1409880 - Links from other applications start new instances of Firefox on macOS

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Toolkit :: Application Update, defect)

Description

[evanearlsalter]

Attachment: Screencast

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.13; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0
Build ID: 20171013042429

Steps to reproduce:

1. Set Firefox as your default browser in macOS
2. Have Firefox running
3. Click on a link in another application


Actual results:

A new instance of Firefox is started up to open the link. The following dialog box appears:

Title: Close Firefox
Body: A copy of Firefox is already open. Only one copy of Firefox can be open at a time.


Expected results:

The link should open in the existing instance of Firefox, either as a new tab in an existing window or a new window.

Comment 1

[Stephen A Pohl [:spohl] (OOO until 9/11)]

(In reply to evanearlsalter from comment #0)
> Created attachment 8919911 [details]
> Screencast
> 
> User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.13; rv:57.0)
> Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0
> Build ID: 20171013042429
> 
> Steps to reproduce:
> 
> 1. Set Firefox as your default browser in macOS
> 2. Have Firefox running
> 3. Click on a link in another application
> 
> 
> Actual results:
> 
> A new instance of Firefox is started up to open the link. The following
> dialog box appears:
> 
> Title: Close Firefox
> Body: A copy of Firefox is already open. Only one copy of Firefox can be
> open at a time.
> 
> 
> Expected results:
> 
> The link should open in the existing instance of Firefox, either as a new
> tab in an existing window or a new window.

It looks like you have Firefox Nightly set as default. Can you confirm? Can you compare the version of Nightly that's already open and compare it to the version that is trying to open?

Comment 2

[evanearlsalter]

Is the Developer Edition the nightly build? I was running 57.0b8, but when I clicked a link and the new instance opened, there was no "About Firefox" menu item to click on while the dialog was open. Upon closing the dialog, the instance closed.

I saw that there was an update waiting to install, so I restarted Firefox and it was updated to 57.0b9. Now, when I click a link from another app, it opens in the current instance.

So it looks like the issue is when Firefox updates but the current instance hasn't been restarted.

Comment 3

[Stephen A Pohl [:spohl] (OOO until 9/11)]

Ok, I'm going to reassign this to app update. Maybe there is already a bug on file for this. Robert, does this sound familiar?

Comment 4

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

It doesn't sound familiar and staging is disabled on 57 so I suspect that whatever is going on isn't due to an update waiting to be applied since all we do is download the mar file. Also, we do update often on dev edition so it isn't surprising that an update was waiting to be applied and this has caused several bugs being misfiled under app update due to that correlation.

spohl, can you think of any reason why downloading the update mar file could have caused this behavior?

Comment 5

[Stephen A Pohl [:spohl] (OOO until 9/11)]

(In reply to Robert Strong [:rstrong] (use needinfo to contact me) from comment #4)
> It doesn't sound familiar and staging is disabled on 57 so I suspect that
> whatever is going on isn't due to an update waiting to be applied since all
> we do is download the mar file. Also, we do update often on dev edition so
> it isn't surprising that an update was waiting to be applied and this has
> caused several bugs being misfiled under app update due to that correlation.
> 
> spohl, can you think of any reason why downloading the update mar file could
> have caused this behavior?

I think this has to do with the way the default web browser is set on macOS. Somehow, the OS thinks that the currently running version of Firefox isn't the default and tries to open the default instead.

It might be good to test this:
1. Set 57.0b8 as default. Open the browser and check for an update.
2. With 57.0b8 still open, click on a link in another app.

Does this reproduce the bug?

Comment 6

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

Before the steps above please also check the following
1. Set 57.0b8 as default. Open the browser.
2. With 57.0b8 still open, click on a link in another app.

Comment 7

[evanearlsalter]

This slipped my mind and I never performed the proper testing. However, I am currently on version 57.0b14 and there is an update pending ("Restart to update Firefox" button in the preferences page), and when I click a link from another application it opens in the current instance of Firefox. Looks like this is resolved.

Comment 8

[Stephen A Pohl [:spohl] (OOO until 9/11)]

Thanks!