I just performed a fresh install on a blank hard disk of Debian 12, including Firefox ESR from the official repositories. I am using the XFCE4 desktop. I changed the Firefox Settings to ask me where to put each downloaded file. It does not offer me this choice; it automatically puts all downloads into the Downloads directory. When I deleted the Downloads directory Firefox recreated it, and put the files there. When I write protected the Downloads directory, Firefox file downloads failed. It did work properly for me on Debian 10 with the Gnome desktop on a different hard disk, with up-to-date Mozilla ESR. I saw one help question dealing with this. The person was advised to install Firefox from the Mozilla site rather than from the repositories. There was no response showing that solved the problem, so I don't want to do that. Any suggestions?