus, syncing a subset of bookmarks via an encrypted file on Google drive and it works very well between computers. It supposedly supports sync via git but wasn't reliable enough for me when I tried in an earlier version last year. The mobile app doesn't seem to integrate with mobile browsers so saving a bookmark into mobile floccus requires copy/paste. However, it's really easy to save a bookmark on a computer and have it appear in mobile floccus. I don't sync anything else and am not sure what else floccus might support. I tend to use the phone as an inbox and I wish there were an easy way to get new bookmarks off of it without exporting them manually.
 
cracauer@ said:
What are you folks doing? Or do you not bother with sync since you mostly browse from the same computer and profile? Are there other browsers that have full sync?
Click to expand...
I use Firefox desktop every-OS, Android and iOS, and use Mozilla's default online sync service.

Afaik there's no way to consistently restore or import bookmarks to Firefox or Chrome Android and iOS, and I wipe my devices frequently enough to need browser stuff easily restorable; Firefox Sync covers it nicely.

I mainly like bookmark sync PC and mobile, and password sync is convenient!


I'm not sure how or if it'd affect mobile, but I can't use Chrome on desktop since they add a Enter at the end of text when it's copied to clipboard; I'm sure there's a better description (plaintext copy?), but I'm not sure how anyone web devs in anything Chrome, Edge and even Opera with it like this:

Code: 
echo Double-click all this code box, copy text to clipboard, paste directly into terminal... Chromes will run immediately with the paste, Firefox needs Enter pressed
 
cracauer@ said:
Google followed through with killing Manifest v2, which disables Ublock Origin


I am not 100% sure FF is on, but I am running out of alternatives. Sync is important for me as I am device hopping a lot.
Click to expand...
Since when ublock origin is disabled ?
Because at the moment im using uBlock Origin on chromium and no youtube adds for me.
 
For password sync，I prefer password-store to keepass. The prev. one encrypt password using gpg, record in git repo and can be sync to other places for backup.
 
cracauer@ said:
Google followed through with killing Manifest v2, which disables Ublock Origin, StopHTML5autoplay and a few other extensions I used.

After a few days it was clear that this is a dealbreaker for me. The web just becomes unusable.

I am not 100% sure FF is on, but I am running out of alternatives. Sync is important for me as I am device hopping a lot.
Click to expand...
I have a bugzilla [# 285619] opened for falkon which segfaults here on 14.2 stable amd64 since mid february, and firefox has taken its place EXCEPT two issues: one, youtube has no sound, two, the CPU is too high while in a subset of my always-open tabs. This happened when falkon switched from qt5 to qt6. Curious what your opinion is about switching to that from what browser you are currently using to make the web more usable...
 
youtube has no sound
Click to expand...

Firefox uses Pulseaudio by default

so you have to start pulseaudio before opening Firefox

Code: 
pulseaudio --start --daemonize 2>/dev/null

but you can change the audio backend to oss

To force a specific backend open

Code: 
about:config

and create

Code: 
media.cubeb.backend

set the option to string and

Code: 
oss
 
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