Command line options to Firefox
I can find no recent documentation on command line options for the Firefox Browser. All of the information on this appears to be out of date or just does not work any more (in the latest version June 2021). Is there any documentation on this anywhere that is correct for the current version of the browser? I am specifically trying to run firefox with command line options on Windows 10 but I do not see that that should make any difference. The only option I can get to work is starting firefox with a specific URL; even then I have to change the browser settings to get that to open a new window; because the browser settings override the command line option -new-window
All Replies (6)
Indeed - this really is a most unhelpful faux pas. Presumably somebody in Mozilla knows what these are?
In the meantime the following might help: firefox.exe -h | more
Novain'i xndr t@
The link I had, I discovered, was no longer valid. So I did a web search. Most of the options should work but check before using these.
https://www.ghacks.net/2017/10/08/the-most-important-firefox-command-line-options/
https://www-archive.mozilla.org/docs/command-line-args.html May 7, 2003, revised June 02, 2004
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Command_line_arguments This page was last modified 23:30, 29 October 2018
https://browserengine.net/the-most-important-firefox-command-line-options/ October 8, 2017
Usage: C:\PROGRA~1\MOZILL~1\firefox.exe [ options ... ] [URL]
Novain'i FredMcD t@
Those links are possibly accurate and not hard to find. In the past (recent?) there was an official reference here at: Command Line Options which was the preferred resource cited by Mozilla Dev's et al. It has however been taken down and for some reason not replaced. There is also the issue that Windows users are required to pipe through more on the command line just to get the help they need. Aside from this not being clear in the help/F1 pages it is a rather cryptic and thus unhelpful method.
None of these links are actually of any help - and I had obviously found them all before posting my question.
As far as I can tell almost all command line options have been disabled except start with a link. This appears to be a recent, deliberate, change intended to "enhance" security. In the end I resorted to a redirection page that opened the window close to the way I wanted using javascript. It was good enough for my purpose but is not ideal and wasted my time finding out; a simple statement that command line options are now disbled would have been preferable. Not so much a case of RTFM but "Where Is TFM" :-)
You can try to use --new-window with two leading dashes just like the Help screen shows as that might currently be mandatory.
That is not very helpful. Giving a link to the code is not the same as a Help Screen. The point is there is no help screen and no documentation. As I said before "As far as I can tell almost all command line options have been disabled except start with a link" so I was already aware that I could start with a link and if this is the most recenty code it appears that all that is possible is to start Firefox with a known page. This is fine, I have no problem with that, the problem I was reporting is that there is now way to know this as a user of the software and searching the internet just gives misleading or incorrect information. It should be easy for Mozilla to create a web page that says what it does or they could fix the command line -help so that it actually prints some help.