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updated to firefox 138.0.1-1.1 and now my shortcuts are gone?!

I just updated my system and firefox to 138.0.1-1.1 along the way. I opened firefox and saw nothing was right. For some reason the shortcuts are disabled and default search engine has been changed from google to duckduckgo. Infact google has been removed from the search engine list altogether.

Wondering if something is wrong I cleared the data from firefox and opened it. This time I wasn't even greeted with the usual welcome screen. Just a blank page without shortcuts, similar to how to looks on librewolf.

I just want some clarification, is this a bug or a change that has been made. Please let me know!

Re: updated to firefox 138.0.1-1.1 and now my shortcuts are gone?!

Reply #1 –
In the Settings / Home tab there is a checkbox Shortcuts. This is probably disabled now and enabling it should bring back the old behavior. Mozilla advertises Firefox as a 'private browser' but their recent TOS changes are no longer non-ambiguous about this. To protect some of the privacy of the firefox users we have made changes like replacing some search engines with ones that do respect user privacy. These changes can be undone and overwritten by users.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

artist

Re: updated to firefox 138.0.1-1.1 and now my shortcuts are gone?!

Reply #2 –
So this was an upstream change then?

re: clearly didn't read the reply properly. my bad there

Re: updated to firefox 138.0.1-1.1 and now my shortcuts are gone?!

Reply #3 –
Quote from: Artist – on
we have made changes like replacing some search engines with ones that do respect user privacy. These changes can be undone and overwritten by users.

Oh wow I was not aware you are fiddling with packages more than just for compatibility reasons, but commit 75ab6420a3 shows that the ublock extension was not added by upstream?

I use Firefox with a specific, isolated user for only one specific thing and I had problems in the past with certain privacy settings so I try to keep it as vanilla as possible. 💦
Is there a common place I missed that announces and discusses when such tweaks are introduced to packages (not just firefox)?

Edit: Gotcha

Re: updated to firefox 138.0.1-1.1 and now my shortcuts are gone?!

Reply #4 –
Quote from: Artist – on
we have made changes like replacing some search engines with ones that do respect user privacy. These changes can be undone and overwritten by users.

Hi, I just upgraded my notebook (I haven't been using in a while now) and noticed the Google search being gone from Firefox. However, I struggle a bit to get it back … would you please be so kind to explain how exactly "these changes can be undone and overwritten by users"?

In about:config, I see browser.policies.runOncePerModification.removeSearchEngines, which lists ["Google","Bing","Amazon.com","eBay","Twitter","Yahoo!"]. However, if I remove the "Google" entry from this, it has no effect. Also, deleting search.json.mozlz4 from my profile and resetting the search engines to default does not help. Google is gone. After a restart, "Google" is also listed again in the key mentioned above.

I also added browser.policies.runOncePerModification.removeSearchEngines (and set it to "true") so that I can simply add a new search engine. However, I can't use the name "Google", as apparently, it's already taken/present – but not selectable.

No question, it's generally a good idea to avoid Google. However, it would be nice to have the choice to use it nevertheless …

Re: updated to firefox 138.0.1-1.1 and now my shortcuts are gone?!

Reply #5 –
Quote from: l3u – on
Also, deleting search.json.mozlz4 from my profile and resetting the search engines to default does not help. Google is gone. After a restart, "Google" is also listed again in the key mentioned above.
https://gitea.artixlinux.org/packages/firefox/src/branch/master/policies.json
/usr/lib/firefox/distribution/policies.json
I use firedragon and they (Garuda) setup some of their settings in there including search engines. Any changes in about:config , which also exist in that file, will get recreated when you restart firefox as you describe.
You can edit the file and then use NoUpgrade = file or NoExtract = file in pacman.conf  to prevent it getting overwritten on upgrade

Re: updated to firefox 138.0.1-1.1 and now my shortcuts are gone?!

Reply #6 –
Okay, I can mess with distribution-provided system-wide files … but how can I change this as a user?

Re: updated to firefox 138.0.1-1.1 and now my shortcuts are gone?!

Reply #7 –
Quote from: l3u – on
Okay, I can mess with distribution-provided system-wide files … but how can I change this as a user?
As user root.
Maybe there's another way to override policies.json in ~./mozilla but I don't think so.

Whether the various packagers of mozilla, and derivatives, should be forcing certain search engines and disallowing others is a mater of debate. But also unimportant to me as I just build my own how I like it. (I hate the purplish Garuda branding so checkout the older branding before compiling)

Re: updated to firefox 138.0.1-1.1 and now my shortcuts are gone?!

Reply #8 –
Of course you can work around this as root. Or by compiling your stuff yourself.

I meanwhile worked around this by backing up search.json.mozlz4 before the update, running Firefox once, closing it, restoring search.json.mozlz4 and then restoring the default search engines. Or so, don't ask me what exactly I did. However, Google re-appeared.

As said, it's for sure not bad to try to avoid Google. But anyway, the choice should be up to the user eventually. That's why I use Linux after all. And having to mess around this hackishly to get back what was taken from me without asking first this way doesn't feel right tbh …

Maybe, Artist can comment on this – if one can make a decision here as a user, as claimed above …

Re: updated to firefox 138.0.1-1.1 and now my shortcuts are gone?!

Reply #9 –
An updated version without the search engine removal is already being built in gremlins; according to Mozilla, search engines can be added back as per Add or remove a search engine in Firefox but that involves using an external site and features that have been removed from Firefox. So this procedure does not seem simple nor reliable enough to actually use.

artist

Re: updated to firefox 138.0.1-1.1 and now my shortcuts are gone?!

Reply #10 –
This was an upstream change by Mozilla to remove Google?! I thought this was an Artix downstream decision? I must have read it wrong …

However, this is inconvenient. If we can't trust Firefox anymore, what could we use at all?! It's all Firefox or Chrome frontends nowadays …

Re: updated to firefox 138.0.1-1.1 and now my shortcuts are gone?!

Reply #11 –
It's not an upstream change from Mozilla, but they do make it difficult to re-add a search engine to Firefox. It was the go-to browser for 15 years for many users but going down the drain now.
From the chrome based browsers an alternative is to use ungoogled-chromium.

artist

Re: updated to firefox 138.0.1-1.1 and now my shortcuts are gone?!

Reply #12 –
Quote from: l3u – on
Of course you can work around this as root. Or by compiling your stuff yourself.
Without me knowing what you know there isn't really an 'of course'.
You didn't seem to know where the file which affects this was located so I was just telling you so you could edit it if the package wasn't changed to remove the section which I believed was causing your issue..
Quote
If we can't trust Firefox anymore, what could we use at all?! It's all Firefox or Chrome frontends nowadays …
Derivatives of either that prevent as much data as possible being harvested.
As Artist said ungoogled-chromium is a good choice for a chromium based browser.
For Mozilla you've got Librewolf , but I personally find that so locked down to be a pain, or also Firedragon as I mentioned before which I find a reasonable compromise between privacy and usability.
There are many others, probably another one of each flavour created while I typed this out.
 

Re: updated to firefox 138.0.1-1.1 and now my shortcuts are gone?!

Reply #13 –
Quote from: gripped – on
Without me knowing what you know there isn't really an 'of course'.
You didn't seem to know where the file which affects this was located so I was just telling you so you could edit it if the package wasn't changed to remove the section which I believed was causing your issue..
Hey, don't get me wrong! No hard feelings! This knowledge and you sharing it is of course appreciated, as you pointed out the root cause of the problem!

I only assumed a solution would exist that is applicable as a normal user, ideally using Firefox's GUI. Neither including messing with distribution-provided files, nor building the whole thing locally. And that was what I was looking for. Apparently, this is alas not the case.

However, my hackish workaround backing up the pre-update search definition JSON whatever file and restoring it later on and restoring the default search engines then seems to work good enough, at least here. I only don't like the infantilizing here, that only can be worked around if you know what you do. Well, on the other side, not much people not knowing what they do use Artix, do they?! ;-)