Manually set preferences in about:config

[ineuw]

What is the lifespan of a manually set preference?

[Grumpus]

Some change with an update and some will hold indefinitely.
It may take several edits to have it hold also.
Is also affected by the relative other components.

[ineuw]

Thank you. I will use update and relative components as my guide. Also noticed that some preferences change/revert, even though there is a lengthy list of policy based restrictions and a user.js on changing preferences. I came to suspect that the changes are reset by the .exe file

[Grumpus]

Some of this has to be more specific than general.
.exe for MS but not for Linux.

[ineuw]

Some of this has to be more specific than general.
.exe for MS but not for Linux.

I meant executable.

My version is FF 82.0.3 because it's stable. But, here is an example of changes from an unknown source. My preferred search engine is DDG and I delete the rest. Its results meet my needs and easily distinguished by my settings.

This morning, I found all search engines reappeared on the list. As usual, but not always, Google Search asserts itself as the primary search engine. This means that my preferred search engine, DDG defined in my user.js is overridden. If I moved them to firefox.cfg, would this help override the intended changes?

Code: Select all

user_pref("browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.topSiteSearchShortcuts.searchEngines", "DuckDuckGo");
user_pref("browser.search.defaultenginename", "DuckDuckGo");
user_pref("browser.search.searchEnginesURL", "https://duckduckgo.com/");
user_pref("browser.search.selectedEngine", "DuckDuckGo");
user_pref("browser.startup.homepage", "https://duckduckgo.com/");
user_pref("browser.urlbar.placeholderName", "DuckDuckGo");

[jscher2000]

My preferred search engine is DDG and I delete the rest.

Some users have reported that if you use Remove to completely empty out the One-Click Search Engines / Search Shortcuts box, they eventually come back. That might be considered an error condition by some code somewhere.

Removing some and unchecking some has always been stable for me.

[ineuw]

Thanks, I will try that and see what happens.

[Grumpus]

With Linux Mint and some Ubuntu versions in order to dump the search engines is near impossible because they are controlled by files in the profile taking order from elsewhere.
Also in the /usr/lib/firefox folders. json files which can be edited in profile and /usr/lib both locations.
Initially deleting those you do not want and maintaining those you want.
However when Firefox is updated you'll need to re-edit. You can get around this to a minimal edit state by making copies (backups of the edited), BUT . . .
Changes in those edited files need to be reviewed for other changes not relative to the search engines.
It's not futile but it will need to be adjusted with each update, some times more or less than before.

[ineuw]

The time required to manage the search engines is not worth it, unless I can add to any of the settings/preferences. Be it as a group policy, a preference added to firefox.cfg, or user.js. This last option has its limitation due to being loaded after the application starts. I am using all three.