Closed Bug 1991809 Opened 10 months ago Closed 7 months ago

"Open links in tabs instead of new windows" setting no longer works on Firefox 144

Categories

(Core :: Widget: Win32, defect)

Product:
Core
Component:
Widget: Win32
Version:
Firefox 144
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1994825

People

(Reporter: matthew.wojick, Unassigned)

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:144.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/144.0

Steps to reproduce:

"Open links in tabs instead of new windows" setting no longer works for external links on Firefox 144 (Dev Edition), tested on Windows 11 on Firefox 144.0b7 (64-bit). Also tested Nightly (145.0a1) and it's broken there too.

For example, opening a site from powershell by running this: start https://www.example.com

Actual results:

Will always open in a new window regardless of the setting.

Expected results:

Should open in a new tab in the existing window when that setting is enabled.

Component: Untriaged → Tabbed Browser

Hello, thank you for the bug report!

Unfortunately I could not reproduce your issue. I used both Powershell and Command Prompt to open links in Firefox Nightly 145.0a1 and Firefox 144.0b8(Dev Edition and Beta) , but each time only one window was opened and the tabs were opened in the same window. Would you be so kind as to answer a few questions so we can investigate this further?

Thank you.

Flags: needinfo?(matthew.wojick)

  • Are there any other settings or configurations needed in order to reproduce this issue?
    No, just enabling Open links in tabs, and setting firefox dev or nightly to the default app in windows, nothing else.

  • Does this issue happen with a new profile?
    Yes, I did a clean install of nightly (145) with a new profile and still happens. Same on 144. 143 is still working at the moment however.

  • Does this issue happen when Firefox is in Troubleshoot Mode?
    Yes.

Flags: needinfo?(matthew.wojick)

Thanks for answering! Oana, does this illuminate anything for you? I tried to reproduce myself but regardless of whether "Open links in tabs instead of new windows" is ticked or not my links always open in the same window. Perhaps a clue?

Flags: needinfo?(oardelean)

I also started experiencing this on Windows 11.

So far I was able to figure out that when there is a Firefox window is on the desktop where the external app with the link is the link is opened the that window. If there's no window on that desktop new window is created.

If the desktop contains the Firefox Web App window (add tab to taskbar) new window created as well.

I actually just managed to figure out how to reproduce it in my case. I'm using a window manager (https://github.com/glzr-io/glazewm) and when setting hide_method: "cloak" (which is the default), and when Firefox and the terminal/app you use to open a link are in different workspaces, then it opens in a new window every time. So it's more niche of an issue than I thought but it was working in 143 so either way seems like there was a change in how it determines if there's a current running Firefox to attach onto and might be causing issues with other window managers as well.

I could not reproduce the issue after trying multiple times. I’ve also tried to reproduce with GlazeWM installed, but I did not succeed. I suspect I missed something when doing the setup.

Matt, could you please detail the steps necessary for your setup and the commands used in CMD/Powershell in order to reproduce? Do you use any other external app apart from GlazeWM?

Can you reproduce this in a clean environment?

Flags: needinfo?(oardelean) → needinfo?(matthew.wojick)

I was able to reproduce it in a clean install of Windows 11 (in a VM using VMware workstation pro), using Firefox 144, and also using another popular window manager as well (https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi). You just need to have the window manager running with default settings and to have Firefox and the terminal in different workspaces (e.g. use alt+shift+2 to move one of them to workspace 2 and alt+1 to go back to workspace 1). Komorebi is probably easiest to setup properly since you just need to run these commands (in powershell):

winget install LGUG2Z.komorebi
winget install LGUG2Z.whkd

then in a new tab:

komorebic quickstart
komorebic start --whkd --bar

then to test opening a link from an external app one way is to do this in powershell:
start https://www.example.com

It should open in a new window every time if firefox is in a different workspace. Let me know if that helps.

Flags: needinfo?(matthew.wojick)

Same with Windows 10 and FF 144, no custom window managers installed.

Seems to be a new "feature" to v144:

https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/144.0/releasenotes/

_Changed

On Windows, when opening a link from another application, Firefox will only use a window on the current virtual desktop or open a new window if needed._

A feature that obsoletes the virtual desktop feature which was introduced by MS to Windows 10 at last (after being available on Unices for about 40 years).

It should at least be possible to deactivate this "feature".

(In reply to ulrich.guenzel from comment #8)

Same with Windows 10 and FF 144, no custom window managers installed.

Seems to be a new "feature" to v144:

https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/144.0/releasenotes/

_Changed

On Windows, when opening a link from another application, Firefox will only use a window on the current virtual desktop or open a new window if needed._

A feature that obsoletes the virtual desktop feature which was introduced by MS to Windows 10 at last (after being available on Unices for about 40 years).

It should at least be possible to deactivate this "feature".

Wow nice catch. Also looks like there is already a way to disable it in about:config. I just searched for virtual and found this: widget.prefer_windows_on_current_virtual_desktop
Set it to false and it's back to how it was before. So I guess this can be closed now. But I have to say I don't understand why this was made the default behavior in 144. It's not intuitive and isn't the way other browsers like Chrome behave by default.

(In reply to Matt W from comment #9)

(In reply to ulrich.guenzel from comment #8)

Same with Windows 10 and FF 144, no custom window managers installed.

Seems to be a new "feature" to v144:

https://www.firefox.com/en-US/firefox/144.0/releasenotes/

_Changed

On Windows, when opening a link from another application, Firefox will only use a window on the current virtual desktop or open a new window if needed._

A feature that obsoletes the virtual desktop feature which was introduced by MS to Windows 10 at last (after being available on Unices for about 40 years).

It should at least be possible to deactivate this "feature".

Wow nice catch. Also looks like there is already a way to disable it in about:config. I just searched for virtual and found this: widget.prefer_windows_on_current_virtual_desktop
Set it to false and it's back to how it was before. So I guess this can be closed now. But I have to say I don't understand why this was made the default behavior in 144. It's not intuitive and isn't the way other browsers like Chrome behave by default.

Nice find!
Unfortunately, this config option doesn't exist in my version (FF 144.0.2 on Windows 10). If I add it to about:config, its plainly ignored. So I'm still waiting for a solution...

Ah my bad, I'm on 145.0b9 (dev edition). Guess they added it very recently.

Nevertheless, that's giving reason for hope. Looks like somebody else shares the opinion that this feature has it's downsides.
Thanks a lot.

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

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Flags: needinfo?(mak)

Bug 1994825 and Bug 1423768 are likely related, Widget is better suited at making a call on this.

Component: Tabbed Browser → Widget: Win32
Flags: needinfo?(mak)
Product: Firefox → Core

Yes, the discussion here is correct; this is intended behavior (per bug 1423768), and the pref to disable it was added in Firefox 145 (bug 1994825).

Severity: -- → S3
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 7 months ago
Duplicate of bug: 1994825
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
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