Chrome Blocks Android Extensions—Top 5 Mobile Browsers That Support Them

Published Apr 22, 2026, 3:00 PM EDT

Oluwademilade is a tech enthusiast with over five years of writing experience. He joined the MUO team in 2022 and covers various topics, including consumer tech, iOS, Android, artificial intelligence, hardware, software, and cybersecurity. In addition to writing at MUO, his work has appeared on HowtoGeek, Cryptoknowmics, TechNerdiness, and SlashGear.

Oluwademilade attended the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, earning a medical degree from the College of Medicine. Excelling in public service, Oluwademilade was honored with the title of Global Action Ambassador by a student organization affiliated with the United Nations. He received this designation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in recognition of his efforts to make a positive global impact in 2020
 

In his free time, Oluwademilade enjoys testing new AI apps and features, troubleshooting tech problems for family and friends, learning new coding languages, and traveling to new places whenever possible.

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I've been a Chrome user since it came to Android, and I still use it more than I should. But there's one thing I've worked around for years: Chrome on Android has never supported extensions. Not in 2012 when it launched on the platform, and not now in 2026. I do not think it's a bug or an oversight; rather, I think it's a deliberate decision Google hasn't shown much interest in reversing.

So when I want to run uBlock Origin, Bitwarden, Dark Reader, or any of the extensions that grace my desktop browsing, I've had to look elsewhere. The good news is that an interesting group of browsers has stepped in to fill that gap.

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Firefox

The one that rewrote its own rulebook

In fact, Firefox does one thing Chrome won't do on Android: it natively supports mobile extensions. Now, Firefox doesn't support Chrome extensions, and it's better to get that out of the way early. What it does have is its own add-on ecosystem through Mozilla's AMO (addons.mozilla.org), and that space has expanded quite a bit. Since Mozilla opened it up properly in late 2023, it has grown from a curated handful to over a thousand Android-compatible extensions. The catalog includes uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Bitwarden, Dark Reader, SponsorBlock, and Immersive Translate (which handles translations across web pages, PDFs, eBooks, and even video subtitles).

Firefox is also the only browser on this list that's fully open source, end to end, because it isn't built on Google's Chromium. It runs on its own Gecko engine, and that alone gives its extension ecosystem a slightly different personality. Mozilla's Recommended Extensions program puts add-ons through a formal security and functionality review before they earn the badge. So yes, the catalog is smaller than the Chrome Web Store, but it's also more considered. If you care about knowing what's actually running inside your browser, Firefox makes a pretty strong case for itself.

Firefox is a free, open-source web browser developed by Mozilla, focused on speed, privacy, and security for users on all major platforms. It includes advanced features like tabbed browsing, a built-in password manager, private browsing mode, strong tracker blocking, and customization through thousands of extensions and themes.

Kiwi

Not the fruit

Kiwi Browser launched in 2018 as a personal side project by developer Arnaud Granal, who wanted Chrome extensions on his Android phone and decided to build his own solution. By 2019, it had full support in the Chrome Web Store. By the time it shut down in January 2025, it was pulling in a million downloads a month — which, paradoxically, is part of why it had to close. A project built by one person in their spare time cannot sustainably support a user base that size, and Granal said as much in his Discord announcement.

The extension framework that powered Kiwi didn't disappear; it was instead merged into Microsoft Edge Canary before the project was archived. The last stable Kiwi APK is still available on the official GitHub repository and still functions for those who want to install it outside the official store. Although I understand that many people might be wary of running an unmaintained browser as a daily driver, especially when considering the reasons to be careful when sideloading Android apps. And in fairness, security patches stopped with the project. Personally, since I wrote about it and tested it myself, I haven't run into any issues so far, though that's more of a reassurance than a guarantee.

Kiwi Browser

Kiwi Browser brings full desktop-style Chrome extension support to Android, along with built-in ad blocking and a fast Chromium-based engine. It’s a lightweight power-user browser that lets you customize mobile browsing far beyond standard Chrome.

Quetta

It showed up when the field emptied

When Kiwi Browser shut down and was archived in early 2025, it left behind a very specific gap. There was suddenly no Chromium-based Android browser that could pull extensions straight from the Chrome Web Store without workarounds. Quetta stepped into that vacuum quickly and cleanly. It supports both the Chrome Web Store and Microsoft Edge Add-ons natively, and installing extensions is as simple as tap, confirm, done. Just as important, extension pop-ups behave as they do on desktop, opening as small inline overlays instead of hijacking a full tab. That's a detail many mobile browsers still struggle with.

Beyond extensions, Quetta has a few extra tricks up its sleeve. There's a built-in video downloader that handles formats like MP4, M3U8, and HLS, so it can grab more complex streams that other browsers tend to miss. The ad blocker relies on what it calls an "AI⁺" engine, using machine learning to detect ad behavior rather than relying solely on static filter lists. In practice, it often picks up dynamic ad elements that slip through on mobile. Privacy features are also fairly comprehensive, with tracker blocking, fingerprint protection, and a biometric-locked Data Vault for browsing history and sensitive files.

That said, Quetta is still finding its footing. It's very much Android-first right now, but a Windows version is on the roadmap, which should eventually round it out into a proper cross-platform setup.

Quetta Browser

Quetta is a privacy-focused mobile browser with built-in ad blocking, tracker protection, and a clean distraction-free interface. It also supports extensions and secure browsing features while staying lightweight and fast.

Lemur

The overachiever nobody talks about enough

Lemur isn't exactly a household name yet, and it doesn't come with the long, almost nostalgic backstory of Kiwi or the recognition of Firefox. But under the surface, it's built on a solid Chromium base, and it shows. Like Quetta, it handles extensions from both the Chrome Web Store and Microsoft Edge Add-ons without fuss. In fact, it tends to run Edge extensions a bit more gracefully than you might expect. It also lets you sideload extensions as local CRX or ZIP files, which is an important win if you like experimenting with niche tools or running something you built yourself.

Tampermonkey working fully inside Lemur is another detail worth paying attention to. That opens the door to user scripts that can reshape websites at a deeper level. You can bypass restrictive layouts, tweak YouTube's interface, or add features that traditional extensions don't cover. The interface is also highly modular; it supports a unique "Infinite" homepage where you can group frequently used extensions and web links into folders, much like an Android home screen.

Lemur Browser

Lemur is a lightweight Chromium-based Android browser that supports Chrome and Edge extensions. It focuses on speed and flexibility, letting you customize mobile browsing with desktop-style add-ons.

Yandex

The browser that crossed its own borders to get here

Yandex Browser is the product of Russia's largest tech company, and carves out its niche with a hybrid extension model that pulls from multiple ecosystems at once. It's one of the few Android browsers that officially supports add-ons from both the Chrome Web Store and the Opera Add-ons catalog, which opens up a pretty massive toolbox. Not everything built for desktop translates perfectly, but it handles productivity and media-focused extensions especially well, which is where most people tend to spend their time anyway.

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It also comes with a built-in security layer called "Protect," which actively scans your installed extensions and can step in to disable anything that starts behaving suspiciously or appears to mess with your data. Its most futuristic trick is AI-driven video translation powered by its Alice AI. The browser can take a video in another language and overlay a real-time, synchronized, synthesized voice-over. This is complemented by a summarization feature that scans long YouTube videos or articles and hands you a compact list of key points with timestamps, which is quite useful when you're trying to decide whether something is worth your time.

Turbo Mode also remains a staple feature. When your connection slows down, Yandex routes traffic through its servers to compress data before it reaches your phone. Pages load faster, and you burn less data in the process. The Tableau homepage rounds things out with a customizable dashboard that surfaces weather, notifications, and quick shortcuts, turning the start page into something closer to a control panel than a blank tab.

Yandex Browser

Yandex is a Chromium-based browser with built-in ad blocking, strong security features, and a customizable interface. It also includes Turbo mode, smart search tools, and extension support for a faster, more flexible browsing experience.

This is what happens when someone else does Google's homework

The story of extensions on Android mobile is really the story of what happens when a platform's most popular browser refuses to move. Chrome's decision to keep extensions off Android wasn't made yesterday, and it hasn't reversed, so the browsers above have each, in their own way, decided to make the move themselves. Some are polished enough to replace Chrome entirely. Some are built for use cases Chrome was never going to serve. And one of them was a one-man project that lasted seven years, changed the entire conversation, and then stepped aside. The space it left behind turned out to be bigger than anyone expected.