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Can't undo "always use private surfing"

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  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by Gnospen

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I have the box "always use private surfing" checked. After installing 35.0 I can't turn it of. As soon as I uncheck this box FF restarts. BUT again in private mode. And the box stays checked. I tried about:config setting "browser.privatebrowsing.autostart to false. It resets itself to true after restart. What else can I do?

I have the box "always use private surfing" checked. After installing 35.0 I can't turn it of. As soon as I uncheck this box FF restarts. BUT again in private mode. And the box stays checked. I tried about:config setting "browser.privatebrowsing.autostart to false. It resets itself to true after restart. What else can I do?

Chosen solution

Your System Details list shows that you have a user.js file in the profile folder to initialize prefs each time Firefox starts. You can check its content with a plain text editor (right-click: Open with). The user.js file is read each time Firefox is started and initializes preferences to the value specified in this file, so preferences set via user.js can only be changed temporarily for the current session. You can delete the user.js file if you didn't create this file yourself. You can reset involved prefs on the about:config page to the default value.

See also:


You can check the target line in the Firefox desktop shortcut (right-click: Properties) to make sure that nothing is appended after the path to the Firefox program.

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Chosen Solution

Your System Details list shows that you have a user.js file in the profile folder to initialize prefs each time Firefox starts. You can check its content with a plain text editor (right-click: Open with). The user.js file is read each time Firefox is started and initializes preferences to the value specified in this file, so preferences set via user.js can only be changed temporarily for the current session. You can delete the user.js file if you didn't create this file yourself. You can reset involved prefs on the about:config page to the default value.

See also:


You can check the target line in the Firefox desktop shortcut (right-click: Properties) to make sure that nothing is appended after the path to the Firefox program.

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Thanks @Cor-el I must be tired, of course it's in user.js. Fixed it and all is fine.