What Mozilla Firefox Focus Does for iOS Mobile Web Browsing

The Mozilla Firefox Focus mobile web browser for iOS is designed to make it easier for users to apply privacy controls that erase cookies and turn off trackers.

Privacy is the feature that will attract users to Firefox Focus. The browser ships with “automatic privacy” features that remove cookies and browsing history from the device. It’s important to note that users won’t be invisible to web marketers; rather, the browser will keep a person’s browsing history off the device, so others can’t see what they were doing.

Firefox Focus tries to help users put the browsing experience front and center. The app eliminates a mobile website’s advertisements to show more of the site within the frame. In addition, users can block all kinds of trackers and cookies that might be used to serve more ads.

By stripping away ads and trackers that sometimes load before a page’s content, Firefox Focus should be able to boot up pages more quickly, Mozilla says. Firefox Focus wasn’t built expressly for speed, but it’s a welcome byproduct of its features.

Since Firefox Focus was designed with privacy and simplicity in mind, Mozilla says it didn’t include tabs in the browser. While that might come as a surprise, since Mozilla was the organization that popularized tabs long ago, it apparently believes they’re unnecessary for folks who care most about privacy or do most of their browsing on mobile devices.

Mozilla also has removed menus from the Firefox Focus browser. While there is a settings page that lets users turn on trackers when necessary, there’s no way to modify its look and feel, set up bookmarks or perform other tasks available in the desktop browser. With Firefox Focus, what users see is what they get.

In some cases, Firefox Focus users might want to delete only certain parts of their browsing history and keep links to other sites. For those folks, Firefox Focus comes with an “Erase” button that lets them selectively choose which sites to remove from the app. It’s displayed in the app’s toolbar above the website.

Some sites require users to allow cookies and trackers to display their content. In that case, Firefox Focus comes with a Settings page to enable users to temporarily turn on what’s required for the site. When users are done visiting site, they can go back to Settings and turn the bans back on.

Mozilla’s Firefox Focus is by no means a replacement for the Firefox desktop version. While it still gives users the ability to surf the web, it doesn’t synchronize bookmarks, support tabs and deliver all the other features folks have come to expect from Firefox. And unlike Firefox, Mozilla’s privacy-focused browser isn’t necessarily designed to be used all the time. Rather, Firefox Focus is a complementary browser to enable mobile device users to surf the web privately.

Firefox Focus is available solely on iOS and works on the iPhone 5s or later models. Focus will also run on any iPad Air, the iPad Mini 2 or later model and the iPad Pro. It’s also supported on the sixth-generation iPad Touch. However, those devices must have iOS 9.0 or later installed to run the browser.

Firefox Focus is available now in Apple’s App Store at no charge. That said, Mozilla’s app comes with an age restriction that requires a person to be at least 17 years old to download it. Mozilla hasn’t yet said whether Firefox Focus will be made available on other mobile operating systems such as Google’s Android.