Join the Mozilla’s Test Days event from Dec 2–8 to test the new Firefox address bar on Firefox Beta 134 and get a chance to win Mozilla swag vouchers! 🎁

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

"Manage Data" button appears grayed out

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by cor-el

more options

Hi, I noticed this issue quite a few times: When I open the cookies privacy settings, the two buttons "Clear Data" and "Manage Data" often appear grayed out. I don't use private browsing or disabled offline cache like I saw in other threads, and I use only 4 regular extensions. The funny thing is that the buttons become functional on their own after a couple of minutes if I just leave the tab open. So it seems that Firefox is running some very long process before enabling these buttons the first time the settings page is opened. If I close the privacy settings tab and open it again, then these two buttons immediately appear enabled, not grayed out.

Firefox should probably change the very confusing and counter-intuitive way it is handling these two buttons, or at least display some animated icon to indicate it is doing some stuff, but if it's reading all cookies before deciding to enable the two buttons (and I don't think I have an unusual number of cookies), I'd rather have Firefox enable these buttons immediately and run this cookies analysis process AFTER I click on one of these two buttons, not before. By the way, it would be great if the about:support page could provide the number of cookies or web sites with cookies so we might use this for technical support. I have no idea how many I have and if this number is a problem.

In any case, for all other users that experience the grayed out cookie management buttons: Leave the settings tab open, do other stuff on Firefox or the computer, and come back to this settings tab after a few minutes, you'll find the two buttons enabled.

Hi, I noticed this issue quite a few times: When I open the cookies privacy settings, the two buttons "Clear Data" and "Manage Data" often appear grayed out. I don't use private browsing or disabled offline cache like I saw in other threads, and I use only 4 regular extensions. The funny thing is that the buttons become functional on their own after a couple of minutes if I just leave the tab open. So it seems that Firefox is running some very long process before enabling these buttons the first time the settings page is opened. If I close the privacy settings tab and open it again, then these two buttons immediately appear enabled, not grayed out. Firefox should probably change the very confusing and counter-intuitive way it is handling these two buttons, or at least display some animated icon to indicate it is doing some stuff, but if it's reading all cookies before deciding to enable the two buttons (and I don't think I have an unusual number of cookies), I'd rather have Firefox enable these buttons immediately and run this cookies analysis process AFTER I click on one of these two buttons, not before. By the way, it would be great if the about:support page could provide the number of cookies or web sites with cookies so we might use this for technical support. I have no idea how many I have and if this number is a problem. In any case, for all other users that experience the grayed out cookie management buttons: Leave the settings tab open, do other stuff on Firefox or the computer, and come back to this settings tab after a few minutes, you'll find the two buttons enabled.

All Replies (2)

more options

Hi, I think that happens when Firefox is checking the cache size.

more options

Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions ("3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem.

  • switch to the DEFAULT theme: "3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Add-ons -> Themes
  • do NOT click the "Refresh Firefox" button on the Safe Mode start window