Closed Bug 1965720 Opened 3 months ago Closed 2 months ago

Unable to disable private tab locking in Firefox nightly

Categories

(Firefox for Android :: Tabs, defect)

Product:
Firefox for Android
Component:
Tabs
Version:
Firefox 140
Platform:
All
Android
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: sparklydarker, Unassigned)

References

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Android 15; Mobile; rv:140.0) Gecko/140.0 Firefox/140.0

Steps to reproduce:

In a prior version of Firefox nightly, (see bug 1964240), I unfortunately enabled private tab locking. A subsequent update to Firefox nightly resolved the problem, but now as of 140.0a1 (Build #2016090079), it has resurfaced.

Actual results:

In the early version, I failed to continuously say "no thanks" to the onboarding for private tab locking via password/biometrics, and then was unable to turn it off anywhere in the settings or flags.

Expected results:

The next update from Google play distribution fixed the problem and stopped requiring authentication to look at look at private tabs. But the most recent update has resurfaced the issue, which can not be turned off.

My phone is rooted. Is there a file I can edit in /data/data/org.mozilla.firefox to manually disable this? It makes the browser essentially unusable for my workflow.

Just to add, I realize that nightly is expected to break things. A couple times a year a new update comes out that crashes repeatedly, and I'm always happy to submit those crash logs upstream to help with bleeding-edge development in real world usage.

That has always been fixed after a day or two at most. And I've come to rely on using nightly as a daily driver for browsing.

I realize I'm somewhat of an edge case here, but it would be nice if the forced password unlocking could at least be disabled until there's a way to actually turn it off somewhere in settings or flags.

You can disable the lock by going to Settings - Private browsing and disable the "Use screen lock to hide tabs in private browsing" option.

Duplicate of this bug: 1965967

(In reply to Mira Lobontiu (Android QA) from comment #3)

You can disable the lock by going to Settings - Private browsing and disable the "Use screen lock to hide tabs in private browsing" option.

i've updated to latest nightly but there were no such options, only "add shortcut to private browsing", "open links in private browsing", "allow screenshots in private browsing".

140.0a1 (Build #2016091719), null
GV: 140.0a1-20250518220019
AS: 140.20250516050428
OS: Android 12

2025-05-18T22:00:19

question: how do i upload images? drag-and-drop doesn't work.

Can confirm that the referenced option does not exist in the latest version of Firefox Nightly in the Play store (same build number and such as the commenter above except I'm on Android 15). Links to screenshots:-

Private browsing options: https://photos.app.goo.gl/UYm1QJeqHzXWsGdt6

Build info: https://photos.app.goo.gl/5QwC5stNBPRfGaW58

There feature should become available in Nightly soon, we updated the feature flag for it yesterday, so it should reach the playstore the next build cycle.

Another option to solve the issue would be clear the cache.

I can confirm the option labelled "Use screen lock to hide tabs in private browsing" does appear under Settings > Private Browsing in the latest version of Firefox Nightly in Play store with build info:

140.0a1 (Build #2016092007), null
GV: 140.0a1-20250520091341
AS: 140.20250516050428
OS: Android 15

However, the option requires a force quit and cache clear to take effect.

Steps to reproduce

  1. Update Firefox Nightly to the build listed above
  2. Check that the setting Settings > Private Browsing > Use screen lock to hide tabs in private browsing is set to ON
  3. Toggle the above setting to OFF
  4. Open a new private tab to google.com
  5. Press the Home Screen button to return to the home screen
  6. Open Firefox

Expected behaviour

Firefox opens to the private tab showing the Google home page

Actual behaviour

The user is prompted to enter their screen lock PIN, even though the setting to require that is off. Force quitting Firefox, clearing the cache, and repeating steps 4-6 gives the expected behaviour.

Additional info

Settings should take effect immediately or, if this is not possible, the user should be warned that the setting change will only take effect after restarting the browser. Further, after toggling the above setting, the user is still prompted (via a status message on the private tab list rather than a modal dialogue, but still) to enable the setting. Users should not be prompted to enable settings that they have deliberately and consciously chosen to disable.

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

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Flags: needinfo?(nbond)
Severity: -- → S2
Flags: needinfo?(nbond)

Hey Mike, can you take a look at this again? Thanks

Flags: needinfo?(mavduevskiy)

hey, Cathy! we have the feature enabled in nightly and beta, so there should be no problem with accessing the setting and disabling it

Flags: needinfo?(mavduevskiy)

Thanks Mike, closing this bug as fixed. If any users continue to have issues, feel free to comment and re-open the bug. Thanks

Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 2 months ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
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