1748576 - Forcing privacy.userContext.enabled to false doesn't persist on restart when webextension has contextualidentites permission

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1595865

(WebExtensions :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[Kenneth]

Steps to reproduce:

1. Add a web extension that has contextualidentites permission / uses container tabs.
2. Go into about:config and toggle/set privacy.userContext.enabled to false (its default value).
3. Restart browser

Actual results:

privacy.userContext.enabled is re-enabled (marked true) on browser restart.

Expected results:

privacy.userContext.enabled stays disabled / false after browser restart, thus forcing containers to not be enabled even if a web extension has that permission.

Comment 1

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

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'WebExtensions::Untriaged' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Alex Cornestean]

Hello,

I reproduced the issue on the latest Nightly (97.0a1/20220106214936), Beta (96.0/20220106144528) and Release (95.0.2/20211218203254) under Windows 10 x64 and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

Using a container add-on (example, Firefox Multi-Account Containers),
the privacy.userContext.enabled pref will revert to true after a browser restart even if it was set to false beforehand.

Comment 3

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

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:mixedpuppy, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 4

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

Changing preferences via about:config is "at your own risk". In this case it is not surprising that an extension controlled preference is fixed on the next startup. We do have a low priority bug to add UI to about config.

Comment 5

[Kenneth]

Not sure if this specific preference is extension controlled as it would fall under a check on the browser side the determines this?

There's no optional permission for contextual identities, so web extensions that can utilize the API for containers (but not required / extension has its own setting to not use containers) is forcing the contextual identity/container checkbox in Firefox to be active, which is then communicated to the user that containers are active but they aren't using containers in the first place and cannot disable that.