2024569 - The PDF opening application is not retained between Firefox sessions. handlers.json is reseted.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1983032

(Firefox :: File Handling, defect)

Description

[Tanguy.P]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:140.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/140.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. I opened Firefox ESR 140.5.0 by clicking the desktop icon.
2. In the options, I changed the application settings option for opening PDFs with Foxit Viewer software. My PDFs now open with Foxit Reader.
3. Then I closed and reopened Firefox.

In addition, when directly modifying the settings in the handlers.json file, the file is reset every time Firefox is opened.
I tested it with a new Firefox profile. And also on a computer connected to a different network than mine.

Actual results:

My settings were reset to default values ​​and so PDFs open in a Firefox tab.

handlers.json is reseted.

Expected results:

The PDFs should open with Foxit Reader.

The modification to the handlers.json file should be preserved.

Comment 1

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

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

Comment 2

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Can you share the PDF section of handlers.json as you configure it? And is Foxit set as the Windows default PDF handler, or are you manually choosing it on disk as the handling application?

When you say "the file is reset" - does the entire content get reset, or just the PDF bits?

Please can you attach about:support information from your affected Firefox instance?

Comment 3

[Tanguy.P]

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #2)

Can you share the PDF section of handlers.json as you configure it? And is Foxit set as the Windows default PDF handler, or are you manually choosing it on disk as the handling application?

Yes, Foxit is set as the Windows default PDF handler.

In handlers.json here is what's written after I set it to (the change is in bold):
{"defaultHandlersVersion":{},"mimeTypes":{"application/pdf":{"action":4,"extensions":["pdf"],"handlers":[{"name":"FoxitPDFReader.exe","path":"C:\Program Files\Foxit Software\Foxit PDF Reader\FoxitPDFReader.exe"}]} ...

And after I reopen Firefox:
{"defaultHandlersVersion":{},"mimeTypes":{"application/pdf":{"action":3,"extensions":["pdf"],"handlers":[{"name":"FoxitPDFReader.exe","path":"C:\Program Files\Foxit Software\Foxit PDF Reader\FoxitPDFReader.exe"}]} ...

When you say "the file is reset" - does the entire content get reset, or just the PDF bits?

This is the only thing in my situation that change/reset. All of the other options are fine and not modified.

For your information, since opening this ticket, my browser version has changed, but the problem persists. It is still present in ESR version 140.5 and also in the newer ESR version 140.9.

Please can you attach about:support information from your affected Firefox instance?

Here is the about:support in Firefox ESR 140.9 (same parameters as version ESR 140.5):

mod edit: moved to attachment.

Comment 4

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Attachment: about-support.json

Comment 5

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Attachment: about-support.json

Try to fix syntax error...

Comment 6

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Attachment: about-support.json

...

Comment 7

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Attachment: about-support.json

Sorry, this is getting slightly ridiculous...

Comment 8

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Your Firefox appears to be managed via enterprise policies. If you go to about:policies, is there a "Handlers" entry (or anything else related to PDFs) and what does it say? I suspect that that might be what is resetting this... it's likely still a bug of some sorts (either that it can be changed in the UI when that doesn't really work, or that it gets reset when it shouldn't be) but it's difficult for me to know what is going on without that piece of information (which appears not to be part of about:support information, unfortunately :-( ).

Comment 9

[Tanguy.P]

It is managed via enterprise policies but these policies were working fine on the previous version of Firefox which was "ESR 128.11". Maybe switching from 128.11 to 140.5 then 140.9 provoked an error but there is nothing I can do about that at my level.

In about:policies, there is only one mention of "PDF": [DisableBuiltinPDFViewer = false].

PS: Sorry about the about-support part, I did not know the right procedure.

Comment 10

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Yes, something did change and we didn't think it was common because we didn't think many people would have "DisableBuiltInPDFViewer=false" in their policy (since it's the default).

This is bug 1983032

Comment 11

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

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

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 12

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

I fixed this in 1983032.

It will happen once (as we save that we did it) and then it won't happen again.

Comment 13

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Mike Kaply [:mkaply] from comment #12)

I fixed this in 1983032.

It will happen once (as we save that we did it) and then it won't happen again.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 1983032 ***

Indeed. Thanks Mike for figuring this out. I'll ask in that bug about 140 esr uplift, as that would need to happen in order for the fix to help the reporter...