Get rid of the "Restart Required" in Firefox

[istrasci]

Please do not block my browsing session just to force me to restart!  Let me restart when I want to.  For security reasons, I'm almost always browsing in Private Mode, and as such, logins and passwords are not saved.  So when I'm forced to restart because of an update, I have to save my current tab session, reopen them after FF has restarted, and re-login to every site I was using—many of which require 2FA, so it's extra annoying.

This is bad UX!  Put a notification, or even a whole separate tab telling me I need to restart.  But don't block out everything I was doing.  Even Windows doesn't do this...

[blarney9]

When using Private Windows, Firefox will occasionally force me to close out all my tabs because it says it needs to update. It _says_ that it will restore all the tabs, but this isn't true for Private Windows. I suggest that users not be lied to and not be forced to lose all their progress, because this makes me not want to use Firefox.

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! It is now open for voting (kudos) and comments.

[Martin-J]

I was in the middle of filling out a fairly long application form that required a lot of information lookup while Firefox updated. I went to lookup an account number on a website and Firefox wanted to restart. This forced me to open another browser to get this information. Then, at the end when I submitted the information, again Firefox insisted on restarting, causing failure of my session.

This is enough to make me start looking for an alternate browser. It is TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE to treat users with such disregard, and makes me no longer trust Mozilla to have my best interests in mind.

I've been a Mozilla user being a beta tester for Netscape in the 1990s, and won't be happy leaving, but perhaps it's time, much as I hate to change.

[jscher2000]

Right, it can't be true for private windows because those tabs are not written to disk. Unfortunately, by the time you get that screen, it's probably too late to do anything with the information anyway.

For more control of update timing, you can use the "Check for updates but let you choose to install them" choice on the Settings/Preferences page.

(Note that if you use a version of Firefox customized by a particular Linux distribution, the package manager may override the built-in setting and install updates in the background.)

[igg]

Updates requiring browser restart

You require the browser to restart to apply updates. When I go to use my browser for something, restarting the browser instead to apply updates is the very last thing I want to do at that time.

Updates need to happen in the background, or in new tabs/windows only or some other mechanism. Restarting the browser just when I need to use it is a very bad user experience.

[lovelyjubbly]

Honestly I think this should have more votes.  I've not encountered this behaviour in other browsers, which manage to update in-place without forcing a restart. 

My request would be please find a way to do updates in the background.  You can let the user know that an update is ready, with a little dot or some visual cue.  The user can then choose to carry on their work if it's important and restart when they are ready.

However, having this screen appear is very disruptive, it blocks all the work.

[lovelyjubbly]

I believe this is a similar idea: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/get-rid-of-invasive-quot-restart-required-quot-in-ff/idi-p/775

[jscher2000]

Could I suggest using the option on the Settings/Preferences page to choose when to download and install updates? That should put the control in your hands. (Don't worry about missing one -- Firefox will nag you every day.)

Please note that some custom builds for Linux use an external package manager to install updates and the internal setting won't be able to stop those installations.

[WhyDoINeedAName]

While I love using Firefox, one thing is sometimes really frustrating: the "we just need to restart" thing. Perhaps that makes sense if the browser is never closed/restarted on a system running for weeks, thus being vulnerable to some security issues, but not in almost any other case. But it is extremely annoying.

Just now I tried reloading a website a few times (not using the cache) since a video was not running. That did not help. Only opening a new tab prompted the "we need to restart" message, after which it worked.

In other cases, the forced restart does interrupt playing media or downloads, or forces the user to reload pages that may send push messages.

Finally, when a browser tab is hijacked by the message, the tab's website link is not recovered after the browser is restarted.

[jscher2000]

On the Settings/Preferences page, in the tiny search box, type updat and change your setting to have Firefox always ask you before installing updates. Don't worry about missing one -- Firefox will nag you daily.

Note: if you installed Firefox using your Linux package manager, the package manager will drive the update schedule and that internal setting is ineffective.

[WhyDoINeedAName]

Thanks for the advice. Since I'm mostly running linux, I guess there's no easy fix on your side. Perhaps it's possible to recover the web link of the hijacked tab though, which would already help quite a bit.

[jscher2000]

If the tab never loaded -- navigation was attempted but didn't complete -- I'm not sure Firefox records that anywhere. Perhaps someone else has an idea about that.

Regarding the build of Firefox you install, it is possible to bypass your package manager and download directly from Mozilla. https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/#product-desktop-release 

[nozerror]

agree, there should be a better option to "save" your private browsing session rather than to just select all tabs and bookmark them - which I do when update notification becomes really annoying and I have time, however, re-opening these bookmarked tabs is similarly annoying.

I'm using private mode pretty much all the time and when there is an update, then firefox usually waits for couple of days, and then forces restart, losing all opened tabs. same happens when there is memory overload on linux (debian) and firefox crashes due to it - not able to restore tabs, only the most recent ones which I remember.

I see 2 options to solve it: allow firefox to have a selection for users in private mode to save the session either once or constantly.

[NoLifeDGenerate]

Bad enough it updates itself without asking. Fine. STOP expecting me to restart it for no reason. It's working fine. It'll restart when the PC does. Until then, leave me the hell alone. You have no business breaking tabs and forcing a restart.

[KevinBrosnan]

This happens when either there are multiple users or profiles running Firefox at the same time on a computer or more commonly the Linux distro has updated Firefox while Firefox is running.

When this happens Firefox's options are; randomly crash because API call does not match, detect the API incompatibility and prompt the user to do a clean restart, or spend a monumental amount of engineering work to maintain API compatibility while running mixed Gecko versions.

If you are using Linux then using the Mozilla build in /opt, the Snap or Flatpack versions will avoid the distro updating Firefox out from underneath it.