Support for an Open Ecosystem of Extensions on Android & iOS

[aocorporation]

Mozilla is launching their open ecosystem support for extension on Android

Prepare your Firefox desktop extension for the upcoming Android release

What will Brave do to compete with this upcoming ecosystem? Brave should implement this feature for Brave on Mobile (Chrome Store?) (and sideloaded extension support)

[anon57438784]

Chromium doesn’t offer Extension API on android, so what can Brave do? Since 2019 they have been talking about it, but then the cost to add it and maintain it is high.
Also, most things can be done through the adblocker, at least most extensions people say they want to install.
Brendan Eich has asked for extension names, and people usually say the most terrible reasons to add Extension API to Brave on Android.

Also, Firefox, doesn’t run great on Android, so if the only thing they have is “Extensions”, many people will use it and then stop using when they realize scrolling is not smooth, websites are not working great and all that.

What Brave needs to do is to release a way to Sideload our own JS Scriptlets easily, they have an issue opened about it, if they do, then anyone can sideload JS and do most of the things extensions do.

For example, if I ask you what extensions you want Brave to have Extension API for, what will you answer? any important extension you need on Android?

[aocorporation]

Personally I’d vote for SponsorBlock and DeArrow.

[anon57438784]

Well, those two extensions use ‘crowdsourcing’, so, well, they hold a valid reason since they can’t be done with adblocker easily, but if you were Brave Team, the cost of Extension API is high, because you need to add it and maintain it, and then keep security updates on time.
Would you spend time for SponsorBlock or DeArrow? Would you say “that’s it, we will add Extension API” Brave blocks ads, which is should be okay.

I always found this sponsorblock kind of weird, since if people get annoyed by such things, it’s not hard to manually skip them or avoid such ‘content creators’.

I mean as a Cost vs ‘is it really needed?’.

Extension API is surely a complicated thing to add anyways, doesn’t mean Brave might not add it but they are always ‘reviewing’ to add it, and still nothing.