Firefox for Android supports pinch-to-zoom, but only on certain sites (maybe it's disabled by a certain setting of `<meta name="viewport">`).

EDIT: Tried just now. Pinch-to-zoom works fine on HN.

Settings/accessibility/always enable zoom.

Why is disabling it even possible?

Applications might want to implement their own pinch-to-zoom. I can imagine that Google Maps in mobile browsers does that, otherwise you'll just see upscaled images instead of the application fetching new, higher resolution tiles.

You can't pinch to zoom the UI of native Android/iOS apps. Makes sense that web apps with "native-like look" might want to behave similarly.

It's my device, I should be allowed to pinch to zoom, etc., regardless of what the website or app wants.

What platform are you on? It works perfectly in both Brave and Firefox installations (unmodified) on Android (version 9, Pie). (Tested on wikipedia articles). However, keep in mind that individual web pages can disable this behavior with meta viewport. (https://www.w3schools.com/Css/css_rwd_viewport.asp)

iOS Safari got rid of this support a few years ago, for the better in my opinion.

Can you provide a citation or test on a website such as wikipedia? Try pinching to zoom the text size.

(Incidentally, Apple invented (https://www.theverge.com/2012/8/30/3279628/apple-pinch-to-zo...) and tried to patent this gesture: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2045461/us-patent-office-rej... )