1794668 - Checkbox "Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed" Automatically reengages the next time Firefox is reopened

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Toolkit :: Data Sanitization, defect)

Description

[joerg]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:105.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/105.0

Steps to reproduce:

After unchecking the checkbox "Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed", closing and reopening Firefox, the checkbox is reengaged without user input.

The dropdown for History shows similar behavior. It is set to "Use custom settings for history" after selecting "Remember history", closing firefox and reopening firefox the dropdown is again set to "Use custom settings for history" without user input.

Actual results:

Checkbox is reengaged even though it should be set to not engaged, at the next closing, Firefox deletes all cookies.

Expected results:

Checkbox and Dropdown should have stayed at the applied settings.

Comment 1

[joerg]

Attachment: about:support output

No user.js is active per my knowledge. Some addons are installed but I don't think they should impact this.

Output from about:support:

Comment 2

[joerg]

Attachment: Screenrecording of behaviour

I have created a short screen recording showing the issue. Other settings changes are saved as expected.

Comment 3

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

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

Comment 4

[Emma Zühlcke [:emz]]

Thanks for providing more info, this is very helpful!
Hannah, do you have time to investigate?

Comment 5

[Hannah Peuckmann]

I am still not really able to reproduce this, only with a user.js that sets the according prefs. The about:support data holds the entry :
"userJS": { "exists": true },
On about:support under Application Basics there is the entry Profile Folder.
@joerg could you please search that profile folder for a user.js? Might be worth a try.

Comment 6

[joerg]

Attachment: user.js

I have searched the folder and found a user.js - I have attched the file. This may of course explain it but then the question would be how that file came to be there. I am sure I never actively created this file. It must have been done by something at some point...

Would the solution then simply be to delete that file?

Comment 7

[Hannah Peuckmann]

Thank you. Deleting the following lines should solve your problem:

user_pref("privacy.clearOnShutdown.cache",true); user_pref("privacy.clearOnShutdown.cookies",true); user_pref("privacy.clearOnShutdown.downloads",true); user_pref("privacy.clearOnShutdown.formdata",true); user_pref("privacy.clearOnShutdown.history",true); user_pref("privacy.clearOnShutdown.offlineApps",true); user_pref("privacy.clearOnShutdown.sessions",true); user_pref("privacy.clearOnShutdown.siteSettings",true); user_pref("privacy.sanitize.sanitizeOnShutdown",true);
You can also just delete the file, but I would recommend saving a backup of this file, in case you are missing some settings you are used to due to the user.js.
Please let me know if deleting the above lines(or file) solved the issue!

On how and why this file has been created, maybe Paul has an idea?

Comment 8

[Emma Zühlcke [:emz]]

The user.js attached here looks quite weird, it also has some seemingly invalid entries. I suggest that you delete the entire file from your profile. Generally I don't recommend using a user.js unless you know exactly what you're doing with it.
Firefox doesn't add this file itself so it must have been some external tool.

Comment 9

[joerg]

This solved the problem. The settings stay persistent now. No idea where that file came from. Thank you for the help!