Firefox: Private, Safe Browser for iOS

Firefox for iOS update brings faster search, a handy new menu for frequently used features, and the ability to search other sites within Firefox's search bar.

Pros

Faster browsing: Mozilla promises a 40 percent decrease in CPU usage and 30 percent reduction in memory usage with the latest version of Firefox for iOS. While exact numbers may vary from person to person, we definitely noticed a significant increase in search speed.

Custom search engines: Add your favorite search-powered sites to Firefox, such as Amazon, Wikipedia, and eBay, and then you'll be able to search the sites directly from Firefox's address bar.

Convenient menu: Firefox's new hamburger menu in the bottom rail offers easy navigation. Open it up to add a bookmark, find text on a page, open a new tab or a Private Tab, set a Home page, or get to your Settings menu.

Intuitive navigation: Jump from page to page with Firefox's easy-to-decipher visual and numbered tabs.

Tab recovery: Accidentally close a tab? Recover it by tapping the new Undo button.

Sync: You can sync your tabs, history, and passwords across your iPhone, iPad, Mac, and even Android devices. You'll need to set up an account and log in on all your devices for this to work.

Private Browsing: Firefox's Private Browsing function doesn't track your history, cookies, passwords, site preferences, and temporary Internet files. To open Private Browsing, tap the purple mask at the top right of the browser. Under Settings, you can take advantage of two added safety precautions. Toggle Close Private Tabs to ensure this happens each time you stop browsing. It's also good practice to occasionally tap Clear Private Data to erase sensitive data, such as browsing history, cache, cookies, offline website data, and saved log-ins. How to tell when a tab is private: The search bar will be black with a pink border rather than white with a blue border.

3D Touch compatible: From your home screen, long-press the Firefox for iOS icon to open a new private tab or a new tab.

Cons

No bookmark syncing from iOS: If you're an Android, Mac, or Windows user, you can sync your Firefox bookmarks to iOS devices. Unfortunately, this feature does not work in reverse.

iOS 9 required for Private Browsing: If you don't want to be tracked, you'll have to upgrade to iOS 9.

Bottom Line

If you're unhappy with Apple's default browser, Safari, Firefox for iOS is a fast, intuitive, feature-rich, and privacy-minded alternative worth trying.

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