Why can’t the devs have it update in the background or on next startup? I was in the middle of my work when I got this. Now I need to close everything and go through all the logins and 2FA again. 😡
Chrome is much better at this, hands down. It has never interrupted me the way Firefox does during updates.
I use it on both Windows and Mac, I’ve never seen this o.o
I’ve seen it multiple times over the years. Don’t know what could be causing this.
In my experience - having 2 different instances (e.g. if you want 2 icons on the taskbar) and one having updated.
Yup! Two different profiles running at the same time. As soon as I update one, I’ll update the other one as well to avoid this.
Though whenever I forget, it’s a pain!!
I think this could be handled differently. Interrupting the user’s work half-way through is such a bad, bad form.
Yup, this is called ‘User Error’. User messes it up, User blames the software.
It’s very clearly communicated when you install and set it up.
- × Allow Firefox to automatically install updates (recommended)
- ✔ Check for updates but let you choose to install them.
- × Use a background service to install updates.
If you don’t want this you can change things.
When you first install Firefox, uncheck install updates as a service. Personally, I don’t like applications running services in the background all the time. When I close something I expect it to be gone, and I don’t want it running until I tell it to.
Second, go into settings and change your update settings to “Check for updates but let you choose to install them”. Firefox will pop up with a discrete notification telling you when an update is available, asking you to download, then another dismissable notification telling you to restart to update.
I’ve been using Firefox since 1.0PR and I’ve never seen this message before. For me, Firefox has always quietly downloaded the update in the background and then installed it the next time I used it.
I’m curious to know just exactly what it is you’re doing to make this message come up.
You should be able to replicate it with:
- Ubuntu 20.04 container
- Install Firefox from a deb earlier than 120.0.1(current in repo)
- Open a few tabs and navigate to various web apps
- apt update, upgrade
- Once update completes, open new tab and navigate somewhere, you’ll get this message
Not sure if it actually happens with each update, but it seems so to me.
I typically keep Firefox open all the time with 50-100 tabs, (using various extensions to keep the organized)
This happens to me every few weeks and it’s genuinely annoying, unless I had all my tabs saved it just lose them, and instead of giving me a chance to do that, Firefox just becomes useless until I hit the button.
I don’t understand why, if it’s going to put a page like this up anyway, that it doesn’t just restart on its own; I would prefer it to not do either but at least that removes the unneeded button click.
For anyone who is still confused about what causes this: Firefox launches copies of itself when creating new website instances (usually when loading a website that has not already been loaded). Because of this, if it is updated in the background (through any means; I usually see this after a manual system update), Firefox has to restart when you try and load a new site because it cannot create any compatible copies of itself, since the old version is the one that is still running and the copies would use the new (updated) version.
The solution is to only update when Firefox is closed, or restart it when it asks.
This happens when FF updates out of band. Ie package manager.
Your windows updates are probably set to also get applications when it updates. Turn that off and see what happens (next month).