1657669 - Firefox's recommendation to reset settings after 60 days of not using - bad idea

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: General, enhancement)

Description

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686 on x86_64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/68.0

Steps to reproduce:

Hello,

thank you for all contributions and building a wonderful browser. I'd like to report a feature that is very bad.

Problem creation and regression: bug 498181

"It looks like you haven't started Firefox in a while. Do you want to clean it up for a fresh, like-new experience? And by the way, welcome back!"

This feature is very nasty: people are tricked to reset their Firefox by a push of a button. It can be a lot of work to get the settings and add-ons like they were.

• Why would anyone think it's a good idea to suggest resetting settings of any program after 60 days, or any period, of inactive time, if there is no problem?
• Does Firefox not trust it's own customized settings? Are the default settings supposed to be better?
• Does Firefox suggest there is something wrong with the settings, if the browser has not been used for 60 days?
• What's the idea of "new fresh" experience? The experience already is good as it has been setup to user's likings with personal settings.
• Why the time is just 60 days. Better would be 10 years to actually justify something.
• Welcome back? User never abandoned Firefox, just didn't use the browser or computer for a long time. No need to punish user for using Firefox again.
• It's not a rewarding feeling to get punished with the reset. "Wow, where are my settings and add-ons...? Damn, better change to another more reliable browser since I would need to start from the beginning anyway."
• The pop-up is scary to non-techical people. Often they just push the button to make it disappear.
• User might not understand the language or the message, and just presses the button, since it's there.

FIX:
Type about:config on the address field and create a new Boolean pref with the name browser.disableResetPrompt and set its value to true to disable this notification:
browser.disableResetPrompt = true

Firefox would be a better browser, if it didn't need to be fixed like this individually for every user! Please remove the reset prompt.

Regards,

--

  Harri

Comment 1

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

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

Comment 2

[Clara Guerrero ( Need Info Brindusa Tot Please)]

Hi Harri,

Thanks for suggesting this as an enhancement.
I will move this over to a component so developers can take a look over it.

Related also bug 1187954

Best regards, Clara.