2064652 - Keeps creating shortcut in Start Menu

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Installer, defect)

Description

[LM Hess]

Steps to reproduce:

Install Firefox version 154 for Windows

Actual results:

Firefox creates a shortcut in the Start Menu. I delete the shortcut because I already have one in another location. Also, it is very rude to just create a shortcut in some random place without asking the user.

A few minutes the Firefox shortcut that I deleted is re-added.

Every time I delete the shortcut it re-appears a few minutes later.

Expected results:

I should delete the shortcut and nothing more happens.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox for Android::General' component, but is not confident enough to move the bug to that component.

Comment 2

[LM Hess]

This is Firefox for Windows - Not Android.
This does not happen in previous versions, it appears to be new in Firefox 154.

Comment 3

[Dianna Smith [:diannaS]]

:yazan could you see if this is caused by bug 2056382?

Comment 4

[Harshit Sohaney [:hsohaney]]

Thanks for filing this! Just to clarify - the shortcut is recreated while firefox is still running? or does it require a restart?

Comment 5

[LM Hess]

(In reply to Harshit Sohaney [:hsohaney] from comment #4)

Thanks for filing this! Just to clarify - the shortcut is recreated while firefox is still running? or does it require a restart?

I am not 100% sure. I almost always have Firefox running any time my computer is on, so I would say this happens while Firefox is running and does not require a restart. I wasn't expecting this behavior so I wasn't watching it closely. I just know that I deleted the shortcut and a short time later it was there again. I deleted it again and a short time later it re-appeared.

After this happened 3 or 4 times I removed Firefox 154 went back to 153.1 which does not have this problem.

Comment 8

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

Set release status flags based on info from the regressing bug 2056382

Comment 10

[David Phipps]

It happens at the moment Firefox 154.0 is launched. As best as I can tell, it appears to be a result of the new "Browser Icon" feature introduced with version 154.0, where users can select a custom Firefox icon from a variety of options. Apparently, when developers wrote this new feature into Firefox 154.0, nobody bothered to consider that maybe some users might not want this new feature on their machine, with the result that there is no option to toggle it off. Simply adding an option to toggle off the "Browser Icon" feature would most likely fix this issue immediately.

Comment 11

[John T. Haller (email is bugzilla2@)]

This happens on every launch of Firefox 154.0 on Windows 10 and 11.

If there is no Firefox.lnk icon within %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs, it will create one. It will do this even if you already have a Firefox.lnk icon within C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs.

If there is already a Firefox.lnk icon within %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs, Firefox will steal it for its current location. So, if you have another copy of Firefox like Firefox Portable from PortableApps.com and run it, it will break the existing icon for the local copy of Firefox and have it reference the portable version of Firefox. This icon will be broken and pointing to the copy of Firefox that may be missing later, leaving the user unable to launch Firefox on their local machine.

Comment 12

[John T. Haller (email is bugzilla2@)]

I can further confirm that Firefox Beta channel will take over the shortcut from Firefox Stable when run and vice versa as they both use a shortcut named just Firefox. Firefox Developer and Firefox Nightly create their own separate shortcuts.

Comment 13

[John T. Haller (email is bugzilla2@)]

See also: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2063459

Comment 14

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

The bug is marked as tracked for firefox154 (release), tracked for firefox155 (beta) and tracked for firefox156 (nightly). However, the bug still isn't assigned.

:Amir, could you please find an assignee for this tracked bug? Given that it is a regression and we know the cause, we could also simply backout the regressor. If you disagree with the tracking decision, please talk with the release managers.

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 15

[maik.diessner]

Confirmed here too. Version 153 and previous versions did not show this behaviour.

Comment 16

[maik.diessner]

Attachment: Screenshot.png

Comment 17

[maik.diessner]

Attachment: Video.mp4