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Firefox Sync actually works

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Re: Firefox Sync actually works

#51

Post by ijustlovemath »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #46

It does work very well, but personally I'd appreciate a mechanism that I could implement manually and without the cloud. Something like "copy files Foo, Bar and Baz on the source device to folder DooDad on the target device". I appreciate that this doesn't work for mobile devices with their filesystem-free presentation, but even there I'd rather explicitly import data from a file I downloaded than have it move throug…

You should check out SyncThing. It's a privacy-respecting p2p file sharing application that you can use like Dropbox. A little fiddly to set up but works like a charm once you get it going

Re: Firefox Sync actually works

#53

Post by salil999 »

xnzakg wrote: post #15
ugjka wrote: post #5

It can be a pain when you do large random deletes from browsing history, then sync can hang up for 20 minutes with lot of IO/Cpu. You can trigger this by doing "Forget this website" and if that website is a lot in your history

I suppose it probably has to rewrite your entire history in that case? Deleting lines in log-like files isn't exactly easy. Actually, I wonder how that's stored in order for the search to stay responsive, some kind of bloom filter? Or just a normal database?

Most browsers use a SQL database for storing data like this.

Re: Firefox Sync actually works

#54

Post by D13Fd »

pzmarzly wrote: post #23

Can some long-standing user of iOS Firefox say if the sync issues there have been fixed? Halfway-broken sync on iOS version of Firefox (as well as a general lack of love for it and the UI that kept getting redesigned every other month) was the reason why I switched to Safari 4 years ago.

It's not fixed. It's still better than nothing, but it's weird to see an article singing its praises.

I still use Firefox though, it's the best cross-platform browser overall.

Re: Firefox Sync actually works

#56

Post by intrasight »

yesimahuman wrote: post #50

It’s too bad that Firefox has such a great UX and privacy-focused cloud features like this, yet is being held back by its engine. As a heavy FF user for the last few years it’s become more and more clear that the world just doesn’t care about making sites work on FF and I’m more frequently having to switch to Chrome. My dream is that FF would switch to Chromium while keeping all the great features around the browser…

It's too bad that I can't read the article - because I'm using Firefox and an ad blocker. I get "Something went wrong. Please disable your blocker on How-To Geek"

Re: Firefox Sync actually works

#57

Post by url00 »

Obviously this is only one anecdote so take it with a grain of salt but my experience with Firefox Sync was abysmal. I had it corrupt my bookmarks db twice in a year of using it. Fixing it required digging into my profile folder on Windows and manually deleting the db file while also disabling sync. Otherwise it would just redownload the corrupted db. It was bad to the point where I couldn’t even make new bookmarks with the corrupted file.

Anyway, it really burned me on FF since. It’s probably fixed now (or at least I hope it is) and I want to go back but given the lack of priority put on FF by Mozilla I’m just nervous to make the change again.

Re: Firefox Sync actually works

#58

Post by barkerja »

For all its issues, I wouldn’t say iCloud syncing is one of them for Safari. I’ve had nothing but a good experience over the past couple years when it comes to syncing tabs, bookmarks and passwords.

Re: Firefox Sync actually works

#59

Post by abound »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #46

It does work very well, but personally I'd appreciate a mechanism that I could implement manually and without the cloud. Something like "copy files Foo, Bar and Baz on the source device to folder DooDad on the target device". I appreciate that this doesn't work for mobile devices with their filesystem-free presentation, but even there I'd rather explicitly import data from a file I downloaded than have it move throug…

Firefox's sync service is open source [1], so you can self-host it and update your about:config to point to it. I do this and it works great. (I believe you can even self-host the accounts service if you really want to)

Caveat is that I've linked to the old Python one, and they've got a new Rust one, but it didn't support SQLite the last time I had checked.

[1] https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncserver

Re: Firefox Sync actually works

#60

Post by caminante »

unshavedyak wrote: post #40
amelius wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, E2EE.

The parent raised a good point tho. If you can add devices without entering encryption info, how can it be properly E2E?

I don't know what criteria is required to meet an E2EE (End to end encryption?) standard.

In general though, the info is stored on Mozilla's (or an affiliate's) cloud.[0]

1. If you lose your password and didn't setup a separate password recovery code (one time codes), then your data is toast. You can't reset your password via email without wiping your cloud data because mozilla uses your password in a hashing algorithm to store your data.

2. If I recall, you have to setup a 2FA to login on new devices.

[0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/sync/

*EDIT: revised above to clarify mozilla password reset wipes data unless you have recovery key.

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