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

How can I set default toolbar layout for all users in my system?

  • 4 replies
  • 3 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by Erchamion

more options

Hi everybody! I am running a local ubuntu server at my office. I can set some defaults preferences (about:config) for all new users in the system by defining those prefs in the /etc/firefox/syspref.js. Now, I want to define default toolbar layout in a similar way (maybe not needed but fun), to copy the toolbar layout for my user. Is there a general way to do that? thank you in advance!

Hi everybody! I am running a local ubuntu server at my office. I can set some defaults preferences (about:config) for all new users in the system by defining those prefs in the /etc/firefox/syspref.js. Now, I want to define default toolbar layout in a similar way (maybe not needed but fun), to copy the toolbar layout for my user. Is there a general way to do that? thank you in advance!

All Replies (4)

more options
more options

thankyou for your help, cor-el! I had seen that page, but it is not specified how to make a default localstore.rdf. Coping the file manualy to every new user firefox profile is not what I am looking for. However, I tried to solve the problem saving a clean profile at /etc/skel . Just for the record, what I did is to copy the $HOME/.mozilla/ to /etc/skel. Then, modify the profile folder to some suitable name, for example:

mv /etc/skel/.mozilla/firefox/<somestring>.default /etc/skel/.mozilla/firefox/new.default


Then I remove everything that is not needed insede the profile, leaving only the localstore.rdf, I also left the extensions and search engine folder (because I recommend duckduckgo as default search engine).

for every new user, it kind of work, but not exactly. for example, I save a localstore.rdf without home buttons, but for new users a home button is included in the toolbar, so I guess I am missing something.

In the other hand, this procedure will not help if , for example, I created new profiles for existing users (which is desirable for many reasons).

I will appreciate any further help!

Modified by Erchamion

more options

You can try to create a default template folder (defaults/profile) in the Firefox and place the file(s) in that folder for newly created profile.

The only way to customize an existing profile is to copy files directly to it.

more options

Thankyou cor-el. Following your suggestion, I created a folder:

/usr/lib/firefox-<version>/defaults/profile

and copied a template profile files there. For instance, there I have the following files and folders:

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K 2012-03-26 15:28 chrome

drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4.0K 2012-03-26 15:28 extensions

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K 2012-03-26 15:28 searchplugins

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 14K 2012-03-26 15:28 search.json

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 38K 2012-03-26 15:28 localstore.rdf

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 96K 2012-03-26 15:28 chromeappsstore.sqlite

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.0K 2012-03-26 15:28 search.sqlite


with those files, I have my search engines and 'overall' toolbar layout, and I made some tests where extensions can also be exported by copying the 'extensions' folder and extensions.{sqlite,rdf} files. This methods behaves more or less the way I want. The thing is, I still have the same problems as explained above, that is, some buttons that are not present in the original template profile, are present in the new profile ( for example if I delete the 'getting started' or 'home button', they show up the new profile). I think it has to do with te bar selections from right click menu on the toolbar.

Modified by Erchamion