Does it still happen in a new profile? An easy way to test a new profile is to install Developer Edition and see if it happens there or refresh your existing profile. Make sure you stay signed out of your sync account when testing.

Zeroknight- Thanks for actually giving me new options! (Seriously) The new profile didn't work, though. I tried it in the developer edition and in the regular FF troubleshoot mode. I'm hesitant to do a full refresh, but once I get my add-ons and prefs copied down, if I'm outta options I'll try that.--- edit: did the refresh and it didn't help Oh, and now I keep getting a bubble that says Firefox is unable to download update, or FF is unable to install update... and as I said I manually did the update last night. (getting so confused)

Hey you definitely were on to something. Turns out checking for updates were broken for Firefox builds on Macs. It seems to affect macOS users running non-admin accounts.

They rushed to release version 125.0.1 to fix that. Please install that build then test if searching for updates is working correctly.

Firefox 125.0.1: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/

Apologies, I got your problem switched around in my head, thinking you were on Mac instead of Windows. I did find one more Windows user with same checking for updates problem as you here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1445093#answer-1648171

There's a suggestion there to disable the Web Protection feature in NordVPN. A Reddit user tracked it down to NordVPN being the problem: "Figured it out. When NordVPN "Web Protection" is on, it fails to check for updates from the About menu as well. When "Web Protection" is off, it correctly checks for updates. I surmise that when Firefox fails to check, it assumes that I need an update and gives the original annoying message."

But I'm going to see if there's another bug filed for autoupdate failures for Windows users. If not, I'll file it.

I did find one more Windows user with same checking for updates problem as you here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1445093

THANK YOU! I checked the thread you linked and the most recent post said that it seemed NordVPN was affecting Firefox. I run NordVPN, too, so tried disabling the web protection and poof, Firefox is up to date. I'm sure I'm not the only one hoping for a fix, but at least I can work around it for now.

Awesome! Thanks for letting us know that fixed it. I'm going to see if we can still file a bug for this so that the Firefox devs can apply pressure on the NordVPN developers to get this fixed asap. Because they've known about this issue for at least a month. And I have low confidence they'll fix this on their own w/ any outside pressure from Firefox employees.

The Reddit thread where NordVPN was blocking Firefox updates since March 23rd: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1bly9xz/firefox_suddenly_unable_to_auto_update/ Solution: "Figured it out. When NordVPN "Web Protection" is on, it fails to check for updates from the About menu as well. When "Web Protection" is off, it correctly checks for updates. I surmise that when Firefox fails to check, it assumes that I need an update and gives the original annoying message."