After a few months of transition, I've now moved all of my PWAs over from Firefox to Vivaldi.

I'm still using FF as my main browser for the time being, but its PWA support has caused me too many problems, and they don't seem to have any desire to fix them.

For example:
PWAs often crash on launch: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1974078
PWA notifications can't be opened: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1880000
Switching between light/dark mode breaks PWAs display mode: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1933470

And many smaller things like choppy animations, occasionally PWAs completely hang and don't load until I restart the app or even the browser, notifications don't support images and many other features, and newer manifest properties aren't supported at all (eg display: override).

This is shame because I mostly like using FF, it does a lot of things well (extensions on mobile and very good Linux support being two of my favourites), and browser engine diversity is good to have and lacking, but they really need to get somebody to work on PWAs again.

1974078 - PWAs sometimes crash on launch

UNCONFIRMED (nobody) in Firefox for Android - PWA. Last updated 2025-08-09.

Note: this is on Android. On desktop I don't really use PWAs, and FF doesn't support them. On iOS all PWAs and browsers run on Safari (#AppleBrowserBan), which means you get an even worse experience than this. Chromium's PWA support may be many years ahead of FF and WebKit, but FF at least doesn't breaks things on purpose like Apple does.

See for example:
https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/apple-backs-off-killing-web-apps/
https://webventures.rejh.nl/blog/2024/history-of-safari-show-stoppers/
https://www.construct.net/en/blogs/ashleys-blog-2/safari-releases-development-1616

Apple backs off killing web apps, but the fight continues - Open Web Advocacy

Open Web Advocacy
@FormularSumo I've also switched to Vivaldi. PWAs are so frustrating with Firefox for Android!
@gericci Is that just for PWAs as well, or for general browsing too?
@FormularSumo For general browsing also. Sites take ages to load on FF android, and I'm not very happy with the new FF terms and conditions. Sad... as you, FF has been my preferred browser since always

@gericci I was experimenting more with Vivaldi and Firefox on Android recently, and found out that my Firefox installation had slowed down massively over time (~3.5 years). Vivaldi is still a little faster, but there's much less difference after clearing local data:

https://social.vivaldi.net/@FormularSumo/116245832631391239

@gericci I've been trying out using Vivaldi as my main browser for a week or so now. I had to work through some Linux-specific issues, but it's mostly been good using it. I wrote some of it down here:

https://formularsumo.co.uk/living-pages/software/#browser

Software

An attempt to collate the software I use and why.

FormularSumo
@FormularSumo Great! Thanks, I'll surely read it