1778562 - Firefox doesn't seem to restart when Windows restarts

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Widget: Win32, defect, P2)

Description

[Robin Steuber (she/her) [:bytesized]]

I remember that, I believe since Bug 603903, Firefox would restart when it was open and Windows was restarted, conditional on toolkit.winRegisterApplicationRestart being set. It doesn't seem like that has been working lately.

I've got a few priorities ahead of this, but I'm hoping to investigate soon what is happened to break this functionality.

Comment 1

[Adam Gashlin (he/him) [:agashlin] (ex-moco)]

It still seems to work for me on Windows 10 21H2 19044.1766. But I have a nondefault Windows configuration.

I thought I had written this up in another bug but I can't find it, here's the background:

This feature was originally intended to restart and restore a session across an unattended restart (usually for a Windows update). At about the same time, Windows 10 got a feature where it would always use the restart manager to save and restart apps, even across a normal shutdown/restart. This was linked to the setting to restart such apps prior to login, which caused some issues. This was enabled by default, I think in 1709 (Fall Creators Update), you can see when people started noticing it in this thread. I wrote up some finer build-by-build details in bug 1464146 comment 1.

A few years later the "Automatically save my restartable apps when I sign out..." setting was split off, and it was also turned off by default. This was rolled out in insider build 18965, I think it was released with 20H1 (mentioned here).

So I think the feature is still working, but it now needs to be opted into in Windows 10 settings. It ought to still work by default for unattended restarts, which can be simulated with shutdown /g. No idea what the situation might be on Windows 11.

---

Side note, while I'm writing: This is supposed to be able to recover a session even if "Open previous windows and tabs" isn't set. When I tested it just now, it doesn't seem to work reliably, I find that more recently opened tabs don't get restored, or are restored empty. Relevant tests might have been disabled in bug 1751259.

Comment 2

[Robin Steuber (she/her) [:bytesized]]

(In reply to Adam Gashlin (he/him) [:agashlin] (ex-moco) from comment #1)

A few years later the "Automatically save my restartable apps when I sign out..." setting was split off, and it was also turned off by default.

Hmm, it seems likely that the feature is probably working as expected then. I'm going to leave the bug open and try to find some time to just take another look over the situation to make sure. But it's quite possible that there is nothing to do here.

Comment 3

[Romain Testard [:RT]]

FWIW I just tested this on Win11

• Update is available
• Get prompted to restart when Firefox is opened, accept and be warned Firefox will be closed
• OS restarts, Firefox does not

Comment 4

[Robin Steuber (she/her) [:bytesized]]

(In reply to Romain Testard [:RT] from comment #3)

FWIW I just tested this on Win11

• Update is available
• Get prompted to restart when Firefox is opened, accept and be warned Firefox will be closed
• OS restarts, Firefox does not

I just tested this on Windows 11 as described in Comment 1 with shutdown /g and Firefox was started with the operating system, as expected. It's not enough for an update available. It has to be an "unattended restart". If you manually restart the computer, it's not an unattended restart, it's just a restart.