I genuinely love Brave and respect the work the team is doing — privacy-first, clean UI, solid performance. It’s easily my primary browser on desktop.
That said, I’m struggling to understand one thing and wanted to ask the community (and maybe the Brave team) for clarity.
Why doesn’t Brave support extensions on iOS and Android?
I’ve recently come across one browser on Android and one on iOS that support full Chrome extensions, so technically it seems possible. Extensions are extremely important for my current workflow, and because Brave doesn’t support them on mobile, I’m forced to maintain different browsers on different platforms.
This breaks a lot of things I value:
history sync
tab sync / “send tab to device”
overall continuity across devices
What puzzles me further is that it’s not just Brave — Chrome, Firefox, and Edge also don’t support extensions on mobile (especially iOS). So I’m curious:
Is this a technical limitation?
Is it due to OS-level restrictions (especially Apple’s policies)?
Or is it a deliberate product decision?
To be clear, this isn’t a complaint — I genuinely like Brave and want to stick with it long term. I’m just trying to understand the reasoning behind this limitation and whether full extension support on mobile is something we can ever realistically expect.
Would really appreciate insights from the community or the Brave team.
Yes, I use Orion on iOS and Kiwi on Android. What I don’t understand is how Orion manages to support full extensions on iOS despite Apple’s WebKit restrictions, which are usually cited as the main blocker. And since Android is an open platform (unlike iOS with WebKit), what’s actually stopping big browsers from offering proper extension support on mobile?
I would (and I did) go to ‘Alter.systems’ and ask:
“How does Orion manage to support full extensions on iOS despite Apple’s WebKit restrictions?”
Briefly, their answer:
Orion Browser emulates a desktop-grade extension layer within Apple’s permitted boundaries. Orion uses Apple’s WKWebView, but layered with Orion’s own JS [JavaScript] injection and messaging bridge.
Orion builds a secure JavaScript sandbox bridge between the webview and the extension scripts, mimicking the chrome.* API or browser.* API surface.
This lets Orion intercept and relay extension actions (e.g., content scripts, message passing, storage) through its own native APIs - all without breaking Apple’s rules.
Orion implements part of the WebExtension API in Swift. Orion’s internal code translates calls from the extension (written for Chromium or Firefox) into supported native iOS functionality.
So, the Kagi-Orion competition would be devoting funding, people, and time to such a cause. Brave Software might be thrilled to receive the funding, in order to devote people and time. Is my guess.
One more guess: Introduction of the extensions, becomes a complex security issue from Apple’s view. That is also my concern.
Thanks for the explanation — it really helped clarify things. Hopefully, one day these platform-level barriers will be lifted so we can safely enjoy full extension support across all browsers and platforms.
For me, extensions work with Edge on iOS. On Android, I have no problems installing them in FireFox. I haven’t run into any issues on either of my phones (iPhone 16, Samsung Galaxy S25).
