This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Firefox loads at startup for no apparent reason

more options

I'm running Firefox 116.0.2 on Xubuntu 20.04.6. A day ago, it started loading at startup for no apparent reason. I don't want it to that. It's not my default browser, and it is not selected as such. It is not listed in any startup folders or in application autostart in system settings. I tried the winregister and auto update fixes using about:config, and no joy.

Does anyone have any suggestions? It's past annoying.

I'm running Firefox 116.0.2 on Xubuntu 20.04.6. A day ago, it started loading at startup for no apparent reason. I don't want it to that. It's not my default browser, and it is not selected as such. It is not listed in any startup folders or in application autostart in system settings. I tried the winregister and auto update fixes using about:config, and no joy. Does anyone have any suggestions? It's past annoying.

Chosen solution

Solved it. Terry was correct -- it was a distro/desktop bug, in this case XFCE. I closed all the active apps, did a restart using log out/save session, restart, and that fixed it. I'm actually kind embarrassed; I've used XFCE long enough that something like this has happened before. Wish I had thought of it.

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (3)

more options

Use the menu command or keyboard shortcut to exit Firefox and allow it at least 30 seconds to finish before shutting down or rebooting. If that doesn't stop the issue, it seems like something you need to ask distro support.

Modified by Terry

more options

Thanks for this. I booted the computer, Firefox started, and I used control-Q to close it. Then I waited 40 seconds and rebooted. It loaded again. So, assuming I did what you said correctly, no luck.

I'm wondering if there's something that changed in the .desktop file.

more options

Seçilmiş Həll

Solved it. Terry was correct -- it was a distro/desktop bug, in this case XFCE. I closed all the active apps, did a restart using log out/save session, restart, and that fixed it. I'm actually kind embarrassed; I've used XFCE long enough that something like this has happened before. Wish I had thought of it.