Are all changes in about:preferences saved only to prefs.js?

Discussion of features in Mozilla Firefox
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dumpster_danny
Posts: 19
Joined: May 29th, 2014, 4:15 am

Are all changes in about:preferences saved only to prefs.js?

Post by dumpster_danny »

Are all the changes made manually in Edit -> Preferences (or about:preferences) saved -only- to prefs.js? My plan would be to start a vanilla FF, modify the preferences I wish, see what is changed in prefs.js compared to vanilla one, and make user.js from seemingly meaningful rows.

I suppose this does not work at least for preferences where something has to be searched or installed, like a new search engine or so.

I'm using FF 65.0.1.
morat
Posts: 6403
Joined: February 3rd, 2009, 6:29 pm

Re: Are all changes in about:preferences saved only to prefs

Post by morat »

dumpster_danny wrote:Are all the changes made manually in Edit -> Preferences (or about:preferences) saved -only- to prefs.js?
Most, but not all.

For example, if I change mailto in Applications from "Use Thunderbird" to "Use Gmail", then that option is saved in the handlers.json file.

Transferring data to a new profile (see download actions for file types)
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_ ... o_transfer

The search engine options are saved in the search.json.mozlz4 file.

Decompress search.json.mozlz4
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... &t=3023201

Search engine extractor by jscher2000
http://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/searchjson.html
http://github.com/jscher2000/Firefox-File-Utilities

Preference tracker
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... &t=3046666
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therube
Posts: 21698
Joined: March 10th, 2004, 9:59 pm
Location: Maryland USA

Re: Are all changes in about:preferences saved only to prefs

Post by therube »

Additionally some settings are set / "changed" by FF itself (like once it has queried your system for free space or whatnot).

Anyway, a prefs.js compare should be a start towards your goal.
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