1624205 - Prompt for master password at browser start

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Toolkit :: Password Manager, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Thomas Oskk]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0 SeaMonkey/2.49.3

Steps to reproduce:

Open Firefox
surf on sites that require authentication
wait up to minutes for master password entry mask

Actual results:

it may take two minutes before the entry mask pops up

Expected results:

the entry mask for the master password should appear right away after the browser is started (compare Seamonkey behaviour)

Comment 1

[Andrei Purice]

Hello Thomas,

I've tested this issue on the latest Nightly 76.0a1 (2020-03-26), the beta 75.0b9 and release 74.0 and the prompt is instant.

Can you please retest this while in Safe Mode. You can find helpful info here : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode .
Also a fresh new profile could help. You can find more about creating a new profile here : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-and-diagnose-firefox-problems#w_6-create-a-new-firefox-profile .

Comment 2

[Thomas Oskk]

Hi Andrei,
sorry, took a while.
So, I've tried what you suggested, and the pop-up is a bit quicker, but surely not instant.
I can't reproduce how long it would take to appear, sometimes two or three seconds, sometimes a minute or more, on same and different systems. I only can force it to appear when I directly click into a login mask.
To check, when you have FF Sync, try opening the browser and open the sync tab in side bar where you're email is shown. I'd expect to have the pop-up instantly, but it might take a few or more seconds to appear, or until you click on your email address. On other sites in the internet it might even take longer - as long as you don't click directly into the mask.
This is known to me for quite a while, I just waited to see if one of the updates would fix it. It started already some years back, still in Win7-time, where I had it on 32- and 63-bit systems, and it's still there in upgraded and freshly installed Win10 32/64 systems, on older and not just that old computers. And I can even see it on a laptop running latest Ubuntu. Some of the browsers are synchronised (via FF sync), others aren't. Most browsers share all or at least a few add-ons and plug-ins, but one has none besides those that come with FF anyway (it's not synced).
So I don't consider it to be an issue with add-ons or profile, and I know I had instant pop-ups a while (several years) back.
For comparison, if you know Seamonkey, there you will have the expected behaviour: Before it will even show a browser (or mail) window, you'll have the master PW entry mask popping up.
Hope I could help to clarify.

Comment 3

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Bugbug thinks this bug should belong to this component, but please revert this change in case of error.

Comment 4

[vogu66]

When sync is enabled it requires the master password when the session starts, but there is enough time to start browsing the net before the prompt actually appears, and it is quite disruptive when it does. At least in that case, I believe it would be nice to have the prompt appear at browser start, and not wait for firefox to try connecting to the firefox account.

As far as I can tell, the prompt is pretty much instant when on a website requiring a password, if the password wasn't input beforehand (but I don't use it that often, so don't take my word for it)

Using: Firefox developer edition, 87.0b9, Linux

Comment 5

[jason.antonacci]

Attachment: about:support

(In reply to vogu66 from comment #4)
> When sync is enabled it requires the master password when the session starts, but there is enough time to start browsing the net before the prompt actually appears, and it is quite disruptive when it does. At least in that case, I believe it would be nice to have the prompt appear at browser start, and not wait for firefox to try connecting to the firefox account.

+1 Very annoying/disruptive to be typing into the address bar, then suddenly in the Primary Password dialogue box.  Especially so if you hit enter and submit.

Comment 6

[jason.antonacci]

Comment on attachment 9221385 [details]
about:support

>{
>  "application": {
>    "name": "Firefox",
>    "osVersion": "Windows_NT 10.0 19042",
>    "version": "88.0.1",
>    "buildID": "20210504152106",
>    "distributionID": "",
>    "userAgent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:88.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/88.0",
>    "safeMode": false,
>    "updateChannel": "release",
>    "supportURL": "https://support.mozilla.org/1/firefox/88.0.1/WINNT/en-US/",
>    "numTotalWindows": 1,
>    "numFissionWindows": 0,
>    "numRemoteWindows": 1,
>    "launcherProcessState": 0,
>    "fissionAutoStart": false,
>    "fissionDecisionStatus": "disabledByDefault",
>    "remoteAutoStart": true,
>    "policiesStatus": 0,
>    "keyLocationServiceGoogleFound": true,
>    "keySafebrowsingGoogleFound": true,
>    "keyMozillaFound": true
>  }
>}

Comment 7

[jason.antonacci]

(In reply to vogu66 from comment #4)

When sync is enabled it requires the master password when the session starts, but there is enough time to start browsing the net before the prompt actually appears, and it is quite disruptive when it does. At least in that case, I believe it would be nice to have the prompt appear at browser start, and not wait for firefox to try connecting to the firefox account.

+1 Very annoying/disruptive to be typing into the address bar, then suddenly in the Primary Password dialogue box. Especially so if you hit enter and submit.

Comment 8

[Myrddin]

I wish that Firefox would immediately ask for the Primary Password upon starting. I've gotten so used to this with Seamonkey and now I just usually sit and wait to do anything until it decides to ask me for the Primary Password.

Is there any setting in the config that could get it to just ask first thing upon opening Firefox?
Sometimes it asks in less than a minute and other times seems to take forever.. I'd be so happy if it would just either ask before even opening the browser window or just after loading the homepage. Anything other than waiting for it to ask at some point.

Thanks much.

-Myrddin R Emrys
.end.trans.

Comment 9

[Thomas Oskk]

with Release 100.0 this seems to be fixed now, at least I see an instant prompt after starting FF.

Comment 10

[Sergey Galich [:serg]]

:Thomas Oskk thanks for confirming that it works as expected. I'm going to close this bug for now.

We will use Bug 1361838 to add option to always ask for Primary Password at startup.