Mozilla shares data on how Firefox users are using its browser and the Internet

[Matrix]

Forward-looking: Mozilla's report covers Firefox usage on the web but according to Rebecca Weiss, head of Mozilla's public data science effort, they're hoping to add mobile usage to the mix at some point.

Mozilla a few years back launched the Firefox Hardware Report as a public resource to share what hardware is being actively used in the wild. Now, the software maker is bolstering the data with new information on how desktop Firefox users are using its browser and the Internet.

Mozilla had high hopes that its Quantum browser would help it better compete with Google’s Chrome but according to the first wave of data, that hasn’t really happened. As of March 31, 2017, there were nearly 313 million Firefox clients running on desktop computers worldwide (monthly active users). A year later, the figure had fallen to just north of 293 million.

A few months later, in the middle of the summer slump (August 25, 2017), Mozilla had 277 million Firefox desktop users. This year around the same time, it’s at 256 million users.

Mozilla’s report also shows the prevalence of data tracker blockers. Starting with Firefox 57, Mozilla gave users the option to enable Always On Tracking Protection for all browsing sessions. Since that time, 1.2% of Firefox users have turned it on (the figure does not include Tracking Protection use in Private Browsing).

Additionally, 9.3% of users have the Adblock Plus add-on and 3.2% are using uBlock Origin.

For those curious, a whopping 88.7 percent of Firefox users are running Intel CPUs. Intel is also winning in the GPU department where 66.1 percent of systems rely on integrated Intel graphics. Only 14.6 percent of Firefox desktop users are running AMD graphics. Nvidia’s share sits at 14.1 percent.

 

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[nIGHT]

I'm surprised on how low the number of users of FF are using adblocking addons,

[Dce3480]

Where are all those custom firefox

Command line enteries for austrias theme and tabmix

[vissha]

On 8/29/2018 at 4:40 AM, fl0ppyd1scours3 said:

Where are all those custom firefox

Command line enteries for austrias theme and tabmix

Estimation of the number of Waterfox users based on Mozilla telemetry data

Adblock Plus and for uBlock Origin are the most popular Firefox add-ons. Thus, data for Firefox usage (by Firefox version and date) with these add-ons was obtained from addons.mozilla.org. Direct links to files containing these data:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/statistics/apps-day-20170829-20180829.csv

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/statistics/apps-day-20170830-20180830.csv

The most recent files can be downloaded from these pages:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/statistics/usage/applications/?last=365

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/statistics/usage/applications/?last=365

In analysis, I included the following Waterfox versions: 56.0.3, 56.0.4, 56.1.0, 56.2.0, 56.2.0, 56.2.1, 56.2.2. These versions are described at Mozilla website as Firefox with the same numbers. I used these particular versions, because their numbers are specific to Waterfox. I did not use versions 56.0, 56.0.1 or 56.0.2 because their numbers are version numbers for Waterfox, as well for Firefox. However, it is possible that there is some significant number of users for Watefox 56.0 and much lower for 56.0.1 or 56.0.2.

I verified that these versions (56.0.3, 56.0.4, 56.1.0, 56.2.0, 56.2.0, 56.2.1, 56.2.2) correspond to Waterfox. I did this verification by comparing release dates for each Waterfox version (found on Waterfox blog) with daily active usage of the browser found in Mozilla data.

It was approx. 29,000 daily active users for Watefox (versions 56.0.3-56.2.2) with uBlock Origin and approx. 25,000 users for Waterfox with Adblock Plus. Thus, uBlock Origin is much more popular among users of Waterfox than Firefox. This is contrary to Firefox users where, respectively, both add-ons are on 3.3% and 9.4% machines with Firefox (source).

It is possible that most users have uBlock Origin or Adblock Plus and that there is a minimal overlap between these two adblockers. Thus, there are less than 54,000 daily active users with Waterfox (versions 56.0.3-56.2.2) with ad blocker(s). After taking into account that lower Waterfox versions are also used (especially, 56.0 and 55.0), it could be approx. 60,000 daily active users with Waterfox (all versions) with mentioned ad blocker(s).

Firefox users with these ad blockers constitute less than 12.7% all FF users. If the fraction of Waterfox (with uBlock Origin or Adblock Plus) users is the same as Firefox users that will mean than there is 472,000 Watefox daily active users. However, it is very probable that Waterfox users have adblocker more often than average Firefox user meaning that true number of Watefox daily active users is between 60,000 and 472,000, most probably somewhere around 200,000. Number of all users (monthly active users, yearly active users) will be higher.

At the end, I would like to show you that Watefox users are visible on some Mozilla usage graphs. This link shows usage of different Firefox/Waterfox versions with Session Manager:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/session-manager/statistics/usage/applications/?last=365

Waterfox 56.2 (56.2.0, 56.2.0, 56.2.1, 56.2.2) is marked in graph legend as Firefox 56.2. Data for Waterfox 56.2 are also visible in column 5 in table below graph.

(UPDATE 2)

It looks like we might have approx. 500k Waterfox daily active users (and 112M Firefox daily active users):

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/9bswmn/estimation_of_the_number_of_waterfox_users_based/e55p8sw/

Quote From Robert_Ab1:

Quote

So I found the way to estimate the number of Firefox daily active users.

From Mozilla data for Adblock Plus, we can see that there is on avarage appox. 10.5M daily active users. At the same time, Adblock is used by 9.4% users. It mean that we have 112M Firefox daily active users.

Taking into account also that 1.99% Firefox users are currently using Firefox 62 Nightly, we can estimate the number of Nightly users to be 2.23M, which is in agreement with numbers received from u/TylerDMozilla

.

Thus, for Firefox we have: 900M yearly active users, 300M monthly active users, 112 daily active users.

.

Daily active users:

• Firefox (all versions): 112M,

• Beta-Firefox: 2.2M,

• Nightly: 100k,

• Waterfox: 550k (there is 4x less users for Waterfox than for Beta-Firefox - estimation below),

• Basilisk + Palemoon: ?

It means that we could have >1M Waterfox monthly active users, and even more yearly active users.

Source

[DKT27]

Some surprising things there. For example, gamers are well known to prefer nVidia GPUs over AMD as per Steam, but Firefox users seem to equally like both nVidia and AMD GPUs. Another thing is that 1080p still is not used by most, but it's getting there, it's likely that 720p is dominated by laptop users. As for CPUs, AMD usage did not increase - quite the opposite, in spite of releasing Ryzen CPUs. What's also to notice that 64-bit OSes are dominating, which is good to see.

 

As for Firefox usage, it's seen that it's usage in fact, has increased in some countries, going against the worldwide trend.

 

Coming to addons, it's well known that not all Firefox users have any addons in them. However, last time I checked - please correct me on this, Mozilla claimed that only 10% users has addons in their Firefox browsers, when did that become above 35%. It's however, said before too that not everyone out these uses adblockers though.

[Karlston]

On 8/29/2018 at 9:10 AM, fl0ppyd1scours3 said:

Where are all those custom firefox

Command line enteries for austrias theme and tabmix

 

Not sure if you mean this... https://github.com/Aris-t2/CustomCSSforFx

 

Aris developed the great Classic Theme Restorer addon before it was killed off by Mozilla's Web Extension obsession.

 

This CSS can bring back many features of CTR. I use it in FF Quantum to display tabs just above the content, allow multiple rows of tabs, and customise the tab background colours. It can do a lot more.

 

Info here... https://www.ghacks.net/2017/11/13/customize-firefox-57-with-css/