Leave Firefox beta channel
Is there an easy way to downgrade back from the beta channel to stable? The downgrade protection feature seems to be a major blocker of just installing the latest stable version. Noticing high RAM usage on Firefox 100 and crashes which is making it hard to use for a daily web browser.
All Replies (9)
The only way to switch update channel is to uninstall the Beta version and install the current release.
- https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/#product-desktop-release
- https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/desktop/
Note that the Beta channel has reached the release candidate stage for Firefox 100, so next Tuesday Firefox 100 will be released to the Release update channel.
cor-el said
The only way to switch update channel is to uninstall the Beta version and install the current release. Note that the Beta channel has reached the release candidate stage for Firefox 100, so next Tuesday Firefox 100 will be released to the Release update channel.
Thanks for the reply. So basically I have to wait until next Tuesday for v100 to release because of downgrade protection, right? Is there a way to bypass downgrade protection before then without creating a new profile?
You can remove compatibility.ini in the profile folder to allow downgrading, but it is quite possible that updating next week will cause the same problems.
If you have submitted crash reports, please post the IDs of one or more recent crash reports that start with "bp-".
- bp-xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx
You can find the report ID of recent crash reports on the "Help -> More Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page.
- click the "All Crash Reports" button on this page to open the about:crashes page and see all crash reports.
Alternatively you can open about:crashes via the location/address bar.
See also:
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mozillacrashreporter
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-crashes-closing-or-quitting
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-crashes-asking-support
You can create a new profile as a quick test to see if your current profile is causing the problem.
See "Creating a profile":
If the new profile works then you can transfer files from a previously used profile to the new profile, but be cautious not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over problems.
Hmm, good point. bp-e267e4ee-a0e2-49e0-b355-f8b2d0220426 is the only relevant crash report I see, but I think it crashed more times. I was hoping it would just be something obvious to revert before releasing, but may have to switch to another browser temporarily until hopping back to a later stable build.
Another crash report: bp-680437b9-10b7-4ca4-8095-0d2e10220427 on build 20220425210429.
Both crash reports appear to be memory related (first looks like a malloc error, and the second is an out of memory error)
On Linux I downgraded this way to stable very recently and I had no breakage. You may just be able to uninstall the beta, install the stable and run the stable with the command line argument --allow-downgrade once, and the profile should be downgraded and ready afterwards.
Don't be like me and make a backup before doing this.
Amelia said
Both crash reports appear to be memory related (first looks like a malloc error, and the second is an out of memory error) On Linux I downgraded this way to stable very recently and I had no breakage. You may just be able to uninstall the beta, install the stable and run the stable with the command line argument --allow-downgrade once, and the profile should be downgraded and ready afterwards. Don't be like me and make a backup before doing this.
Thanks for the downgrade flag info. I think cor-el made a good point that stable would probably just reintroduce the issue so I might be stuck for a while and just keep submitting any crash reports that come up to provide some data.
You can possibly try to file a bug report as Firefox 100 is still in release candidate (RC1) stage like shown in the second (small OOM; 4KB) crash report.
Not exactly sure how to reproduce the problem and memory usage is somehow much better so far today. Will continue to monitor and mark this solved for now. Thanks for the help!