Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

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

Why do you disallow disabling the default browser check, when ff is the default?

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 5 views
  • Paskiausią atsakymą parašė Happy112

more options

I made FF the default browser (FF 57.0) and the check box for 'Check if FF is the default ...' becomes checked and disabled, - enforcing the check. I prefer to be in control of what my defaults are and I don't need FF to check this.

Its not a big thing but it does mean that if/when I decide to change the default browser on my PC FF will nag me about it next time it starts.

What is more perturbing is that FF has decided that it needs to check and it needs me not to stop it from checking.

Please enlighten me as to what legitimate reason there is for such behaviour? My best guess is that Mozilla want to know when or if I choose another browser as default. There is nothing wrong with wanting that information, however I would prefer Mozilla asked me for it, instead of disabling the checkbox, it should change the label to something like 'Inform Mozilla that default status has changed' AND make sure that it is still enabled and unchecked by default.

I made FF the default browser (FF 57.0) and the check box for 'Check if FF is the default ...' becomes checked and disabled, - enforcing the check. I prefer to be in control of what my defaults are and I don't need FF to check this. Its not a big thing but it does mean that if/when I decide to change the default browser on my PC FF will nag me about it next time it starts. What is more perturbing is that FF has decided that it needs to check and it needs me not to stop it from checking. Please enlighten me as to what legitimate reason there is for such behaviour? My best guess is that Mozilla want to know when or if I choose another browser as default. There is nothing wrong with wanting that information, however I would prefer Mozilla asked me for it, instead of disabling the checkbox, it should change the label to something like 'Inform Mozilla that default status has changed' AND make sure that it is still enabled and unchecked by default.

All Replies (2)

more options

Hi,

Please see : https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1189038

When you scroll down some, you'll see :

"Bug 1041516 made it so that when you set Firefox as the default browser, checking for default status on startup also gets set. That's good but we didn't prevent the check on startup setting from being unchecked. So a user can sabotage themselves by opening the options tab and unchecking "Always check if Firefox is your default browser." This will put them in a state where another browser can be set as default without Firefox noticing. We should make this setting unable to be changed when Firefox is the default browser."

more options

You can always do this :

Type in the address bar about:config (press Enter) (promise to be careful, if asked)

Type in the search bar and look for the preference :

browser.shell.checkDefaultBrowser

Set its value to false - then close and restart Firefox.