this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
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When i use all of my internet limit it limits my internet, on firefox websites are unusable. Is there browser for android with following features:

Preferably on F-Droid

Just load text

Edit:

For now solution is firefox + ublock (adnauseum) and in settings of ublock check block JavaScript and block elements over 10kb

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[–] lucg@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Regardless of any browser, consider that there's probably a half dozen background programs using the internet connection as well. You'll want to install something like a firewall that you can turn on that blocks all connections except from some allowlisted apps you currently want to use. A simple message check from a handful of installed messengers can occupy that connection for a few seconds while you're trying to load something that's much more important to you right now in the browser

(that^ was my situation this morning on ~12kbps 2G network, trying to load my ~4KB grocery list webapp in the grocery store with bad reception... ended up connecting to the store WiFi and sold my soul with a checkbox ^^')

Add in a weather app updating, system update check, some app trying to download a new version, the keyboard sending telemetry or downloading new words, the OS trying to load a "generate 204" page to detect whether there is connectivity, the GNSS subsystem loading SUPL data for positioning, Google submitting its WiFi scan data to either obtain a location or improve their service, calendar sync...

[–] limerod@reddthat.com 2 points 1 day ago

You can disable background sync or turn on battery saver to limit background activity which also turns off background sync.

For a firewall app. I would recommend Netguard.

[–] mecen@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well most of my apps are foss so there shouldn't be this problem and doesn't messages rely on google push notifications and not working in background?

[–] limerod@reddthat.com 2 points 1 day ago

Depends on the app. Foss apps either periodically check for new messages or keep an active connection to the server to check for new messages. Some use Unified Push to reduce the battery drain of a constant connection.

[–] ramble81@lemmy.zip 17 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Had to get on our developers as our main website was over 50MB on load. They hadn’t optimized any images and were using size tags to resize a 4K image down to a thumbnail.

[–] mecen@lemmy.ca 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

This site sounds like dumpster fire

[–] helix@feddit.org 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Most sites on the internet are like this now, since many people have fast internet the art of optimising websites is basically lost. I worked at a marketing agency back when we optimised images by manually selecting their pallette and dithering algorithms, our max size of a page was set to 1MB... Nowadays, you can be lucky if the JavaScript is less than 5MB, I guess.

[–] marcie@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago

i remember engineers complaining when the graphics i used were like 2mb, but they included all graphics for the site. simpler days

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 19 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Ublock origin has the option to block all media over a certain size and JavaScript. The browser will never request the files so it will be faster (as long as it isn't inline scripts)

Alternatively https://github.com/ayastreb/bandwidth-hero/

[–] Azzu@leminal.space 17 points 4 days ago

Yeah the problem is not the browser, it's that websites are so big. Firefox works perfectly fine on low bandwidth if you use ublock origin and block media and script loading.

I use this often for the same reason, many websites don't display properly or at all anymore but at least it's more usable.

[–] mecen@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Thanks, I used it with adnauseum and it made internet slightly more bearable.

But I reduced max loading element size to 10KiB

Does anyone know how to make it load later these elements

For example load first elements with 1kb later 10 kb next 100kb etc.

[–] limerod@reddthat.com 2 points 1 day ago

Thanks, I used it with adnauseum and it made internet slightly more bearable.

Adnauseum is the opposite of bandwidth saving in your case. It sends a request to ad trackers reducing the impact of your the data usage reduction.

Remove Adnauseum and switch to Ublock-origin. 64kbps was a data speed I think I saw in 2010/2012 and maybe, 2014 when I used to exhaust my data limit.

You need every data saving measure you can get. I would block 3rd party requests if you haven't already to reduce the bandwidth needed even further.

[–] davidgro@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Lynx or w3m or something in Termux? (Installing Termux would be best somewhere you can get faster internet, like a library or business, etc)

[–] Mihies@programming.dev 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Lynx still lives? πŸ‘€

Edit: Why downvotes? I'm pleasantly surprised that decades old text browser is still with us 🀷 Sorry about that.

[–] mecen@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Can you use them on touch screen?

[–] davidgro@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

Yes, I just tried it. In Termux you would have the on-screen keyboard up nearly all the time anyway but both browsers I mentioned allow tapping on links, etc. (But w3m seems to require pressing Enter on the keyboard to confirm navigating to them)

[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.today 2 points 3 days ago

ik it's proprietary shitware but opera mini and puffin could potentially help

[–] LedgeDrop@lemmy.zip 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I've never tried it, but it's on my todo list: Browsh

[–] mecen@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 days ago

It requires remote server so probably not for me but interesting project nevertheless. Thanks

[–] twkm@programming.dev 2 points 3 days ago
[–] Ftumch@lemmy.today 5 points 4 days ago

Try the uMatrix plugin. It allows you to dis- or enable things like scripts and images on a per-site basis.

[–] B0rax@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago

Doesn’t adnauseum use more internet because it β€žclicksβ€œ on all the ads?

[–] MurrayL@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

I would think that whatever browser you use would, presumably, make little difference to how much data a website tries to send you? It would only change what’s displayed. (But happy to be corrected on that by someone more knowledgeable.)

If your connection really is limited to such a slow speed, you might need to find a proxy server that strips out as much as possible before it reaches you.

[–] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 days ago

The rendering speed difference is negligible, with a bandwidth this limited the only strategy is to limit what the browser fetches. You don't need a proxy server to strip out page content (also because that would imply breaking the encryption stream), a browser could simply choose not to fetch any image or multimedia resources, override remote fonts with local ones, etc. In that sense the choice matters, because some are specialized for this purpose or can be configured to act in these manners

Well, the browser could choose not to download the images, videos and styling information. Trouble is that many modern sites load their content through JavaScript programs that can be comparatively massive.

But I guess losing those sites would be a small price to pay for OP.

Just loading the text should be really small, especially when it is compressed, which should be the standard nowadays.

[–] mecen@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 days ago

Is there ways to do it on firefox, i remember opera had this gimmick.

[–] L7HM77@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 days ago

I needed something like this back when I lived out in the sticks. Could only get 2g - 3g on Verizon at home, had a DSL line for the desktop, high speed connections were prohibitively expensive. Back in the day you could just walk away and let sites buffer while doing other stuff, but as the rest of the world grew faster, low speed customers got left behind. Everything is set to timeout if it fails to load in a couple minutes.

Only solution I ever found was to disable JavaScript, force everything to HTML/CSS only where possible, and use a download manager with automatic retry/restart to download any videos I wanted to watch from YouTube or Facebook.

[–] Rod_Orm@piefed.world 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Is there any way to disable image on firefox? Or using opera mini

[–] limerod@reddthat.com 1 points 1 day ago

You can block images above a certain size in ublock-origin in firefox. Or block for good in all websites.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 1 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Is there an internet for this sort of thing?

Reducing data usage in general would be nice but too many websites just openly disrespect their users by using far too much bandwidth.

[–] f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyz 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)
[–] 0xKesh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 days ago

Probably a good use case for Gopher

[–] Summzashi@lemmy.world -3 points 3 days ago

Not an open ended question

[–] amzd@lemmy.world 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You can kind of use delta chat with a preview bot. Delta Chat works extremely well on low bandwidth so even if it takes a long time, you’ll eventually get the website, unlike in browsers in my experience

[–] mecen@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 days ago

How does it work?