Pale Moon forum

Hey,
With Pale Moon for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, I can pass the -p flag to the executable to open the profile manager and create different profiles for different browsing tasks.
I can also go in the file system to backup and restore the profiles via File Management tools.
On Android, there is only one profile available to use, you can't create new profiles and switch to them.
Also only when you have root access on Android can you access the profile to backup and restore it.
If possible support for multiple profiles could be done that would be nice.
It would be very helpful if Pale Moon for Android could implement a backup and restore system of the profile to the Internal Storage or External Storage on the phone or tablet for those without root access.
Justin

Pale Moon for Android has been discontinued several years ago. No further development will happen on it.
It is also vulnerable to multiple security issues that are being exploited in the wild; nobody should be using it in 2019 for their daily browser.

@jd2066

I have such a setup by using a combination of IceCat (you want to disable GNU LibreJS and related addons), DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser and Privacy Browser for the browser and Better Open With to choose the browsers per usecase.

Unfortunately, no UXP code comes into play

Oh, ok. Did not know that.
I'm actually using Dolphin Browser at the moment in part because it has an import/export feature but if there were profile management features available in an open source browser like Firefox, Waterfox, Pale Moon and such that would good.
I'm a bit surprised that none of the Mozilla codebase based browsers for Android have an import/export feature due to the nature of most open source programs that include a way to backup the program's configuration if needed.
Sometimes it's just easier to use Google Chrome though as it's really the browser that is completely integrated with Android so it's quick and convenient to use but I would like to avoid using a sync service just to backup my browsing history, open tabs, bookmarks, etc.

jd2066 wrote: ↑

2019-07-26, 20:13

Oh, ok. Did not know that.
I'm a bit surprised that none of the Mozilla codebase based browsers for Android have an import/export feature due to the nature of most open source programs that include a way to backup the program's configuration if needed.

RoestVrijStaal wrote: ↑

2019-07-26, 20:03

@jd2066

I have such a setup by using a combination of IceCat (you want to disable GNU LibreJS and related addons), DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser and Privacy Browser for the browser and Better Open With to choose the browsers per usecase.

Unfortunately, no UXP code comes into play

Thanks for the link to the Better Open With App, I've been wanting a better open with dialog for a long time now, I didn't know that app existed.
I'll check out IceCat, I thought IceCat was just Firefox without the official branding (I think it was Debian Linux that couldn't use the official branding for their build of Firefox so it was called Ice something if I recall right) but I could be thinking of something else.

Isengrim wrote: ↑

2019-07-26, 22:57

Off-topic:
Likely because Mozilla wants you to sync your profile with them rather than backing it up externally, and they don't want to make it easy to leave their browser for another.

Well both Google and Mozilla do not have import/export options in the Android versions of browser built using their codebases in favor of the sync option.
I don't think it's so much that they want to force you to use their sync features as much as they both believe they sync systems are sufficient for that purpose.
I don't think they are, there are some configurations and such you can setup in a browser that is just not synced so copying the whole profile would be good.

Also this seems to be how most all Android and Windows App Platform (UWP) apps work (I would guess iOS apps work the same but I don't use any Apple products so I don't know for sure), the platform sandboxes the app and it's appdata and apps need to use a cloud server or offer an import/export option to the user to save the appdata.
Without either of those, you need a rooted phone or you just lose the appdata for that app if you phone malfunctions.

jd2066 wrote: ↑

2019-07-26, 23:00

Also this seems to be how most all Android and Windows App Platform (UWP) apps work (I would guess iOS apps work the same but I don't use any Apple products so I don't know for sure), the platform sandboxes the app and it's appdata and apps need to use a cloud server or offer an import/export option to the user to save the appdata.
Without either of those, you need a rooted phone or you just lose the appdata for that app if you phone malfunctions.

Not sure about iOS, but It's actually very easy for an Android application to write a backup out to a file. It merely has to declare the intent to read from/write to storage, and the user has to grant permission for that access, which is typically requested on first startup. Compare to network access, which is implicitly granted to most applications without user interaction. Sure, file system access is one extra step, but IMHO it's a small one and not a significant enough technical reason to not offer a local backup option.

Keep in mind that on Android, profile data separation is handled at the application level, so short of external storage, importing/exporting and synchronizing on the device itself quickly becomes difficult due to strict app data separation.