1911246 - [Flatpak] Firefox keeps asking to set it as the default browser, even after doing so

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: Widget: Gtk, defect, P3)

Description

[Vincent]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:128.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/128.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. Start Firefox
2. Firefox asks to be set as the default browser - confirm that, yes, I want it as the default browser.
3. Close Firefox
4. Start Firefox again

Actual results:

Firefox again asked to be set as the default browser.

Expected results:

Firefox should have just started without asking me anything.

Comment 1

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

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

Comment 2

[Jan Horak [:jhorak]]

Which flatpak do you use? Please run
flatpak info org.mozilla.firefox
If it is from flathub it should not ask to be default browser.
Because the upstrem flatpak should have checking for updates disabled
browser.shell.checkDefaultBrowser=false [1]
To check content of distribution.ini use:

flatpak run --command=/bin/sh org.mozilla.firefox
cat /app/lib/firefox/distribution/distribution.ini

[1] https://github.com/mozilla-partners/flatpak/blob/master/desktop/flatpak/distribution/distribution.ini

Comment 3

[Vincent]

Here's the output of those commands:

`$ flatpak info org.mozilla.firefox

Firefox - Fast, Private & Safe Web Browser

      ID: org.mozilla.firefox
     Ref: app/org.mozilla.firefox/x86_64/stable
    Arch: x86_64
  Branch: stable
 Version: 130.0.1
 License: MPL-2.0
  Origin: flathub

Collection: org.flathub.Stable
Installation: system
Installed: 262.0 MB
Runtime: org.freedesktop.Platform/x86_64/23.08
Sdk: org.freedesktop.Sdk/x86_64/23.08

  Commit: e98b9a0b89a1abe9f406625745554e52845aba655d6d460162c0b5c20a8309c1
  Parent: f1bd94a61603e134e9170ee41a388a606e787bbb15b695762a4d19bd8998759c
 Subject: Export org.mozilla.firefox
    Date: 2024-09-17 12:38:12 +0000

`

So instead that's from Flathub.

Looking at browser.shell.checkDefaultBrowser in about:config, I see that it is set to true, and also that it is bold (i.e. not the default value), but I'm not sure why. Possibly due to a migration from the default-installed RPM?

The distribution.ini indeed appears to disable it:

`
$ cat /app/lib/firefox/distribution/distribution.ini
[Global]
id=mozilla-flatpak
version=1.0
about=Mozilla Firefox Flatpak

[Preferences]
browser.shell.checkDefaultBrowser=false
intl.locale.requested=""
spellchecker.dictionary_path="/usr/share/hunspell"
`

Comment 4

[Romain Testard [:RT]]

We also observe that 0% of mozilla-flatpak have it set to default in telemetry, which is practically impossible and seems to indicate that for some reason the browser cannot know that it is set to default ?https://sql.telemetry.mozilla.org/queries/102684/source#253046

Comment 5

[Bill Wayson]

This behavior recently started happening to me, and my Firefox is installed through RPMs. I dual-boot between openSUSE Leap 15.6 and Tumbleweed. Both distributions currently have Firefox 132.0.1 installed from their respective openSUSE OBS Mozilla repositories. I believe the behavior started with FF 132.0. The Plasma "Default Applications" widgets of both openSUSE distributions show FF as the default web browser, and FF acts like the default (e.g. it opens when I click a known-safe URL in an email). But even after selecting the 'set FF as default browser' button, FF says it is not the default browser under Settings -> General.

Comment 6

[Bill Wayson]

This behavior is no longer happening to me. I do not know what change stopped it, but new Firefox RPM packages were installed on November 11. The versions of Firefox are still 132.0.1.