1552664 - Firefox Nightly will add back all removed search engines, even though "automatically update search engines" is disabled.

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 1552559

(Firefox :: Search, defect)

Description

[ValleyKnight]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/60.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. I disabled "automatically update search engines".

2. I removed all search engines, then added one of my own. (A local SearX instance).

3. Updated Firefox Nightly.

4. Checked search engine preferences after restarting.

Actual results:

All of the search engines were added back.

Expected results:

None of them should've been added back.

Comment 1

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

Application update updates the application files in the installation directory and isn't involved in the Search engine updates. Changing component accordingly.

Note: if you are manually removing files in the installation directory to accomplish this then that isn't supported. Hopefully one of the devs that works on Search can help you with accomplishing what you want if that is the case.

Comment 2

[ValleyKnight]

if you are manually removing files in the installation directory to accomplish this

Nope, I just removed them through the search engine preferences.

Hopefully one of the devs that works on Search can help you with accomplishing what you want if that is the case.

I hope so. One of the mods on /r/firefox said "submit an enhancement request to somehow take that preference into consideration" and linked me to Bugzilla. They said that because of this reasoning. "That sounds like the nightly updates are putting them back -- which I think is expected, since the engines come with the update package. The preference controls updates to an installed Firefox, it doesn't control a preference for what is essentially an external updater."

Here is a link to the actual submission I made to /r/firefox if anyone is curious about it.

Comment 3

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

The search engines that come with Firefox / Nightly / etc. are located in the installation directory and the settings for which search engines are hidden / added / etc. is stored in the profile which app update doesn't touch and it sounds like these settings aren't retained for some reason.

Comment 4

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

It's known issue. First bug about it is here bug #1544273 and now follow-up is tracked in bug #1552559.