this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2024
180 points (95.5% liked)

Privacy

32120 readers
348 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I prefer Librewolf as it is easier and simpler to use

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] laughterlaughter@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Have you independently confirmed this?

What is preventing user.js from doing exactly what you're describing right now on your system?

[–] MrOtherGuy@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Sure. For simplified example have only the following in your user.js file:

user_pref("browser.tabs.warnOnClose",true);
  1. Start Firefox
  2. Observe that the pref is indeed true
  3. Go to Setting > General, observe that Confirm before closing multiple tabs is checked
  4. Uncheck the option
  5. In about:config observe that browser.tabs.warnOnClose is now false
  6. Restart Firefox
  7. Observe that the pref is again set to true

The reason is also very simple. Firefox will never write anything to user.js - thus any changes you do at runtime will only be stored to prefs.js. However, user.js always overrides prefs.js at startup.

[–] laughterlaughter@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Understood, thanks. So on a clean install, I'm assuming user.js is either empty or missing, correct?

[–] MrOtherGuy@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

Yes. Firefox doesn't create user.js file itself - if you want one then you need to create it yourself either manually or with some tool. Also, I've seen some "security" software create user.js file without notifying the user about it...