this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2024
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Privacy

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Sure. For simplified example have only the following in your user.js file:

user_pref("browser.tabs.warnOnClose",true);
  1. Start Firefox
  2. Observe that the pref is indeed true
  3. Go to Setting > General, observe that Confirm before closing multiple tabs is checked
  4. Uncheck the option
  5. In about:config observe that browser.tabs.warnOnClose is now false
  6. Restart Firefox
  7. Observe that the pref is again set to true

The reason is also very simple. Firefox will never write anything to user.js - thus any changes you do at runtime will only be stored to prefs.js. However, user.js always overrides prefs.js at startup.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Understood, thanks. So on a clean install, I'm assuming user.js is either empty or missing, correct?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Yes. Firefox doesn't create user.js file itself - if you want one then you need to create it yourself either manually or with some tool. Also, I've seen some "security" software create user.js file without notifying the user about it...