Every guide on this blog assumes a laptop or desktop — but a lot of scrolling, and a lot of spoilers, happen on a phone. Whether ElementHider can follow you there depends entirely on which phone you have. Here's the honest answer for both.
Android: Firefox for Android (works today)
Firefox for Android runs real WebExtensions — the same extension format ElementHider uses on desktop — so installation and day-to-day use are close to identical.
Install Firefox for Android
Skip this if you already have it. Get it from the Google Play Store — it's free. Chrome for Android can't run this guide at all: it has no extension support, no add-ons store, nothing to install.
Open the Add-ons page
Tap the ⋮ menu in Firefox, then Add-ons and themes. Or just open the ElementHider add-on page directly in Firefox on your phone.
Search and install
Search ElementHider from the Add-ons page, or tap Add to Firefox if you opened the add-on page directly. Confirm the permissions prompt — the same one you'd see on desktop.
Once installed, tap the puzzle-piece extensions icon in Firefox's address bar and select ElementHider to open the popup — type a word or phrase, choose Hide or Blur, done. For anything bigger — groups, regex rules, or the point-and-click selector picker — open the full settings page from the Add-ons page (tap ElementHider → Preferences). It opens as a normal tab with more room than the popup; a couple of the wider tables, like Groups, are easiest to manage in landscape.
Tip: If you're signed into the same Firefox Account with Sync turned on across your phone and desktop, keywords you've already added on desktop typically show up on your phone automatically. If nothing shows up, just add a few directly on the device you're using — either way takes effect immediately.
| Feature | Desktop Firefox | Firefox for Android |
|---|---|---|
| Add/edit keywords, Hide vs. Blur | Yes | Yes |
| Point-and-click element picker | Yes (click) | Yes (tap) |
| Groups, Regex, Smart Learning | Yes | Yes — via Preferences page |
| Supporter Pack verification | Yes | Yes — same Ko-fi email flow |
iPhone & iPad: why it doesn't work (and it's not a bug)
This one has nothing to do with Firefox's willingness or ElementHider's design — it's an Apple App Store rule. Apple requires every browser on iOS, regardless of brand, to run on Apple's own WebKit engine rather than the browser's native engine. Firefox for iOS is Firefox in name and interface only; underneath, it's running on WebKit, the same engine as Safari — and it doesn't expose the WebExtensions system that ElementHider is built on. That means even Firefox itself can't run its own desktop and Android extensions on iOS.
Safari does have its own, separate extension system, but it's a different technology built for a different purpose. Safari extensions have to be packaged as a native iOS app component using Xcode and distributed through the App Store — a completely different build and release process than a standard web extension. And Safari's older, more common content-blocking API works from a static, declarative rule list rather than by scanning live page content, so it can't replicate keyword muting, Blur, the point-and-click picker, or Smart Learning the way ElementHider does on desktop and Android.
Not just ElementHider: this limitation applies to every Chromium- or Gecko-style extension, not something specific to us. If you see an iOS app claiming to run "real" browser extensions identical to desktop, that claim is worth being skeptical of.
The Bottom Line
Android: install Firefox, add ElementHider from the Add-ons page, and you get the full desktop experience in your pocket. iPhone and iPad: there's currently no path to running ElementHider at all, in any browser — that's Apple's platform policy, not a gap we can close from our side. If that ever changes, or a native Safari version becomes possible down the line, it'll show up here first.