Bugzilla

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #7)
> (In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #1)
> > I'm not super familiar with backup. Are we deliberately using `Documents` here, Chris?
> 
> Based on Harshit's comments I assume the answer is yes.
> 
> (In reply to Stephen A Pohl [:spohl] from comment #6)
> > (In reply to Harshit Sohaney [:hsohaney] from comment #5)
> > > Documents was mainly chosen for portability (which we wanted for backups for the purpose of device migration). It was also primarily designed for windows (which doesnt ask for this prompt) - is there a better place to put backups into which is visible to users and easily portable?
> > 
> > This depends on the kind of "visibility to users" that you require. `Documents` may be the right choice, but the user should be informed at the time of opting into the feature that they will need to provide access to this directory. If you are referring to a similar level of visibility as for Profiles, then `~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/BackupService/` (or similar) would be the right choice.
> 
> Bouncing this one back to Harshit to arrive at an actionable next step here (possibly after liaising with Chris and/or product folks), to be summarized in the bug. Obvious choices so far:
> 
> - move the default macOS location elsewhere;
> - not probe the directory on macOS unless backups are enabled / stop probing after the first startup of the browser
> - set a flag (pref) if access fails to stop probing again each startup
> - document this better / give users a more informed chance to try this again if permission is not given first time
> - gather telemetry on how often this fails
> 
> There may be others (and these aren't mutually exclusive)
> 
> Off-hand, I think the status quo means:
> 
> 1. the feature basically won't work for macOS users (as trying to use it on a new machine, Firefox likely won't have access to the directory);
> 2. we'll be prompting every new Firefox user on macOS for this permission on first startup and that really sucks, in terms of user experience.
> 
> So I think this should be fairly high priority. Perhaps we could add a symlink in the Documents folder when creating backups (which does require explicit user input!) so that they become more discoverable that way (I don't think `~/Library/` is particularly user-discoverable)

(In reply to Stephen A Pohl [:spohl] from comment #10)
> (In reply to Harshit Sohaney [:hsohaney] from comment #9)
> > hmmm maybe it's just me, but an application requesting access to a folder doesn't seem that detrimental to UX right? Imo not something worth stopping the train ride for - but I'll let Chris chime in here too.
> 
> The concern here is that users don't know *why* Firefox is requesting access to this folder. This leads to questions/concerns as in the description of this bug:
> 
> (In reply to Sam Johnson from comment #0)
> > I've never used this feature. Could this user experience be improved so that it does not make Firefox appear to be maliciously sniffing my Documents folder?
> 
> Users get the impression that this is malicious. There is no way to differentiate this between a legitimate access request vs. a user being "hacked" by a malicious website, extension or otherwise.

Honestly given macOS users aren't really the primary audience for this feature anyway, I think we should disable on macOS while we evaluate. Our window to do this for 152 is rapidly closing so we would need to make a decision soon.

(edit: fix dupe comment)

> (In reply to Harshit Sohaney [:hsohaney] from comment #9)
> > hmmm maybe it's just me, but an application requesting access to a folder doesn't seem that detrimental to UX right? Imo not something worth stopping the train ride for - but I'll let Chris chime in here too.

Stephen answered this well, I think:

(In reply to Stephen A Pohl [:spohl] from comment #10)
> The concern here is that users don't know *why* Firefox is requesting access to this folder. This leads to questions/concerns as in the description of this bug:
> 
> (In reply to Sam Johnson from comment #0)
> > I've never used this feature. Could this user experience be improved so that it does not make Firefox appear to be maliciously sniffing my Documents folder?
> 
> Users get the impression that this is malicious. There is no way to differentiate this between a legitimate access request vs. a user being "hacked" by a malicious website, extension or otherwise.

Honestly given macOS users aren't really the primary audience for this feature anyway, I think we should disable on macOS while we evaluate. Our window to do this for 152 is rapidly closing so we would need to make a decision soon.