1769095 - Constant popup requesting primary password

Status: REOPENED

(Toolkit :: Password Manager, defect, P2)

Description

[tmolle]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:100.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/100.0

Steps to reproduce:

I tried removing "Use Primary Password" in Settings, and then clicked it again and entered my password. The problem is still there. Every time I open Firefox, it asks me for a password, when I just want to search a normal site. Please fix this constant annoyance.
Verson 100.0 (64-bit)

Comment 1

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

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Toolkit::Password Manager' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Dimi Lee [:dimi]]

Hi tmolle,
Just to confirm, do you mean that you have already turned off the "Use a Primary Password" setting but the ask for primary password popup still constantly appear? Could you help take a screenshot of the primary password dialog and attach it to the bug? Thank you!

Comment 3

[tmolle]

Attachment: Screenshot (2).png

Comment 4

[tmolle]

Hi, what I did was turn off the "Use Primary Password" setting, close FF, then open FF and turned it on again. I found this tip somewhere in your online help. Anyway, the popup keeps appearing every time I launch Firefox. If I enter my primary password, and keep one window open, the popup stops appearing. If I just close the popup without entering the primary password, the popup will keep appearing. Is this normal in the latest update? It's annoying if I'm just looking stuff up, and not doing anything requiring one of my saved passwords in the password manager.

Comment 5

[Sam Foster [:sfoster] (he/him)]

(In reply to tmolle from comment #4)

Hi, what I did was turn off the "Use Primary Password" setting, close FF, then open FF and turned it on again. I found this tip somewhere in your online help. Anyway, the popup keeps appearing every time I launch Firefox. If I enter my primary password, and keep one window open, the popup stops appearing. If I just close the popup without entering the primary password, the popup will keep appearing. Is this normal in the latest update? It's annoying if I'm just looking stuff up, and not doing anything requiring one of my saved passwords in the password manager.

This is probably happening because Sync needs to read/write your saved logins, and if you have Primary Password enabled, it will prompt you for it when Sync happens in the background. So this is expected behavior. However, it has not changed recently. Did you just enable Sync or add another device?

Comment 6

[tmolle]

No, I did not knowingly enable sync or add another device.

Comment 7

[tmolle]

Do I need to click Sync in Settings?

Comment 8

[Sam Foster [:sfoster] (he/him)]

(In reply to tmolle from comment #7)

Do I need to click Sync in Settings?

Yes, that will show you if Sync is enabled or not, and if so if you are configured to sync Logins & Passwords.

Comment 9

[tmolle]

Hi again, I clicked on Sync, and it is enabled. I am still getting the popup every time I open FF.

Comment 10

[Dimi Lee [:dimi]]

(In reply to tmolle from comment #9)

Hi again, I clicked on Sync, and it is enabled. I am still getting the popup every time I open FF.

Hi tmolle, if you disable Sync, does this issue still happen?

Comment 11

[tmolle]

"Sync" is permanently on - there is nowhere to disable it that I can see, BUT I clicked on changes and unticked everything, and it's still doing it.

Comment 12

[tmolle]

Update - I saw where to "disconnect" sync, and did that. The problem stopped. Does that mean I can't have sync on at all? Sounds like a poor trade off.

Comment 13

[Tim Giles [:tgiles]]

tmolle, thanks for the report and the additional information! So this is expected behavior since Sync needs access to your primary password in order to interact with your saved data (logins in this case) so unfortunately the primary password prompt will appear. We will tackle this issue of the primary password prompt title being vague in Bug 1713862.

Comment 14

[Dimi Lee [:dimi]]

The behavior is changed a bit after Bug 1559349 was landed. Now we run sync startup after browser idle, which triggers the primary password prompt. So now users see the prompt every time after the startup. I'm not sure what the timing is before FF100. :markh, could you share with us what the main difference is after Bug 1559349 was landed, is triggering SYNC shortly after startup every time a new behavior? Thanks!

Reopen this issue because for users, they might feel this is a new behavior. I want to make sure we are all on the same page whether to fix this issue or not.

Comment 15

[jlfliberty]

User reported [Bug 1768856] Firefox prompts two master password dialogs during startup.

Although it is not a critical problem, I would suggest correcting the error. It can be frustrating when you're in a hurry and begin typing without looking until you see that you've been impeded.

For new users, it's also not a good thing when demonstrating to others to use Firefox as their default browser when they see an error upon initial loading of the browser.

For existing users it's not a good thing to see this happening as soon as suggesting they use the password retention feature.

Jim

Comment 16

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

is triggering SYNC shortly after startup every time a new behavior?

Previously we would sync about 10 seconds after the browser started. As you mention, now we do perform that first sync earlier.

Comment 17

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

Note also that bug 1433679 is probably the "correct" way to solve this - there's nothing we can do about needing the master-password to sync, but we can make it less annoying.