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 resets history preferences on restart

more options

I'm having a problem where on a default installation of firefox (on linux mint 21) where Settings > Privacy & Security > History is always set to "Use custom settings for history" when I restart firefox. This is a default installation. Even if I do the folowing...

1 Close firefox 2 Remove the /home/myname/.mozilla folder 3 Start firefox and change Privacy & Security > History to "Remember history" 4 Close and restart firefox

The Settings > Privacy & Security > History is always reset to "Use custom settings for history" even on a DEFAULT install. I realize that this is because there is a history/cookie setting that is NOT the default, but I didn't set any non-defaults. This is a default installation with a brand new profile. Any ideas what could be causing this?

I'm having a problem where on a default installation of firefox (on linux mint 21) where Settings > Privacy & Security > History is always set to "Use custom settings for history" when I restart firefox. This is a default installation. Even if I do the folowing... 1 Close firefox 2 Remove the /home/myname/.mozilla folder 3 Start firefox and change Privacy & Security > History to "Remember history" 4 Close and restart firefox The Settings > Privacy & Security > History is always reset to "Use custom settings for history" even on a DEFAULT install. I realize that this is because there is a history/cookie setting that is NOT the default, but I didn't set any non-defaults. This is a default installation with a brand new profile. Any ideas what could be causing this?
Attached screenshots

All Replies (1)

more options

Okay, I think I figured this out. My other computer running a different linux distro but the same version of firefox (version 128) didn't have this issue, which pointed toward a config issue on Linux Mint. After searching my entire disk for any "*mozilla*" file I found this config: /usr/lib/firefox/mozilla.cfg which contained this line:

pref("places.history.enabled", false);

This is the stupidest idea I've seen on a linux distro yet. Overriding user configs with a systemwide config and don't let them know about it??? Grrrrrr!!! This explains why every attempt I made to update/uninstall/reinstall and create and delete profiles resulted in a failure to get firefox to remember History settings. Everytime I restarted firefox the places.history.enabled was turned off by this config file.

Helpful?

Sual ver

You must log in to your account to reply to posts. Please start a new question, if you do not have an account yet.