[The Best Apps You've Never Heard of] xxxmadraxxx:
This was originally posted in a thread about the seemingly now defunct Kiwi Browser.

I was trying, there, to be helpful by offering an alternative, for people bemoaning Kiwi's demise. But, as ever on the intarwebs, the er... "spectrummy" people started getting upset because it broke some imaginary rule in their heads, and started insulting me and reporting my posts.

So, as a precaution, in case it 'disappears from the face of the Earth' in that other thread, I'm reposting the info here. Besides which, I think Yandex Browser definitely falls into the category of a "Best App You've Never Heard Of" anyway, Although far from perfect, it's got almost all the features people are looking for in mobile browsers; desktop sync, extension support, text reflow, etc.

You can find one or other of these features supported [or partially supported] in other browsers. But Yandex Browser is the only one I've found that has them all [and, in my time, I must have tried most of them!]. Yet, when people write about alternative android browsers, it almost never gets a mention.

[I suspect because it's Russian and most of the intarwebs is still written by Americans , who have difficulty believing other countries exist! :laugh: ]

So here you go:

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I've been using Yandex Browser for years now: https://browser.yandex.com/

It's not perfect. I think all mobile browsers are pretty crappy really. But it does offer:

* Reasonably fast. It's a Chrome-based fork of Opera so still a lot quicker than Firefox [they just can't seem to shake off the sluggishness on Android]

* A great text-reflow feature that actually works properly [something that, unfortunately Kiwi never managed]. This is an absolute must for me as the text on almost every website is too small to read on my 7" tablet [People don't seem to optimise for that screen size]

* Support for [Chrome webstore] plugins --unlike Firefox, which is belatedly introducing plugin support on a one-by-one basis, Yandex supports any Chrome plugin that is able to run on the browser. Even with plugins which won't install normally through the Chrome webstore, you can enable the browser's 'developer mode' and install them directly. I have installed Tampermonkey, uBlock Origin, uMatrix, Privacy Badger on it and they all function properly [although uBlock Origin and uMatrix's interfaces are a bit fiddly to work with at that size].

* Sync between mobile and desktop [I also use the desktop version of the browser]

* Backed by a big company --Yandex is Russia's equivalent of Google. So you can be reasonably sure the software is not going to be abandoned [Though that never stopped actual Google!]

It's definitely not as snappy as Chrome or Kiwi. But a lot snappier than Firefox and, personally, I'm prepared to put up with a slightly less responsive browser as a trade-off for having access to all the extensions I use on desktop, plus the text-reflow feature, without which I can't imagine being able to surf the web on mobile.

Besides which; being able to use extensions like uMatrix and uBlock Origin aids page-loading speed by allowing me to block a load of the crud which so many websites try to load, these days.

'Swings & Roundabouts', as they say.

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I think you sussed it out anyway. But, you go to: browser://extensions in the address bar, that will bring you to an extensions page where you'll see a button to enable 'Developer Mode'.

Once you've done that, there's an option to manually 'Load Unpacked' which allows you to manually install an extension, even if the webstore says it's not compatible. Of course, it may be that the extension is NOT compatible and won't work, but all the ones I've listed above do work and are running fine:

BTW --you'll see I have an extension installed called CRX Extractor/Downloader. That allows you to download the CRX [extension] bundle for any extension on the Chrome Webstore to then 'Load Unpacked' into Yandex in Developer Mode. It saves having to mess about using various websites which claim to be able to download and extract CRX files but which I've never found to work.

You get to the uBlock picker [and the uMatrix one] by:

1: Clicking on the hamburger menu beside the browser address bar.

2: That'll bring up a menu of icons:

3: Click on 'Extensions' and you'll see a list of your installed extensions [this isn't the same window as the one you get to via browser://extensions]:

4: Tap on uBlock and the picker will open :

As I said above, the uMatrix and uBlock interfaces are a bit fiddly to use on mobile as they've been designed purely for desktop use. For example, the text in the uMatrix picker is so small, I can barely read what it says and it's modal so can't be zoomed. The uBlock one is a bit more manageable, although you may have to pan and zoom about a bit to get to what you want to block and then back to the dialogue to preview/submit. But it's all doable.

[And, given the feisty nature of 'Gorhill' the developer of both extensions, it'd be a braver man than me who would dare to suggest to him that he improves the layout of either extension, so they work better on mobile!]

BTW --one of the features I liked on Kiwi browser was [that in response to a suggestion of mine] the developer added the option to display that Extensions menu in Kiwi directly under the top of the hamburger menu, for speed of access when using extensions like adblockers / password managers, etc. rather than having to dig into sub-menus as we have to do with Yandex.

I wish Yandex would do likewise!