2045797 - Misleading "Default browser" section in "Account and sync" in about:preferences

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 2046522

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[aoia7rz7l]

Tested on Nightly 153.0a1(2026-06-07) BuildID 20260607212012.

Prerequisites:

1. browser.settings-redesign.enabled is set to true (it is by default).
2. Set identity.fxaccounts.enabled to false.
3. Set the DisableProfileImport policy to true.
4. Set browser.backup.archive.enabled and browser.backup.restore.enabled to false (they are currently disabled by default on macOS).

STR:

Visit about:preferences.

Expected Behavior:

Absolutely nothing sync-related showing up in about:preferences when the user has explicitly set identity.fxaccounts.enabled to false.

Actual Behavior:

"Account and sync" appeared with a "Default browser" section and that section alone, of which has absolutely nothing to do with (and does not require) "Account or "sync" and yet cannot be disabled.

I disabled both the "Import browser data" and "Backup" section just to illustrate the point, but it's not like any
of them require Firefox Accounts or Firefox Sync either.

mozregression -pref browser.settings-redesign.enabled:true returned

Last good revision: f9ddc88983a8732fcc8c924bab0c635c9a211498
First bad revision: b1f089e2513053644fa039cfc767aa4499d89df6
Pushlog: https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/pushloghtml?fromchange=f9ddc88983a8732fcc8c924bab0c635c9a211498&tochange=b1f089e2513053644fa039cfc767aa4499d89df6

Regressed by bug 2023825, but I believe the "Default browser" section was added back in bug 2006667, and about:preferences#general was hidden later in bug 2036762.

(In reply to Bogdan Maris, Desktop Test Engineering from bug 2023825 comment #0)

Expected result

Only Accounts and Sync are disabled, all the rest of the sections inside the "settings tab" are still visible.

Actual result

The entire settings tab (Sync at this time and with settings redesign will be renamed to Account and sync) is
disabled, thus disabling Backup (at this time) as well and will also disable Import browser data, Profiles as well.

(In reply to Hanna Jones [:hjones] from bug 2023825 comment #2)

To fix this we'll need to re-think how we handle hiding/showing certain panes and the elements within those panes (i.e. only hide the #sync pane if accounts AND backup are disabled)

identity.fxaccounts.enabled was introduced in bug 1434706 to help downstream disable any FxA and Sync-related UI.

Perhaps it is Product/UX who should rethink and justify why unrelated settings should be merged into the Sync section.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

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

Comment 2

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

:hjones, since you are the author of the regressor, bug 2023825, could you take a look? Also, could you set the severity field?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 3

[Hanna Jones [:hjones]]

This sparked a discussion that led to the work that was done in Bug 2046522 to at least show a message indicating that account settings are unavailable/pointing the user to new information. Since this is the route product wanted to go to fix this issue I'm going to mark this as fixed by Bug 2046522.

Comment 4

[aoia7rz7l]

(In reply to Hanna Jones [:hjones] from comment #3)

This sparked a discussion that led to the work that was done in Bug 2046522 to at least show a message indicating that account settings are unavailable/pointing the user to new information. Since this is the route product wanted to go to fix this issue I'm going to mark this as fixed by Bug 2046522.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 2046522 ***

I am confused as to what was being "fixed" when you (read: whoever in product/ux came up with this) broke a pref specifically used by downstream (read: Tor Browser) and proceed to not fix it and stick up a notice to pretend it's "fixed".

(In reply to Gabriel H [:gharp, :gabriel] from bug 2046522 comment #0)

Proposed fix: When FxA is disabled, show a card at the top of the pane with an explanatory message and a "Learn more" link.

Proposed string (not final, pending content review): "Account settings are unavailable. Learn more"
Learn more link: pointing to https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/managed-browser-firefox

(In reply to Gabriel H [:gharp, :gabriel] from bug 2046522 comment #1)

Final approved string: "Account settings are unavailable. Learn more"

I am sorry but this just reeks of llm writing. Who "proposed" this? Who even "approved" this? How does any of this help when TBB is not "managed" by default? Did anyone from product/ux even bothered reading bug 1434706?

Comment 5

[Mark Striemer [:mstriemer]]

Bug 2046522 shows a message that the account settings are disabled, this was mostly a stop-gap as this issue was identified late in the nightly cycle and we didn't want to have an entirely empty page.

Bug 2047219 is now on file to improve this page when most/all of the content is hidden by policies/pref changes.