1948934 - New Sidebar should not show when in kiosk mode

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Sidebar, defect, P2)

Description

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Kiosk mode should not show the new sidebar.

This can be checked with

if (lazy.BrowserHandler.kiosk) {

Comment 1

[Stuart Colville [:muffinresearch]]

Hi Mike do you know if there's anything that would stop kiosk mode users getting experiments by default?

If experiments won't be enabled in this mode this is probably lower priority since it would need the new sidebar to be explicitly enabled. But if they would be exposed to experiments this is probably higher priority to fix sooner.

FWIW This is similar except it's messaging rather than experiments: See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1597622 via https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/9a6de74c050b5fe7079b1302b9eed5c29453867a/browser/components/asrouter/modules/ASRouter.sys.mjs#1890

Comment 2

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

It's up to them to turn off experiments via policy. We don't explicitly exclude them.

Comment 3

[Hans K]

Hello! Just FYI, this bug is definitely appearing in the wild. I've got a couple of digital signage kiosks which run Firefox on Fedora, and when I upgraded them to Fedora 42, I got the sidebar update. Here are a couple of things that I encountered:

1. The sidebar appears in kiosk mode, but at least on my systems some actions are blocked - namely, the right click menu (where you go to hide the sidebar) doesn't work well. It appears when you right click, but then vanishes as soon as you move the mouse. I had to also attach a keyboard (usually these are completely free of input devices, mounted up on a wall) and use arrow keys to navigate the menu to hide the sidebar.
2. Once I got through the input device gymnastics to hide the sidebar, that action didn't persist- when the browser was closed and reopened, the sidebar came back. In non-kiosk mode, it appears to me that the sidebar state is saved when the browser reopens. Not great for a system which is far from the nearest keyboard and mouse.
3. It's not possible to change the sidebar.revamp preference through policies.json - about:policies shows an error stating that the "setting is blocked for stability reasons" or something like that.
4. Changing sidebar.revamp to False in standard Firefox, then restarting the kiosk didn't work - I had to go into my digital signage ansible playbook and override the webpage to open about:config in kiosk mode, set sidebar.revamp to false, then change the playbook back and re-run it in order to turn the new sidebar off.

All told, it took me quite a long time to get this sorted out, and it was pretty frustrating. If I run into something like this again, I'll probably have to revert to Firefox ESR for these kiosks.

Comment 5

[support]

if you disable the sidebar in the normal prefs , it stays closed.

Comment 6

[Sarah Clements [:sclements]]

(In reply to Hans K from comment #3)

Hello! Just FYI, this bug is definitely appearing in the wild. I've got a couple of digital signage kiosks which run Firefox on Fedora, and when I upgraded them to Fedora 42, I got the sidebar update. Here are a couple of things that I encountered:

1. The sidebar appears in kiosk mode, but at least on my systems some actions are blocked - namely, the right click menu (where you go to hide the sidebar) doesn't work well. It appears when you right click, but then vanishes as soon as you move the mouse. I had to also attach a keyboard (usually these are completely free of input devices, mounted up on a wall) and use arrow keys to navigate the menu to hide the sidebar.
2. Once I got through the input device gymnastics to hide the sidebar, that action didn't persist- when the browser was closed and reopened, the sidebar came back. In non-kiosk mode, it appears to me that the sidebar state is saved when the browser reopens. Not great for a system which is far from the nearest keyboard and mouse.
3. It's not possible to change the sidebar.revamp preference through policies.json - about:policies shows an error stating that the "setting is blocked for stability reasons" or something like that.
4. Changing sidebar.revamp to False in standard Firefox, then restarting the kiosk didn't work - I had to go into my digital signage ansible playbook and override the webpage to open about:config in kiosk mode, set sidebar.revamp to false, then change the playbook back and re-run it in order to turn the new sidebar off.

All told, it took me quite a long time to get this sorted out, and it was pretty frustrating. If I run into something like this again, I'll probably have to revert to Firefox ESR for these kiosks.

Thanks for flagging this. We are planning to roll out sidebar.revamp by default in the next few releases so we'll plan to get this addressed before then. Btw The sidebar.revamp pref is purely a feature flag and won't be staying around for long after we enable it for all users.

Comment 7

[support]

Thanks for flagging this. We are planning to roll out sidebar.revamp by default in the next few releases so we'll plan to get this addressed before then. Btw The sidebar.revamp pref is purely a feature flag and won't be staying around for long after we enable it for all users.

You can't enable this in default if kiosk is enforced, it's a security risk:

the sidebar opened allowing ANYONE to enter firefox prefs.

Example Start: /usr/bin/firefox -P netflix --kiosk --new-instance

I think, best option is, that --kiosk disables sidebar, no matter if enabled in the profile.

Comment 8

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Attachment: Bug 1948934 - Don't show new sidebar in kiosk mode. r?sclements

Comment 9

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/commit/476f69688e13
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/46e1a782e8f6
Don't show new sidebar in kiosk mode. r=sidebar-reviewers,kcochrane

Comment 10

[pstanciu]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/46e1a782e8f6

Comment 11

[Timea Zsoldos [:tzsoldos], Desktop QA]

I have reproduced this issue using Firefox 141.0a1 (2025.06.01) on Windows 11 and Ubuntu 22.
I can confirm this issue is fixed, I verified using Firefox 142.0a1 and 141.0b4 on Windows 11, Ubuntu 22 and on macOS 10.15 the new sidebar not shows in kiosk mode.

Comment 13

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Attachment: Bug 1948934 - Don't show new sidebar in kiosk mode. r?sclements

Original Revision: https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D254001

Comment 14

[Phabricator Automation]

firefox-esr140 Uplift Approval Request

• User impact if declined: Unable to block sidebar in kiosk mode
• Code covered by automated testing: no
• Fix verified in Nightly: yes
• Needs manual QE test: no
• Steps to reproduce for manual QE testing: N/A
• Risk associated with taking this patch: Very low
• Explanation of risk level: Just adds a kiosk check for sidebar
• String changes made/needed: None
• Is Android affected?: no

Comment 15

[Pulsebot]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-esr140/rev/68c1327813a5

Comment 16

[Timea Zsoldos [:tzsoldos], Desktop QA]

I can confirm this issue is fixed, I verified using Firefox 140.1.0esr on Windows 11, Ubuntu 22 and on macOS 10.15 the new sidebar not shows in kiosk mode.