Mozilla expands Firefox’s translation and custom icon availability
It is far from uncommon for the Android and iOS versions of the same app to have different features, and Firefox is no different in this regard. Now Mozilla is leveling the playing field by bringing a previously Android-only feature to iPhone users, and an iOS-only option to its Android app.
While it may seem a little strange considering the widespread availability of the option in other web browsers, the iOS version of Firefox has not featured a web translation option. Now this changes. But there is also a nice change to Android users.
Browsers such as Chrome handle foreign language web pages with aplomb, automatically translating as necessary. This is now a feature of the iOS edition of Firefox. Mozilla is keen to make this stand out from other translation tools, and it says:
If you’ve ever tapped a link only to land on a page in a language you don’t read, you know how quickly curiosity can turn into friction. Until now, iOS users didn’t have a built-in way to translate those pages privately within Firefox. That changes today.
We started rolling out translations last week in German, French and Japanese. This week we added Spanish and Portuguese and will roll out more languages soon.
What’s special about this launch is that it’s not just another translation tool; it’s built on years of Mozilla research and designed to work entirely on your device.
It is this last sentence which is of particular interest, and Mozilla has more to say on the subject:
Most browsers send your page content to the cloud before translating it. Firefox takes a different path: Everything happens locally, directly on your phone.
That means:
- Your content never leaves your device.
- Nothing is logged or stored.
- And once the language model is downloaded, translations even work offline.
Building translations this way isn’t easy. Mobile devices have limited memory and battery, so our engineers designed smarter algorithms that translate only what you actually need to read — not the entire page at once.
Android users have not been forgotten, although the change hitting the Android edition of Firefox is not so life-changing. Mozilla has brought the option to chosen a custom Firefox icon, which has been available to iOS users for a while now, to Android.
Mozilla says of this newly introduced option:
On Android, head to: Settings → Customize → App Icon. From there, you can browse a lineup of Firefox styles, including Momo, the warm, joyful fox hugging the Earth. What makes Momo special isn’t just the art itself, but the story behind it.
These are not the only changes to be found in the Firefox mobile app. Mozilla has also introduced the option to use the AI-powered Perplexity search engine so it can replace Google or whatever has been your default until now.
More details are available here.
