Firefox Community Forum

Out of nowhere I got the sidebar today. An absolutely useless feature that I surely did not ask for. And there is no way of closing or removing it. Please provide a guide, to removing or hiding it PERMANENTLY!

I prefer the tabs be below the bookmark bar, and successfully modified the CSS file to do this some time back. Now update 133 has once again pushed them up below the menu bar. What do I have to do to get them back where I want them this time? And why can't you just leave the tab location preference alone when doing updates?

I recently updated my MacBook Pro to the latest MacOS (Sequoia). Though I didn't notice it immediately, today when I opened Firefox, all text is displayed in a foreign character set. It is pervasive - I've tried to use several tutorials to reset the language and all settings to default, but so far nothing has worked. I've uninstalled Firefox using AppCleaner (which gets any leftover files in OS folders, as well as the app itself), but a clean install results in the same issue. I've disabled all add-ons and reset all settings to default as near as I can tell. The only time the browser displays properly is when it's in Safe Mode. I'm not sure if this is related to the OS update, but I can't seem to identify any other recent change that could have the potential to cause this problem. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Hello

I use Firefox 132.0.1 under Fedora 14 Linux. Whenever I click an urls in another application (e.g. Libreoffice, Keepass...) a new tab is opened in Firefox (according to Firefox's settings), but Firefox itself does not pop up in the foreground, it remains in the background. I highly appreciate the setting 'open links in tabs instead of new windows'. But FF only comes to foreground in case I deactivate 'open links in tabs instead of new windows'. How can I prevent FF to stay in the background in case 'open links in tabs instead of new windows' is enabled?

Thank you in advance

I've never had sponsored shortcuts and suddenly today I've got them. I've attempted the disable the "sponsored shortcuts" on my desktop however its greyed out.

Starting state - Shortcuts selected, sponsored selected and grey Procedure: 1.) Deselect shortcuts, select shortcuts, sponsored becomes cyan 2.) Click sponsored, it becomes grey again 3.) Deselect shortcuts, select shortcuts, sponsored becomes cyan (again) 4.) Click sponsored, it appears deselected 5.) Hit refresh and it returns to starting state

I do not edit my GPO or registry, settings are not controlled by an organization, I am not confusing sponsored shortcuts with pinned search engines.

I'm having some trouble with automatic translations on firefox. I don't know if It's exclusive of firefox, but some websites, mostly wikis, open a "translate" field that automatically creates a new website, wich causes the images and some other stuff on the website to break. I tried disabling the translation on about:config off, as show in some other questions, but it did not work. This is being really annoying because it keeps breaking websites unless i get to the original link.

Hello,

I'm a bit out of ideas how I can get Firefox to display the correct characters. For reference: https://learnjapanese.moe/font/

Windows: I only have german and japanese locale installed, i even changed in intl.cpl the language to japanese. I have installed the japanese language pack / fonts and it's showing correctly in any windows editor.

Firefox: Second language set to japanese, disabled all addons, tried it on private mode to no success.

Any ideas how I get the characters to display?

Edit: I made it work by changing in about:config the font.cjk_pref_fallback_order-string to have ja as first.

Well looks like they did it to us again. My tabs are back on top again and need to put them below where I am a lot of other users like our tabs!

Update: Codes working fine now for 133.0

Today (06/12/2025) upon opening a new tab, Firefox slid the new option of uploading a custom picture to apply to the background. Tried the new feature, now I can not find the setting that allows me to change the picture. I read the thread "Customize your wallpapers". The instructions are as follows; You can personalize your Firefox New Tab page by adding one of the available wallpapers. Follow these steps:

  1. In the right corner of the New Tab page, click the gear IG settings icon.
  2. In the customization panel, under the Wallpapers section, you will see different categories like Solid colors, Abstract and Photographs.

       Click the category you prefer. For example, selecting Abstract will show a variety of abstract designs. 

The problem I have is the customization panel is no where to be seen, I have click on EVERYTHING possible, it is not in my settings, why? How do find this?

Hi. There is a new feature of Firefox that bothers me. It is when I drag tabs around the top, they try to group when I don't want them to. So I go to about:config and find the "browser.tabs.groups.enabled" key and set it to false. But when I restart Firefox, the change reverts. How do I fix this so the change stays?

I've already tried going to Menu->Help->More troubleshooting information->Profile Folder->Open folder, but there is no "user.js" file there. Do I have to do a Firefox reset to fix this? I hope not...

Note that I'm pretty sure that other settings that I change do not revert when I restart Firefox. Right now, it seems to be just this one about:config setting, unless the new version of Firefox reverts all manually changed about:config settings upon restart.

Thanx in advance for any help.

Hello! My computer is Win 7 (my system info; the same with greater detail). I've been relying on Waterfox (mainly to download videos; it's not the browser I use regularly) for years, and it has never given a problem, far as web access. I have not updated the browser, main reason being my downloading add-on (which happens to be the popular "Video DownloadHelper") behaves in a less preferred way in my other browsers. (I fear an update would put the kibosh on the better way that program functions in Waterfox.)

Suddenly Waterfox has become moody (I don't know if BB code is going to work here, but the following image is a scrrenshot of "Hmm. We're having trouble finding that site." If not showing below, the direct link.):

[URL=https://imgbox.com/hXEimf6M][IMG]https://thumbs2.imgbox.com/62/ca/hXEimf6M_t.jpg/IMG/URL

I am hoping the ones reading may have suggestions for me to get my Waterfox back.

I did install a VPN recently, but I don't think that's an issue. Another point of consideration: Waterfox can access the internet in Safe Mode.

I consulted this handy-dandy page before bothering you:

7 Fixes to Try When Waterfox Is Not Loading Webpages on Windows

1) Weak internet connection. (Nope.) 2) Corruption in Waterfox installation files. (This possibility seems remote. After all, it was working well until now. ) 3) Malicious extensions (I have tried disabling all extensions, and there aren't that many.) 4) Webpages will also fail to load if there's something wrong with the browser's code. (This "code," whatever that is. was working fine for all this time. A quick look-see led to this meaning of "code": "..Code is made from C++ and C. Also javascript, pyhton, ruby, and many other languages." That seems to be a long shot.)

Their recommendations (leaving out the ones that are not relevant):

2) Update Waterfox. (I'm trying to avoid that. Of course, this might be the solution; however, It's not as though my version is that old and would have stopped working. Of course... who knows.)

4) Check Your DNS (Sounds like a lot of trouble; I don't think this will make a difference, as other browsers present no problem, and WF works in Safe Mode.)

5) Clear Waterfox Cache and Cookies (I did that.)

6)  Remove Unwanted Extensions  (I did that, by disabling the toggles, as suggested.)

7) Reset Waterfox.

That might be the last resort, and I have the feeling a reset is not going to do the trick. Doing this will get rid of the video downloading extension I'm trying to preserve, and instead I'm hoping one or more experts might come up with another suggestion that will work.

As an additional point, under Waterfox's "Options" > "Network Settings" > "Settings," where the default choice under "Configure Proxy Access to the Internet" is "Use system proxy settings," I fooled around by checking the first two, "No proxy" and "Auto-detect proxy settings for this network," and neither selection did anything. I could not try the remaining choice, "Manual proxy configuration," because I have no idea what figures or numbers to place for that one. If the BB code for the screenshot below does not show, here is the direct image; I'm also using the "attachment" option below.

[URL=https://imgbox.com/AqBgHdib][IMG]https://thumbs2.imgbox.com/2c/b2/AqBgHdib_t.jpg/IMG/URL

It's really odd Waterfox suddenly stopped working; it was so reliable.

Thank you. I would be very grateful for your help.

.

Hello

Recently I've upgraded from Kubuntu 24.04 to 24.10. I'm almost sure that the minimize/restore buttons were available in my Firefox after the system upgrade. For the last few days I can see they are missing - please see attached images.

I can partly fix the problem by going to Settings->More tools -> Customize toolbar and selecting "Title Bar" checkbox. In that case I have the title bar displayed with all 3 button (minimize, restore, close).

But I would like to have the default behavior: title bar is turned off and the mentioned 3 buttons be visible in the tab bar.

How to have those buttons in the tab bar when the title bar is turned off?

I have really liked using the "refresh" button with my Firefox browser. The "refresh" button has disappeared from one of my two Dell PC's (I use Windows Eleven, and my Dell PC's have solid state drive). I know there are two other "help" buttons ("troubleshoot mode" and "clear startup cache"). The "refresh" button has really helped me to keep my Firefox browser working properly with my two Dell PC's. Thank you for any comments you might have about this.

I know I can hide the sidebar by clicking the button on the toolbar. But I'm used to opening my bookmarks and history with ctrl+b and ctrl+h, and being able to close them the same way. This still works to close the actual bookmarks/history, but the sidebar doesn't return to being hidden (despite being hidden before I opened them), it hangs around taking up space on the left of my screen. Even after I removed everything so it's just a useless blank rectangle with "customise sidebar" at the bottom, it defaults to staying open unless I click the button. It's really annoying. Is there any way to make it hide itself again automatically once I'm done using it?

I recently reloaded my M1 MacBook Air with macOS Sequoia. Ever since doing so, Firefox opens the right-click menu every time I press Control+Return (like when attempting to autocomplete a URL ending in .com, a feature I use quite frequently). It is only in Firefox that this happens, no other browser or program is doing this. I have uninstalled Firefox using AppCleaner, downloaded a new copy of Firefox 131.0 and reinstalled without any change in this behavior. Any ideas on what I can do to stop this so Control+Return only autocompletes a URL again?

The newest version of Firefox now has what seems to be a permanent sidebar on the left side of the screen. This is incredibly inconvenient as 1) I have no need for it or any of the AI stuff and 2) I'm using an older screen that is square and so now web pages are contorted when I view them.

Please remove this bar or let me know how to remove it myself.

Thank you.

Hi! Why I lost the customize button on my Firefox's home page? This happened after the last Firefox upgrade.

Your help will be greatly appreciated.

Vaggelis J Tsagris

[edited email from public]