Firefox for Android

Firefox for Android consists of three layers:

  • GeckoView: This is a library that brings the Gecko API to Android.

  • Android Components: This is a library of reusable browser building blocks.

  • Frontend (Fenix): This refers to the frontend interface.

All three components can be found in mozilla-central. To contribute to any of the three, you will need to get set up as a contributor to Firefox.

Mozilla Central Setup

To set up Mozilla Central, you can follow the general instructions provided in the Mozilla Source Docs:

Additionally, to set up specifically for mozilla-central, you can refer to the following guide:

Bootstrap

Bootstrap configures everything for GeckoView and Fenix (Firefox for Android) development.

  • Ensure you have mozilla-central checked out. If this is the first time you are doing this, it may take some time.

git checkout central/default

If you are on a mac, you will need to have the Xcode build tools installed. You can do this by either installing Xcode or installing only the tools from the command line by running xcode-select --install and following the on screen instructions.

If you are on a newer mac with an Apple Silicon M2 or M3 processor, you also need to install rosetta for backwards compatilibilty:

softwareupdate --install-rosetta

You will need to bootstrap for GeckoView/Firefox for Android. The easiest way is to run the following command:

./mach --no-interactive bootstrap --application-choice="GeckoView/Firefox for Android"

Note

  • The --no-interactive argument will make bootstrap run start to finish without requiring any input from you. It will automatically accept any license agreements.

  • The --application-choice="GeckoView/Firefox for Android" argument is needed when using --no-interactive so that “bootstrapping” is done for the correct application (instead of the default).

If you want to make all the selections yourself and/or read through the license agreements, you can simply run:

./mach bootstrap

You should then choose one the following options:

A- You will not change or debug any C++ code:

Choose: 3. GeckoView/Firefox for Android Artifact Mode

Artifact mode downloads pre-built C++ components rather than building them locally, trading bandwidth for time. (more on Artifact mode)

B- You intend to change or debug C++ code:

Choose: 4. GeckoView/Firefox for Android

This will build GeckoView from scratch, and take more time than the option above.

Once ./mach bootstrap is complete, it will automatically write the configuration into a new mozconfig file. If you already have a mozconfig, mach will instead output a new configuration that you should append to your existing file.

Build from the command line

In order to pick up the configuration changes we just made we need to build from the command line. This will update generated sources, compile native code, and produce GeckoView AARs and example and test APKs.

./mach build

Build Using Android Studio

  • Install Android Studio.

  • If on Windows, create a JAVA_HOME environment variable and set it to the path of the Android Studio jbr. With the default installation locations, it is C:\Program Files\Android\Android Studio\jbr.

  • Choose File->Open from the toolbar

  • Navigate to the root of your mozilla-central source directory and click “Open”

  • Click yes if it asks if you want to use the gradle wrapper.

    • If the gradle sync does not automatically start, select File > Sync Project with Gradle Files.

  • Wait for the project to index and gradle to sync. Once synced, the workspace will reconfigure to display the different projects.

    • annotations contains custom Java annotations used inside GeckoView

    • app contains geckoview build settings and omnijar. omnijar contains the parts of Gecko and GeckoView that are not written in Java or Kotlin

    • geckoview is the GeckoView project. Here is all the Java files related to GeckoView

    • geckoview_example is an example browser built using GeckoView.

Now you’re set up and ready to go.

Important: at this time, building from Android Studio or directly from Gradle does not (re-)compile native code, including C++ and Rust. This means you will need to run mach build yourself to pick up changes to native code. Bug 1509539 tracks making Android Studio and Gradle do this automatically.

If you want set up code formatting for Kotlin, please reference IntelliJ IDEA configuration.

Mobile Devices and Emulators

The default mozconfig file, located in the root directory of your mozilla-central contains configurations for running mobile test devices in x86, arm64, and x86_64 architectures.

With the default mozconfig configurations, your machine’s architecture should match the test device’s architecture. On newer Macs built on Apple Silicon, the mozconfig will likely not need to be changed since it runs on arm64 and most mobile devices run on arm64.

If your machine has a different architecture compared to your physical test device, you should uncomment the option matching your test device. Usually, this means uncommenting the arm64 option:

ac_add_options --target=aarch64

Note: When using an emulator, the mozconfig target configuration will most likely need to match the architecture of your machine.

Custom AVD

There are several reasons creating a custom AVD can be required, like e.g. the default emulator setup might be too old for some tasks, and it might be required to run some newer versions of the APIs or others.

Assuming the following environment variables are already set (versions/OS may change):

JAVA_HOME=$HOME/.mozbuild/jdk/jdk-17.0.12+7
ANDROID_HOME=$HOME/.mozbuild/android-sdk-linux
ANDROID_AVD_HOME=$HOME/.mozbuild/android-device/avd
PATH=$ANDROID_HOME/cmdline-tools/12.0/bin/:$PATH

You can identify usable packages already installed on your system via

sdkmanager --list

It will output list of available and installed packages. Packages of interest are system-images and follow the rule system-images;android-API;pkg;arch where

  • API is the Android API level

  • pkg is the set of package installed, e.g., default, google_apis, google_apis_playstore

  • the last one being the emulator architecture and usually stick to x86_64.

The system image package you will use needs to be installed, so if it is not already in the list above, please use (in this example it installs the package for Android 14 (API level 34), default package and x86_64 arch).

sdkmanager "system-images;android-34;default;x86_64"

Then the AVD can be created with:

avdmanager create avd --name android14-x86_64 --package "system-images;android-34;default;x86_64"

The name passed in argument can be whatever you want and the package is one of the installed list. It is then required to modify entries within android_device.py to be able to make use of mach android-emulator, changing the definition to match the name of the AVD created above. Example below:

diff --git a/testing/mozbase/mozrunner/mozrunner/devices/android_device.py b/testing/mozbase/mozrunner/mozrunner/devices/android_device.py
index 4f883261d45c1..07f91c1ab800e 100644
--- a/testing/mozbase/mozrunner/mozrunner/devices/android_device.py
+++ b/testing/mozbase/mozrunner/mozrunner/devices/android_device.py
@@ -151,7 +151,7 @@ AVD_DICT = {
     ),
     "x86_64": AvdInfo(
         "Android x86_64",
-        "mozemulator-x86_64",
+        "android14-x86_64",
         [
             "-skip-adb-auth",
             "-verbose",

Once the avd is created, it can be customized by changing the config.ini file (located under $ANDROID_AVD_HOME/<avd-name>.avd/, e.g., $HOME/.mozbuild/android-device/avd/android14-x86_64/config.ini in the above example). It is recommended to enable physical keyboard by changing the value hw.keyboard to yes (otherwise only virtual keyboard input will work).

Custom mozconfig with Android Studio

Out of the box, Android Studio will use the default mozconfig file, normally located at mozconfig in the root directory of your mozilla-central checkout.

To make Android Studio use a mozconfig in a custom location, you can add the following to your local.properties:

mozilla-central.mozconfig=relative/path/to/mozconfig

Note that, when running mach from the command line, this value will be ignored, and the mozconfig from the mach environment will be used instead.

To override the mozconfig used by mach, you can use the MOZCONFIG environment variable, for example:

MOZCONFIG=debug.mozconfig ./mach build

Project-Specific Instructions

Now that you’re prepared and set up, you can access specific project instructions below: