Get rid of the "Restart Required" in Firefox

[istrasci]

Please do not block my browsing session just to force me to restart!  Let me restart when I want to.  For security reasons, I'm almost always browsing in Private Mode, and as such, logins and passwords are not saved.  So when I'm forced to restart because of an update, I have to save my current tab session, reopen them after FF has restarted, and re-login to every site I was using—many of which require 2FA, so it's extra annoying.

This is bad UX!  Put a notification, or even a whole separate tab telling me I need to restart.  But don't block out everything I was doing.  Even Windows doesn't do this...

[Sailingtheseven]

Forced restarts need to stop. In the middle of my meetings, I can't create any new tabs, I can't do worm, and I can't hang up the call to restart, because you know, work!  Before people ask me to mess with updates, on Linux Mint the updates are handled by the OS, so they just happen, FF just needs to wait until I'm ready to restart it!

[GoodByeFirefox2]

I have to say that Firefox USED to be a great Browser, NOW it is, excuse the language, CRAP. Slow, does not Restore multiple (2 windows) if system has crashed, only restores 1 Window.   There is a saying "If it Aint broke Dont fix it" , which basically means dont fiddle. Mozilla have cleared fiddled with Firefox and have now broken.  NJow will have a find another Browser;.

[bebe]

It happened to me also. Today, while trying to pay a bill, while I got redirected to the cc verification page, the dreaded restart firefox message appeared. This is absolutely inadmissible. Just let me know I have to restart my browser and I'll do it in my own time, like Brave does. If you want to force a restart then pop a few warnings before.

[bebe]

Totally agreed. And the settings regarding updates are weird in Linux.

It's my own device. There's no organization managing my updates. It looks like FF for Linux is an afterthought...

[kutrow]

What kind of a user experience is this? Very off-putting in the middle of my work.

[loffler]

Add setting to disable forced restart

It is extremely annoying that once in a while firefox forces me to restart firefox to apply updates. I have to interrupt my work unwillingly and lose my incognito windows. It should be possibility to postpone or disable restart.

[Jasenjac19]

Good browser 

[KLeung]

This is more accurately described as a bug - Running Win10 22H2, Firefox v114.0.1, with the update mode set to "Check for updates but let you choose when to install them", and still got the dreaded "Restart required, update has begun in the background" message, which means that Firefox is not honouring that setting. I have observed this on both my work laptop and my personal home PC, so it can't be the RMM agent on my laptop pushing updates.

For now, I have disabled the "Mozilla Maintenance Service" service in the Services control panel to see if this stops this improper update behaviour.

By all means nag me to update, but it should never be forced. That is a huge no-no.

Firefox being a massive memory hog (I commonly see north of 7gb RAM used) and frequent undesirable behaviour (websites just stop loading necessitating a browser restart, or it starts inexplicably using huge amounts of CPU) - and although I do use a small handful of plugins, you can't blame those either as I've seen the same behaviour on vanilla Firefox with no plugins installed whatsoever, across multiple unique computers.

I'm just about ready to dump Firefox and go to another browser - and I have been using Firefox since its major version number was still in the low single digits. Chrome has its problems as well, but is much better at managing its memory usage than Firefox is, and is far more stable in my experience.

[komali2]

This is apparently because your OS software has updated the browser underneath firefox's own update software.

I'm not sure why this happens only to firefox, and not other browsers I've installed via package managers, such as Chrome or Brave. Granted that the browser is one of the most complex pieces of software on your machine, so comparisons to software like photo editors and etc don't really make sense, I still don't understand why firefox, over other browsers, has this uniquely annoying behavior.

Personally today was the last straw for me - I was in a video chat running in firefox, and someone asked if I had availability at a certain day. Ctrl+t to open my calendar at google, but nope, restart to use firefox! There was literally NOTHING I could do in that situation. If I want to look at my calendar, I have to leave the videochat. Absolute madness, and so today I finally move this one last device over to Brave browser.

[Jack_Cassowary]

Posting here because a forced restart just lost me work.

Stop.

[Jack_Cassowary]

Posting here because I just lost work to one of these forced restarts.

Stop. It.

[killerog]

Also, it isn't true anymore that it reopens all the tabs you closed. The tab that the notification is shown in doesn't get reopened, and that often is the tab you were just working in at that moment or just opened to do something in.

[botulf]

Pretty obvious that firefox lacks a lot behind in usability. The next time I open a new tab that requires a restart and then don't even get sent back to the content I choose in first place at all. Currently despise mozilla. Work up your rep. Bye

Has been going on to long now. Bye bye

[Troyhy]

This is the  most annoying feature. Show a red blinking triagnle somewhere, I dont care, but dont make me lose work becase of mandatory restart at random times.

[SRut]

I also use Firefox always with all the tracking and history shut off, so when the forced restart prompt occurs (completely unpredictably), I am forced to lose all saved progress and tabs of what I'm currently doing. It's incredibly disruptive and frustrating enough to make me stop using Firefox entirely.