Firefox Focus

Firefox Focus is a web browser from the Mozilla project for users of Android and Apple's iOS mobile devices (and a tracking blocker for the Apple Safari web browser). While this is known as Firefox Klar in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, it is known internationally as Firefox Focus. Firefox Klar was originally a pure ad blocker specifically for mobile iOS Devices developed and released in 2015. The expansion to an independent web browser followed shortly afterwards. The first version for Android was released in June 2017 and downloaded over a million times in the first month. It is available in 27 languages. Since July 2018, Firefox Klar has been pre-installed on the Blackberry Key2 as part of the Locker application.

Firefox Focus is a privacy-focused browser developed by Mozilla, available for Android smart phones and tablets and iOS. It was released in December 2015. Initially, Firefox Focus was like a utility that removed ads and trackers from Safari.

Firefox Focus is an application that Mozilla presented for iOS and later an Android version was created and that aims to make the pages you visit not collect any information other than necessary, for example, that Firefox Focus action makes Everything loads faster emphasizing user privacy.

This browser for iOS has a tracker blocker (trackers) responsible for chasing ads across the web, integrated ad blocker, popup blocker, and does not store users or passwords. In addition, by reducing the amount of ads and trackers on a website, the loading speed improves considerably. As a consequence, the amount of data consumed is smaller, something very relevant in situations of low coverage or when our data rate is about to end.

Focus not only advocates the privacy of the websites we visit but also for simplicity. There are no tabs, so you cannot accumulate dozens of them open for months and does not have complicated menus.

Firefox Focus is a mobile browser developed by Mozilla, editor of the Firefox browser. Available for tablets and smartphones running iOS and Android, it aims to preserve the privacy of its users by limiting access to their personal data and by limiting the tracking of navigation by external trackers.

It is also adapted under the name of Firefox Klar for German-speaking countries, including Switzerland, in order to avoid confusion with the German news magazine FOCUS, owned by Burda, a media group partner of Mozilla. Firefox Klar can be used in all countries and differs from Firefox Focus in that it does not use Google’s analysis services and that telemetry is implicitly disabled there, which limits information leakage more than the default Focus setting.

Functionality

The web browser, which is designed for simplicity and privacy protection, can also act in the background as a content blocker for the Apple Safari web browser to prevent advertising and analytics tracking as well as potentially unwanted tracking by social networks. When using the app as a browser, all loaded session data can be deleted from websites at any time with a delete button. This also closes all open pages and calls up the Firefox-Klar homepage with a search field. The search engine used there is freely selectable and can be individualized by entering a URL.

In contrast to desktop Firefox and Firefox Mobile, the blocking of advertising trackers is activated by default.

The activated blocking of advertising content results in faster loading times when accessing websites. At the same time, the consumption of the mobile data volume is reduced. To bypass content blocker restrictions on the part of Apple, the UIWebView API is used in Firefox Klar.

The function of bookmarks can be replaced by website links that can be created directly on the home screen of the device. Additional tabs can be opened with a long click on links. A customizable auto-complete function suggests a complete URL when typing a letter in the address bar to make it easier for users to access websites.

In version 6, the browser was expanded to include a page search. You can also call up the desktop version of a page, if available. Both functions can be called up from the menu.

Resources

• Crawl blocker.
• Integrated ad blocker.
• Blocker popups.
• Does not store critical data, such as a password or credit card number.

Features

• Tracker Blocker.
• Integrated ad blocker.
• Blocking popups.
• It does not store users or passwords.

Renaming

On January 25, 2016, Mozilla announced in the press blog that the Firefox Focus web browser in German-speaking countries is known as Firefox Klar. The reason for this is that the publishing and media group Burda, which owns the magazine Focus, is a partner of Mozilla.

System requirements

Apple iOS devices

Filtering out advertising and trackers is computationally intensive and therefore only possible on 64-bit devices with iOS 9 and higher, for example with:

• iPhone 5s and newer,
• iPad Air and newer,
• iPad mini 2 and newer,
• iPod touch from the 6th generation.

Android devices

Android version 5.0 or higher is required to use the current version of Firefox Klar.