Changing Your Update Channel

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L.A.R. Grizzly
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Changing Your Update Channel

Post by L.A.R. Grizzly »

To change your update channel:

1. Close Firefox.
2. Go to the Firefox program directory.
3. Enter defaults\pref
4. Edit channel-prefs.js in Notepad.

Change:

pref("app.update.channel", "release");

to the one you desire. Update channels to choose from:

nightly
aurora
beta
esr
release

Example:

pref("app.update.channel", "beta");

5. Save and exit.
6. Re-open Firefox.

To check the change, open about:config and enter: app.update.channel. The channel should now be the one you chose.

Reference: http://kb.mozillazine.org/App.update.channel
Last edited by L.A.R. Grizzly on April 22nd, 2012, 9:43 am, edited 2 times in total.
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sdrocking
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Re: Changing Your Update Channel

Post by sdrocking »

Changing app.update.channel in about:config and then restarting Firefox should also do it.
Last edited by sdrocking on August 15th, 2011, 10:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
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L.A.R. Grizzly
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Re: Changing Your Update Channel

Post by L.A.R. Grizzly »

sdrocking wrote:Changing in about:config and then restarting Firefox should also do it.


That won't work, it's hard coded in the channel-prefs.js file.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/App.update.channel#Caveats

viewtopic.php?p=11118521#p11118521
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James
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Re: Changing Your Update Channel

Post by James »

sdrocking wrote:Changing app.update.channel in about:config and then restarting Firefox should also do it.

Nope it will not as they really should remove this obsolete front-end preference (was used back when Firefox was 1.5 until 4.0) so people will not think it still worked.
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realgeorge
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Re: Changing Your Update Channel

Post by realgeorge »

I`m currently using Aurora 7.0a2, and Nightly 8.0a1. Should one make these pref changes to the update channel now or do it after Mozilla has switched the channels?
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Re: Changing Your Update Channel

Post by JayhawksRock »

realgeorge wrote:I`m currently using Aurora 7.0a2, and Nightly 8.0a1. Should one make these pref changes to the update channel now or do it after Mozilla has switched the channels?

If you want to continue on both Aurora and Nightly you dont need to make any change. Aurora will become 8.0a2 and Nightly will become 9.0a1
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Re: Changing Your Update Channel

Post by sdrocking »

You don't need to change anything. Both the installations can be separately updated to the latest versions on their channels. In a day or two, Aurora will become 8.0a2 and Nightly will become 9.0a1
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Re: Changing Your Update Channel

Post by realgeorge »

Ii I want to continue using 7.0a2 as Beta, and 8.0a1 as Aurora then it would be better to make the pref change now to prevent the update to Aurora 8.0a2 and Nightly to 9.0a1? True?
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Re: Changing Your Update Channel

Post by L.A.R. Grizzly »

realgeorge wrote:Ii I want to continue using 7.0a2 as Beta, and 8.0a1 as Aurora then it would be better to make the pref change now to prevent the update to Aurora 8.0a2 and Nightly to 9.0a1? True?


If you change them now, I don't know if your 7.0a2 would turn to 6.0 Beta and your 8.0a1 would turn to 7.0a2. I would turn off automatic updating (for now) and wait till the official release comes. Then change your prefs and turn your automatic updating back on.
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Re: Changing Your Update Channel

Post by Protocol »

Thanks for the info, Grizzly.
But wouldn't it be great if we could change the channels from within Firefox.

Could an Add-on possibly do it?
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Re: Changing Your Update Channel

Post by L.A.R. Grizzly »

Protocol wrote:Thanks for the info, Grizzly.
But wouldn't it be great if we could change the channels from within Firefox.

Could an Add-on possibly do it?


For a few brief builds early on in the 5.0 development the devs had a button to switch between channels, but they deemed it not that necessary and removed it, so sad. I would suppose that an add-on could be developed. Care to give it a try?

This one's now defunct:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... -selector/
Last edited by L.A.R. Grizzly on August 16th, 2011, 1:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Protocol
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Re: Changing Your Update Channel

Post by Protocol »

L.A.R. Grizzly wrote:
Protocol wrote:Thanks for the info, Grizzly.
But wouldn't it be great if we could change the channels from within Firefox.

Could an Add-on possibly do it?


I would suppose that an add-on could be developed. Care to give it a try?

If I could, I would. :(
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kancaras
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Re: Changing Your Update Channel

Post by kancaras »

thx grizzly but this doesnt work (anymore/for me).
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Re: Changing Your Update Channel

Post by The Timmy »

kancaras wrote:thx grizzly but this doesnt work (anymore/for me).

If you tried beta, it is probably still on 11, give it a few days as the other channels don't get moved to the new version the same day as beta moves to stable.
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kancaras
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Re: Changing Your Update Channel

Post by kancaras »

so lets say i change from beta channel to release. when will firefox download and install the latest release build?
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