1806600 - Firefox will only start to restore tabs when launching if it has Application Focus

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

Description

[bob9221936]

Attachment: user.js

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:108.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/108.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. Ensure that Firefox is configured to load all tabs that you have open right now
   and that you have these preferences set in user.js (see attachments):
   user_pref("browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand", false);
   user_pref("browser.startup.page", 3);

2. Close Firefox

3. Ensure that Firefox as well as a quick loading application like a text editor both are present as shortcuts on your Win7 task bar. (This may not be limited to Win7 or even Windows)

4. Reboot PC so that no caching is present

5. Very quickly, click Firefox taskbar shortcut to initiate loading, but before anything happens very quickly launch the text editor via neighbouring taskbar shortcut

Actual results:

Observe that the text editor shows up first and the taskbar shows that Firefox is loaded slightly later
Observe that while the text editor is open, minimal HDD activity is present, indicating that Firefox is not doing a lot
Now after 30 seconds or so (i.e. when you think that Firefox should now be loading your tabs, and/or complete), switch to Firefox which has been running in the background
Observe that there is a single tab "New Tab" present for a small moment, followed by all of your tabs popping into existence at that time.
These will now load (but they should have initiated loading already during Firefox launch).

Expected results:

In my older Firefox version, what normally happens and what I expect to continue to happen is that (after PC boot up in the morning) I can launch Firefox, Excel and anything else I like, and all will start fine, but Firefox even though it doesn't get a moment of gui focus, it still will load all of my tabs until complete.

Then when I am done with Excel, I can switch to Firefox and all of my tabs are already loaded with respective content and I can switch to any of these with no waiting for webpages to load as all is loaded for all tabs.

Comment 1

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

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::DOM: Core & HTML' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

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

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

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 3

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

I've attempted reproduction on several tries in both Win7 and Win10 while completing all the mentioned requirements and more (opening more applications before focusing on Firefox Release again). The issue could not be reproduced with these steps so the cause must be related to something that isn't mentioned here (like your specific user profile, the addons that you use, your system's hardware specification...). I imagine this could also be some system setting that limits the usage of system resources for optimization.

Answering some specific questions might help us determine the cause:

1. How often does this happen to you? Every time you open the system and use the steps described above?
2. Is it your daily use user profile?
3. Do you have add-ons installed on your profile that might influence browser start-up and/or restore options?
4. Please attempt to reproduce your issue in Safe Mode and tell us the results. (info here; method 2 should work to open Firefox in safe mode directly)
5. Please provide us with the support information. Load "about: support" in your browser, click the "Copy text to clipboard" button and paste it in the comment section to attach it to your bug.
6. Does this also happen in the case of other browsers?

Thank you for your contribution!

Comment 4

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

Redirect a needinfo that is pending on an inactive user to the triage owner.
:dao, since the bug doesn't have a severity set, could you please set the severity or close the bug?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 5

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

If you can still reproduce this and can provide some answers to the questions in comment #3, please re-open this bug.