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I CANNOT remove an addon that is not verified.

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Hello Mozilla, I have tried ALL of the steps at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/cannot-remove-add-on-extension-or-theme and yet, I cannot remove "You Tube Video Downloader" extension. All I can do is disable it, and in fact I have disabled it for a long time, but I would like to just remove it from my list of extensions. I have searched for it from its number in my folder of extensions and globally, and it does not appear to exist. What more can I do?? Thanks, a LOT. Scott Alan Blanchard

Hello Mozilla, I have tried ALL of the steps at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/cannot-remove-add-on-extension-or-theme and yet, I cannot remove "You Tube Video Downloader" extension. All I can do is disable it, and in fact I have disabled it for a long time, but I would like to just remove it from my list of extensions. I have searched for it from its number in my folder of extensions and globally, and it does not appear to exist. What more can I do?? Thanks, a LOT. Scott Alan Blanchard

الحل المُختار

Firefox doesn't display a Remove button for an extension if it was installed into a "shared" location. Often in that case, there is an entry in the Windows Control Panel, Uninstall a Program, which lets you remove it. But of course the extensions that have malware-ish behavior often are listed under other names. Could you clicked the Installed on column heading to sort by date and see whether you find any suspicious looking bundle items installed together?

If that doesn't work, there is a somewhat arduous way to discover its location on disk so you can remove it.

Open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either

  • "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
  • (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
  • type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

In the first table on the page, click the "Show Folder" button. This should launch a new window listing your settings files.

Scroll down and find extensions.json and make a copy somewhere convenient.

Open the file in Firefox's "Scratchpad" tool as follows. Launch the Scratchpad from the Developer menu, either:

  • "3-bar" menu button > Developer > Scratchpad
  • (menu bar) Tools > Web Developer > Scratchpad

Use the Open button on the Scratchpad's toolbar to open the backup copy of extensions.json and then click the Pretty Print button on the toolbar to re-layout the data in a more readable format.

Then use Find (Ctrl+f) to search for {55a and you should see information about the extension. The descriptor gives its location on disk. (The \ in Windows folder paths is doubled in this file due to the way it is processed. When exploring your disk, read \\ as \.)

Can you track it down?

Note: you don't need to save the changes when you exit unless you want to keep the "pretty" version for reference.

Read this answer in context 👍 1

All Replies (7)

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الحل المُختار

Firefox doesn't display a Remove button for an extension if it was installed into a "shared" location. Often in that case, there is an entry in the Windows Control Panel, Uninstall a Program, which lets you remove it. But of course the extensions that have malware-ish behavior often are listed under other names. Could you clicked the Installed on column heading to sort by date and see whether you find any suspicious looking bundle items installed together?

If that doesn't work, there is a somewhat arduous way to discover its location on disk so you can remove it.

Open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either

  • "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
  • (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
  • type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

In the first table on the page, click the "Show Folder" button. This should launch a new window listing your settings files.

Scroll down and find extensions.json and make a copy somewhere convenient.

Open the file in Firefox's "Scratchpad" tool as follows. Launch the Scratchpad from the Developer menu, either:

  • "3-bar" menu button > Developer > Scratchpad
  • (menu bar) Tools > Web Developer > Scratchpad

Use the Open button on the Scratchpad's toolbar to open the backup copy of extensions.json and then click the Pretty Print button on the toolbar to re-layout the data in a more readable format.

Then use Find (Ctrl+f) to search for {55a and you should see information about the extension. The descriptor gives its location on disk. (The \ in Windows folder paths is doubled in this file due to the way it is processed. When exploring your disk, read \\ as \.)

Can you track it down?

Note: you don't need to save the changes when you exit unless you want to keep the "pretty" version for reference.

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Thanks, soooo MUCH. What I was able to find out by doing what you said .. and only this way .. is that the program was part of another program that was still installed on my computer, that was also called "MP4 Converter" from Tomabo software in C:/Program Files (X86)/Tomabo/MP4 Converter. Thank YOU sooooo MUCH!! I do so appreciate it. I have looked for this solution for MONTHS, literally. I think it also resolved another problem I have been working on recently in my Google Chrome with an attack of constantly opening up new tabs with links for Reimage Repair. Blessings to you.

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Could this article be regularly be updated, to accurately reflect the slightly different menus and various "buttons" - and their correct names, under different versions of Firefox, under different Operating Systems (versions of Windows, versions of OS X, versions of Linux Kernel-based OSes, public preview and beta versions for iOS, etc.) ?

Modified by Totusek

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Totusek said

Could this article be regularly be updated, to accurately reflect the slightly different menus and various "buttons" - and their correct names, under different versions of Firefox, under different Operating Systems (versions of Windows, versions of OS X, versions of Linux Kernel-based OSes, public preview and beta versions for iOS, etc.) ?

The https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/cannot-remove-add-on-extension-or-theme is in the desktop Firefox section of the KB and you can change the desktop OS and Firefox version of the article on left where it says Customize this article.

Firefox for iOS is a shell and does not support the usual Extensions and Plugins and such like the Android Firefox and desktop Firefox does.


Anyways Mozilla is not really making any changes to the current forum and KB Kitsune software as they are migrating to a new Lithium support platform.

Modified by James

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If you meant update the solution in this thread, that's unlikely. Threads are locked after six months...

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Simply put - There are GUI things and functions in Firefox in regards to menus and even sometimes the names of things (including in "about: config") - including "buttons," that are not the same, as what is listed in this article and some others.

Sometimes, that's because of a change in Firefox itself - where something in the the names and/or appearance of the default Firefox GUI (or default theme) is slightly different. Another of the reasons that some solutions posted then end up puzzling users, are because the menus and even sometimes the names of "buttons" being listed in possible solutions, are specific to one Platform - or even particular OS versions of a Platform.

The request made here, was much like requests we have read on some other pages - where the results were then redone or the article was even completely replaced with an updated one, so that things were then later correctly listed and named by Platform and/or different generations of Firefox versions (when there was a change that way) - thereby eliminating some of the confusion between Firefox on Linux, Windows, OS X, etc.

The purpose is to - where ever possible - make it so when some Linux user, or Windows user, or OS X user, says "I can't find that listed" - to be able to go and have possible solutions listed: "That's how it is listed in regards to "Windows Control Panel" of these versions of Windows - but in regards to such-and-such version(s) of Ubuntu, it's this way.... or but in such-and-such version(s) of OS X, it's this way, etc.

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Hi Totusek, since you have a login on the support site, you can go to specific articles and use the editing tools in the left column to start a discussion or insert proposed edits to the article. At some point, there will be a freeze on changes as noted earlier, but I think you can still do that now.

IMPORTANT: Make sure JavaScript is enabled while reading or editing the Knowledge Base articles. If JavaScript is disabled, the code which identifies your OS and customizes the article doesn't work and the instructions can be a jumble. (This came up in another thread, but I can't find it at the moment.)