Send browser tabs to another device not working anymore

General
1

When Firefox is configured to sync with an account one can send open tabs to the other devices that are linked to your account.

In my case this ceased to work when trying to send tabs from the phone to the other devices. The phone can still receive tabs.

I can’t entirely pinpoint when this started malfunctioning, but it was around the time of the last update, so since about a month ago.

I cannot find anything in the iode app that indicates something being blocked.

Am I the only one experiencing this problem?

1 Like
2

Hi,
I’m sorry, but the functionality won’t be available anymore in our embedded browser, because it uses google firebase which manages push notifications and is used in firefox to send tabs between devices. We had previously removed all trackers (except the firefox “glean” tracker, which is disabled but not removed), and although firebase is not strictly speaking a tracker, we finally preferred to also remove it as it communicate with google servers and could leak some data. We head towards a completely degoogled OS, so we could not keep that.
If you really miss this feature, you may install the official firefox browser.

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3

Are you sure that’s the reason? I’d think Firebase is involved when the phone receives a tab (because this is supposed to trigger a push message). Because especially that direction is still working.

I’d think sending something away from the phone to the other devices simply triggers some regular message to the Mozilla account server… :thinking:

4

Yes you’re right, but what I don’t explain is why you receive tabs. It does not work for me. Are you on the last revision of the browser, which should be iode.44 ?

5

True, I’m on 110.0.1-iode.44.

I just tested sending something to the phone and it failed, even when syncing the firefox account manually. I’m kind of sure this had continued to be working for a while longer than receiving tabs did.

So do you think there is any way to reactivate at least sending tabs while staying on your version of the browser?

6

I will study the question. It’s true that it maybe could work in one direction.

7

Bonjour. Same problem for me, but I didn’t linked it to the Iode update.
This navigator feature was really usefull to sens important reading or anything else to the computer.
I never digged in the technical aspects behind. I use Firefox fo almost 20 years.
Pascal

8

An update of the browser (based on the latest v111.0 firefox version) has just been pushed on our f-droid repo, with tab sending restored.

9

Just upgraded and tested it - working :grinning:
Thanks a lot!

Any chance you think the other direction might work as well? As I mentioned the receiving direction never really worked for me, but received tabs only when syncing with the firefox account. I’d think Firebase wasn’t involved here as long as push notifications weren’t involved.

10

It works in both directions, indeed when the firefox account is synced.

11

Indeed, I hadn’t tried this, yet.

Thanks a lot for bringing this back!!! :grinning: