≡ Menu

Maxthon Browser for Google Android – fast mobile web browser with nice features

Maxton Web Browser for Google Android

Maxthon Web Browser is one of the best alternatives to more popular web browsers for Android because Maxthon is fast, lightweight, simple to use, and has a lot of useful features like online bookmarks, and tab syncing, website sharing, online backup, and quick homepage bookmarks.

Maxthon for Android is also called Maxthon Cloud Browser. I have been using Maxthon for many years on both Windows, and Google Android since Android 2.3 Gingerbread on my older Kobo Vox tablet with only a 800 MHz CPU, 512MB of RAM, and 8GB of storage. Maxthon was one of the first Alternative web browsers which I used in Android back in 2011 because there were not as many good alternative web browsers back than.

Maxthon’s run faster on many devices even slower smartphones and tablets.

Maxthon only requires 9.8MB  of space to download, and works on Google Android 2.2 Froyo and up to run, so Maxthon may even run on even slower devices which has 4GB of storage space, 800MHz or slower CPU, 256-512MB of RAM which is found on many smartphones and tablets which ran Google Android 2.2-2.3.

Maxthon runs pretty quickly when I use it on Android. It launches in about a second after I tap on its shortcut icon in Google Android homescreen. Websites also load in a few seconds after clicking on a link, or entering the website address, and pressing Go on Google Android’s keyboard. Scrolling up and down websites is smooth, and fast in Maxthon. Switching tabs in Maxthon is quick. I also do not experience any freezing and crashing problems in Maxthon when I use it in Android. Maxthon does not slow down even when multiple tabs are open.

Websites like YouTube, Google, Twitter, and blogs work and look properly when I use Maxthon to visit websites. Maxthon also supports HTML5, so sites which uses HTML5 video and scripts would work in Maxthon.

Maxthon’s Simple User Interface

The user interface for Maxthon is easy to use because it is similar to most other web browsers where there is a tab toolbar, + new tabs button, address bar, refresh/stop button on navigational bar, navigational buttons, menu, quick menu for accessing features like history, bookmarks, and settings button, so there is no learning curve if you know how to use other web browsers. I like that Maxthon hides the address bar, tab bar, and navigational bar as I scroll down the page, so I have more free space on my screen to display a website in Full Screen. When I need to go to another website, I just scroll up, and the navigational bar and address + tab bar re-appears. In the New tabs address bar, I can change the default search engine to Google, Yahoo, Bing, Wikipedia, Amazon, and eBay to search on different search engines, websites, and online stores.

The tabs in Maxthon also has some nice shortcuts when I long press on a tabs title. The short cuts include close other tabs, re-open closed tab, set homepage, view cloud tabs, save page as ( save website as a .html website file to view offline with a web browser), and find in page text search engine.

In the New Tabs page, there is a QR Scanner icon which reads QR images from a rear camera, or QR image picture file. The New Tabs page also contains Quick Access Speed dial bookmarks for quickly visiting sites with a tap of a quick dial bookmark. You can press the + button to make a Quick Access bookmark from a list of Recommended websites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Amazon, eBay, and a list of News sites. You can also make speed dial bookmarks from your Most Visited websites, or manually make a speed dial bookmark by manually typing in the URL/Website Link, and Title of the website into a textbox, and clicking the add button. I can also save bookmarks as Homescreen bookmarks to open website links like apps from my Google Android Homescreen by tapping on Maxthon homescreen bookmarks.

There is also NewsBites which is a news reader where you can read current news from different sites which you are subscribed to in an easy to read text and image reading format. The NewsBites reader stores news article’s text and images on your device storage, so you can read them offline when you are not connected to the internet with a Wi-Fi, or Cellular data connection. NewsBites also uses less data than going to websites since NewsBites articles don’t contain ads, social sharing buttons, and other features which use up more data than a NewsBites article which just need to download text and images from the articles. You can also disable images in Maxthon to save even more data. In the NewsBites reader, there are buttons to change the text size, share the article to social networks, e-mail, etc, favorite the article to read latter, and read the article in Night mode.

You can also View the Original article from its website, so you can make a comment on blog posts, and read other people’s comments on the website. Comments are not displayed on the NewsBites reader, so you need to go to the article’s website to read readers comment.

Clicking on the arrow button on the left of the address bar brings up shortcuts to Cloud Push, Sync tabs from, Cloud Downloads and Share to.

I like that there is an Exit button on the menu pop-up menu, so it is easy to exit Maxthon, so it is not running in the background using up RAM, and CPU resources when I am not using Maxthon.

Maxthon also has a quick-scroll buttons where I can use the volume buttons on my device, or Maxthon’s onscreen see-through quick scroll buttons to more quickly scroll up and down longer websites.

There is also a see-through refresh/stop button on the bottom right of Maxthon to more easily refresh or stop loading a website when I scroll down a page. The Refresh/Stop button disappears after a few seconds of not scrolling down a page, and shows up again after you scroll up and down a website.

Both the Quick scroll and stop/refresh buttons are movable, so they don’t get in the way of your browsing. You can also turn off quick scroll volume buttons, and on-screen button’s in Maxthon settings under Quick Scroll settings in the Page Display settings found in the settings for Maxthon.

Maxthon has a lot of cool, convenient, and useful features

When I use all the features in Maxthon, I can also use Maxthon as an online news reader, offline news article viewer, QR image scanner from my smartphone or tablets rear camera, or QR image file, Web search app, messaging app by sending websites to my other Maxthon devices or to someone’s e-mail or smartphone phone number Cloud Push, online bookmarks, and downloads backup tool where bookmarks and downloads are uploaded to my Maxthon account. I can also use Maxthon to browse the web privately by turning on Private mode, and browse the web comfortably in low light light conditions by turning on Night Mode in Maxthon. There is also Bright Screen mode for making the screen brighter, and easier to read in high light conditions.

It is possible to play a YouTube video or media content from other video and music audio streaming website on one tab  in Maxthon while using another tab to browse a website, and read articles. This means I can use Maxthon as a music or podcast player to listen to audio in one tab while I read an article on another site on another tab which I open in Maxthon.

There are many useful features in Maxthon Browser.  There is online Bookmark, and tab syncing to other Maxthon compatible operating system when you login to your free Maxthon Passport account, and have Maxthon open on your other computer, smartphone, or tablet.

One of the most useful features of Maxthon is Cloud Push which lets you send text, images, websites/links and tabs to other Maxthon web browsers on devices where you are logged into your Maxthon account, and Maxthon is opened on. You can also send text, images, websites/links and tabs to a E-mail address/phone number, and also send a short message with Cloud Push.

Maxthon also supports Sharing websites to social networking, chat apps, and other apps which support Share To in Maxthon.

The Speed Dial Quick Access Bookmarks in the home page for quickly going to websites at the homepage, and easy to use bookmarks manager.  The Quick Access Bookmarks can be re-arrange and deleted, by holding down on the icon, to organize your bookmarks to find them easier.

News Bites News Reader ,on the right of the home page,  sends recent news articles from many popular and trusted news sources which come pre-subscribe in Maxthon, or you picked manually from different categories like News, Entertainment, Technology, Economy, Sports, and Lifestyle. The News articles are display in an easy to reading style which only shows you photos and text like an RSS Reader. The News Bites subscription icon locations on the News Bites page can be arranged manually by pressing down on the icons for a news source, so you can more easily find subscriptions to sites which you read most often.

Maxthon has a Reader Mode which you can press on the right of the address bar to displays articles on websites in text and image format. Reader Mode also makes large articles easier to read, and faster because Reader mode disables scripts, sidebars, social sharing buttons, and other widgets on a website which can slow down your mobile device when you use it to read articles on websites.   You can turn on private browsing to tell Maxthon to not save your browsing history, cookies, cache,  and other data on your browser.

The Night mode in Maxthon turns the background black, link color to a light blue color, and the text gray to make websites easier to read at night when it is dark.

There is also user agent switcher to change the user agent to Android, desktop, ipad and no user agents views to bring up the mobile, iPad or desktop site depending what you change Maxthon’s user agent to.

The full-screen web browsing mode hides the tab bar, address bar, and navigational bar to let you browse in Full screen mode by using the whole screen. To get back the address bar, tab bar, and navigational bar, I just need to press the circle icon with the three horizontal lines which is located at the bottom right of the screen.

Maxthon has cloud downloads which let you download, and upload files to ‘My Cloud’ account,which you signed up for a user account at Maxthon’s website, for easy backup to Maxthon’s online storage.

Maxthon also has a downloads manager with two section one for your downloaded local files and one for yout Cloud online storage files which you uploaded to your Maxthon Passport account, website text search engine for finding keywords and phrases in a website’s articles/text , HTML5, Javascript  and Adobe Flash support .  A search engine is also installed on Maxthon’s History section, and bookmark section to make finding websites in history and bookmarks which contain a keyword which you are searching for faster. Bookmarks stored in the bookmarks section of Maxthon can be sorted Alphabetically, by date, by frequency used,  or the default way.  You can also make new folders to organize your bookmarks, sync bookmarks, and add new bookmarks in the bookmarks manager. It is also possible to Edit a bookmark’s folder location, title, and link.

There are features in Maxthon like website pre-load, Script disable, and picture disable in Maxthon to make websites load faster, and use less bandwidth when you disable things like JavaScript, images, Flash, Cookies, and Fetch Mode, in Maxthon’s settings.

It is easy to not save, or erase history, cookies, and cache from Maxthon to protect your privacy from others who use your smartphone, or tablet.

It is easy to protect my privacy in Maxthon by checking the Private check box in the Menu, so my History and other browsing data like cookies, cache files, etc would not be saved on the browser while I browse the web. I can also delete individual website links from Maxthon history manager by long pressing the website, and taping on  the delete button. To delete all my history, I just need to tap on the trash can icon on the bottom right of the browser, and press OK on the “Remove History” pop-up Window.

In the Privacy & Security settings found in Maxthon settings, I can check the Browse in Private mode to set Maxthon to not save my browsing history. I can also check Delete History when exiting in the Privacy & Security settings. There are also buttons to delete Maxthon’s cache, history, cookies, form data, saved password, or delete all cache, history, cookies, form data, and saved passwords. Pressing Delete All will also log you out of your Maxthon account. I can also press on Reset to default which delete all browsing data, and reset all of Maxthon’s settings to the default settings.

There are a lot of custom settings in Maxthon to make Maxthon perform the way you want it to perform, and to make Maxthon easier to use, use less data, and save you time while browsing the web.

Maxthon settings for changing the layout of how a website is displayed is pretty easy to do in the Page Display settings found in settings. In the Page Display, I can easily change how text is encoded, web link underline, normal, or no underline style, Enable or disable JavaScript, Turn on and off Flash, website screen rotation/orientation settings, touch Gesture settings for doing different web browser tasks by making a touch gesture on your screen in Maxthon, quick scroll, Web Page Zoom, lock toolbar, enable and disable text auto-wrap to fit your screen, and Open or don’t open Pages in Overview.

Maxthon has some advance settings for more savvy users to customize how Maxthon works. I can change the default homepage, download folder location, turn on and off Quick back, turn of fetch mode to pre-fetch websites for faster website load times, Disable Night Mode dialog box, make favorite sync only on Wifi, or manually, turn on and off sync tabs of your device, so they can be viewed on other devices, sync items only on wifi to save mobile 2G/3G/4G data from your cell phone service provider company. I can also turn on and off notifications pop-ups, and turn on and off Newsbites auto-updates, set Maxthon to check for updates, or not, and join or not join BBEP  user experience anonymous data collection to improve Maxthon.

In Maxthon’s settings, I can also send feedback, check for updates, and see my current version by pressing the About button in settings, and also set Maxthon as my default web browser for Google Android.

Maxthon is a fast, lightweight, easy to use, and feature-rich web browser with a lot of useful features like Cloud tabs, Cloud Downloads, Cloud Push, Bookmarks sync, etc.

Download Maxthon Android Web Browser at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mx.browser

How to Download Maxthon’s APK installer file for Android directly from Maxthon.com to make installing Maxthon possible on Google Android devices where Maxthon is displayed as incompatible in Google Play, and to install Maxthon on devices like cheaper Android tablets with third-party unofficial app stores or no app stores at all which does not use Google Play as the apps store. The Maxthon .APK should work for smartphones and tablets which are based on Android like the Amazon Kindle Fire, and Barnes and Noble Nook.

You can also download’s Maxthon’s APK installer file from http://www.maxthon.com/ , and clicking on the Android link. Lastly, click on the .apk Download link which is between Android Browser, and the changelog link found under the Free Downloads section.

If you are using a mobile web browser on Google Android, you may need to press the “More Features” button to see the Free Download section where you would find the .apk download link along with the regular download link for Google Play, Changelog link, and the list of features found in Maxthon Cloud web browser for Google Android.

You may need to turn on Unknown Sources , which allows installation of Android apps from non-Google Play sources, in the Security settings in Android before you can install Maxthon’s .APK file to Android.

Maxthon’s Passport user account at my.maxthon.com website also has an online bookmarks viewer for accessing and recovering your bookmarks on devices without Maxthon installed on it. There are also links on My Maxthon to the add-ons directory for Maxthon desktop, and forums where you can use your account to post on Maxthon forum where people post for help with using Maxthon. You can also change your Avatar picture, contact info, change password, and other information in MY Maxthon.

Read my Article on Maxthon Cloud Browser for Desktop computers running Windows, Mac, and Linux.

1 comment… add one
  • Jim Bo November 15, 2018, 9:45 am

    After I install a Maxthon ver 4.4.5.1000 on my android cellphone, within a short time, it gets automatically replaced by Mx5, which I use for a desktop but don’t like for android because of weird bookmarks arrangement.
    Inspite of unchecking “Update” in settings, has not helped
    Any suggestions?

Leave a Comment