Restarting Firefox

I’m a long, long time user of Firefox. Not only have I used Firefox as my main browser the entire time it’s been available, I was using it before it was called Firefox. I changed to a little-known browser called Phoenix, and when they changed the name to Firebird, I used that (it was no longer “little-known”). I don’t remember much about what the browser was like back then - heck, I’d have to do research to see the relevant release dates. I do recall the 1.0 release being a big deal. I was transitioning from Windows to Linux at the time, so it was important to have a respectable browser. Over the years, I’ve never considered switching to Chrome, not even when that was the cool thing to do. Even as Firefox changed the UI for no reason other than to be a clone of Chrome, I stuck with it.

I provide that introduction as evidence for just how bad the browser restart problem has become on Firefox. When a new version of Firefox comes out, it’s not long before Firefox simply stops working, with a message that it needs to be restarted. I’ve had it shut down on me while teaching an online class. Other times my browser extensions (notably my password manager) will stop working, with the only solution being to restart the browser. That doesn’t work in 2020. We keep too many tabs open, and we’re logged into too many websites, to do a 1993-style shutdown and restart of the browser. There is no restart functionality built into the Firefox menus. I would in some cases get a message with a button to restart - a button, I might add, which did not work. This has resulted in stretches of multiple weeks where I mostly use Chrome due to the restart problem¹.

There has been some hope. The “Restart Firefox” button actually works now. Not only does it restart the browser, it reopens all of the tabs correctly. I don’t like being forced into a restart, but the need to relog into (or whatever the right word is) a few sites is a minor inconvenience I’ll accept to keep using Firefox. The other problem, where my extensions quit working until I restart Firefox, is not only still there, it’s getting worse. This was still going to force me to move to Chrome permanently. Or maybe not. Now that I’ve spewed three paragraphs of boring crap, let me get to the point.

I found a way to successfully restart my browser without an extension.² Go to this URL:

about:restartrequired

That’s it. You can even add a button to your bookmarks toolbar if like me you still use the bookmarks toolbar. That will take you to the “Restart Firefox” page. As of this post (December 2020), it completes the restart process successfully, including restoration of all open tabs.