(edit) oh no, I’ve said something bad about the lesser evil, and the people who have made it their identity to violently cum all over the first thing that isn’t owned by Google are after me. I hope the pipe bomb hitman is at least polite.
I just wish Firefox updates weren’t so intrusive. Having it hit me with “Firefox updated in the background, restart to continue using Firefox” while I’m trying to use QuickBooks for my job is so disruptive when QuickBooks doesn’t save automatically and never opens back up to where I left it off. I won’t go back to Chrome, but I never had it pull that sort of forced restart on me.
There are lots of people who will never update if asked to update at their leisure. I think it’s far better for user security to have updates be forced by default, with the option to schedule them yourself.
From what I understand, Chrome doesn’t need to do this, because when you close it, it keeps running in the background and does its upgrades then, which is also pretty intrusive.
If you’re updating Firefox via the built-in auto-updater, you can tell it in the settings that it should only install updates when you tell it to do so.
Ah. I guess I don’t notice that since I’m on Linux and just update Firefox whenever I want.
If you go to Hamburger menu > Settings > General > Check for updates but let you choose to install them, you won’t auto update anymore. I agree that would be annoying.
I legitimately forgot this used to happen to me on Windows, it’s so convenient being able to update all the software on my system with the click of a button
What OS? I almost never close out of Firefox on my Macs at home and I’ve never seen that message there. FF on Windows seems to be the same. It’s been ages though since I’ve left FF open for months on end on Linux though.
I’ve had this same experience on Linux Mint. I’ll run apt update & apt upgrade and, occasionally, if Firefox is one of the things being updated, new tabs and new pages won’t load and will tell me I need to do a system restart to continue browsing.
I always update manually, so it never happens without me initiating the update first. But sometimes I’m like, “Dangit, didn’t realize this update would require a restart to keep using Firefox.”
On Linux, disabling Firefox updates in Firefox itself will not fix this issue, because Firefox’s own updater doesn’t actually have this bug! You get this warning when the Linux package manager has already replaced the files underneath the running program.
You say it’s windows, but I think you said it’s a work machine so maybe they’re updating firefox from under you?
I wish this blanket statement were true. Firefox is better in some respects, but surely not all. Tab and session management - just to name two examples - are just handled better by the Chromium crowd, as much as it pains me to say that.
Back in the day, Firefox was literally not as good as Chrome. I personally think that has reversed and it’s now much better than Chrome. Leagues better, now that Chrome is banning UBlock Origin. I do wish we had more competition than just Chrome, Safari, and Firefox though…
Servo, as far I know, has no plans to be a browser. Instead, they want to offer an alternative to Blink (the Chrome rendering engine), so that other software can be made with it. This seems to be a common misconception.
Ladybird’s project lead and main developer, Andreas Kling, may or may not hold controversial views that some would prefer to avoid supporting.
I really want there to be more options in the browser market that aren’t Blink based (or WebKit, sorry Apple), but the situation’s tough.
I’m an advocate for Firefox, but it is slowly, slowly entering enshittification.
The addition of AI, dark patterns to enable “sponsored bookmarks” upon reinstall, ads (albeit subtle) when using the address bar for search…
All of these can be disabled, some easily, some with feature flags.
Sure the enshittification isn’t anywhere near the pace as Chrome but it’s happening. And again, this is coming from a maybe 10 year financial donor to Mozilla.
Firefox is better than Chrome, no question but there is an opportunity for a new browser to challenge the field.
You make good points but some people are knew jerking on Firefox’s AI. One of them is client side translation which is really neat as I don’t need to send the content to some Google ad data vacuum.
Another AI model helps differently abled people to have websites described to them using, again, a local model.
There is also Libtefox which uses the same rendering engine without the other stuff if you don’t want it.
I consider it an important act to use non Chromium browsers as not to completely hand over the power of rendering web content to Google.
Yes, but only begrudgingly.
(edit) oh no, I’ve said something bad about the lesser evil, and the people who have made it their identity to violently cum all over the first thing that isn’t owned by Google are after me. I hope the pipe bomb hitman is at least polite.
Nah, Firefox is way better.
I just wish Firefox updates weren’t so intrusive. Having it hit me with “Firefox updated in the background, restart to continue using Firefox” while I’m trying to use QuickBooks for my job is so disruptive when QuickBooks doesn’t save automatically and never opens back up to where I left it off. I won’t go back to Chrome, but I never had it pull that sort of forced restart on me.
You can disable that. I have mine set to notify me when updates are available
Amazing, I’ll give that a shot
I’m happy that they give an option but goddamn would it kill them to have the safe option as the default for once?
There are lots of people who will never update if asked to update at their leisure. I think it’s far better for user security to have updates be forced by default, with the option to schedule them yourself.
Or batch update some of your apps with Patch My PC Home Updater
Looks like it didn’t work unfortunately 😞 Thank you for the suggestion though!
From what I understand, Chrome doesn’t need to do this, because when you close it, it keeps running in the background and does its upgrades then, which is also pretty intrusive.
If you’re updating Firefox via the built-in auto-updater, you can tell it in the settings that it should only install updates when you tell it to do so.
Ah. I guess I don’t notice that since I’m on Linux and just update Firefox whenever I want.
If you go to Hamburger menu > Settings > General > Check for updates but let you choose to install them, you won’t auto update anymore. I agree that would be annoying.
Thanks! I had no idea this setting existed and it will make Firefox so much more practical for me to use.
I legitimately forgot this used to happen to me on Windows, it’s so convenient being able to update all the software on my system with the click of a button
Restart Firefox to let it finish updating. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a screen that says you HAVE to restart right now at this very moment.
When it happens, it doesn’t let me do anything other than stay on the already loaded webpage without restarting.
Open a new tab > “Restart to continue…”
Click a link > “Restart to continue…”
Type a URL > “Restart to continue…”
and etc
What OS? I almost never close out of Firefox on my Macs at home and I’ve never seen that message there. FF on Windows seems to be the same. It’s been ages though since I’ve left FF open for months on end on Linux though.
I’ve had this same experience on Linux Mint. I’ll run apt update & apt upgrade and, occasionally, if Firefox is one of the things being updated, new tabs and new pages won’t load and will tell me I need to do a system restart to continue browsing.
I always update manually, so it never happens without me initiating the update first. But sometimes I’m like, “Dangit, didn’t realize this update would require a restart to keep using Firefox.”
Windows 10
Same on MacOS
I got it again unfortunately, here’s a screenshot of what it looks like
I found this. https://superuser.com/questions/1451210/how-can-i-make-firefox-stop-forcing-me-to-restart-my-browser
You say it’s windows, but I think you said it’s a work machine so maybe they’re updating firefox from under you?
They said at work, perhaps it is a corporate thingy that forces them to be on the mandated version.
It happens on Linux – after your package manager has updated Firefox. Which typically means that you told it to. So it’s not really a surprise.
I wish this blanket statement were true. Firefox is better in some respects, but surely not all. Tab and session management - just to name two examples - are just handled better by the Chromium crowd, as much as it pains me to say that.
That said, I still use Firefox in most cases.
Different profiles on Firefox are nowhere near Chrome.
I’m still going to use FF, but there are areas it lags behind Chrome. That’s the only big one for me.
Naturally, the browser that receives way less funding has less Dev work available.
Same… I know it’s better and worth supporting, I just don’t like using it for some reason.
Back in the day, Firefox was literally not as good as Chrome. I personally think that has reversed and it’s now much better than Chrome. Leagues better, now that Chrome is banning UBlock Origin. I do wish we had more competition than just Chrome, Safari, and Firefox though…
Yeah any other alternatives? There’s arc, but I think that’s just chromium underneath (see above, meme)
There’s ladybird and servo, but neither are near a release and ladybird won’t even have an alpha til 2026.
And to make matters more complicated,
I really want there to be more options in the browser market that aren’t Blink based (or WebKit, sorry Apple), but the situation’s tough.
I’m an advocate for Firefox, but it is slowly, slowly entering enshittification.
The addition of AI, dark patterns to enable “sponsored bookmarks” upon reinstall, ads (albeit subtle) when using the address bar for search…
All of these can be disabled, some easily, some with feature flags.
Sure the enshittification isn’t anywhere near the pace as Chrome but it’s happening. And again, this is coming from a maybe 10 year financial donor to Mozilla.
Firefox is better than Chrome, no question but there is an opportunity for a new browser to challenge the field.
You make good points but some people are knew jerking on Firefox’s AI. One of them is client side translation which is really neat as I don’t need to send the content to some Google ad data vacuum.
Another AI model helps differently abled people to have websites described to them using, again, a local model.
There is also Libtefox which uses the same rendering engine without the other stuff if you don’t want it.
I consider it an important act to use non Chromium browsers as not to completely hand over the power of rendering web content to Google.