Why are (mobile) browsers so big? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by illectrility@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Why are so many mobile browsers at least 100, if not 200 megabytes in size? Even Firefox Focus which is supposed to be small and, you know, focussed is 85MB big.

The smallest browser I could find was the /e/ Foundation's built-in browser for /e/OS. It's 12MB.

It's kind of between Firefox and Focus in terms of features so why are all other browsers so big? Is there a small version of Firefox for Android?

Edit: I just looked up the /e/ Browser repo on their GitLab and the browser appears to be bigger than the 12MB displayed in App Info. It's about 70MB, so pretty comparable to the other browsers. I was so confused by the size difference but that's cleared up now.

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[-] the_lone_wolf@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

4MB jquarks browser with built-in adblocker

[-] sim642@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Doesn't it just rely on the Android built-in WebView?

[-] the_lone_wolf@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Yes and i don't see any problems in that, it will be more secure bcz system webview automatically gets updated to mitigate vulnerability.

[-] sim642@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

It's just an unfair comparison. The Firefox app includes a whole browser engine while this one just uses an engine built into Android itself.

this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023

71 points (93.8% liked)

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