We're calling on all EU-based Mozillians with iOS or iPadOS devices to help us monitor Apple’s new browser choice screens. Join the effort to hold Big Tech to account!

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

A few questions re: policies.json

  • 1 reply
  • 0 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by Mike Kaply

more options

Hi there,

I'm playing with policies.json on Linux/Ubuntu now, trying to improve my knowledge of Firefox customization through different policies and user interaction after the Firefox deployment. I added a custom bookmark and extension, which show and install okay when I restart the browser. But when I delete them from within the browser and restart Firefox, they show up again. To avoid this, I can delete /etc/firefox/policies/policies.json after the Firefox deployment. Hence my questions:

  • Is the deletion of the JSON file after the Firefox deployment a reasonable option at all?
  • If yes, how can I automate the process silently, without user interaction?
  • If no, what would be your advice to let users modify the browser settings like removing extension(s) or bookmark(s) set in policies.json so that they do not reappear after the browser restart?

Thank you! Rustam

Hi there, I'm playing with '''policies.json''' on Linux/Ubuntu now, trying to improve my knowledge of Firefox customization through different policies and user interaction after the Firefox deployment. I added a custom bookmark and extension, which show and install okay when I restart the browser. But when I delete them from within the browser and restart Firefox, they show up again. To avoid this, I can delete '''/etc/firefox/policies/policies.json''' after the Firefox deployment. Hence my questions: * Is the deletion of the JSON file after the Firefox deployment a reasonable option at all? * If yes, how can I automate the process silently, without user interaction? * If no, what would be your advice to let users modify the browser settings like removing extension(s) or bookmark(s) set in policies.json so that they do not reappear after the browser restart? Thank you! Rustam

Modified by ralhas

All Replies (1)

more options

Generally folks don't delete policies.json because they want the policy with new profiles as well.

> If no, what would be your advice to let users modify the browser settings like removing extension(s) or bookmark(s) set in policies.json so that they do not reappear after the browser restart?

Our experience with bookmarks is that most companies don't want the user to delete the bookmarks, so we don't support this use case.

Extensions are a little better. I think if you use Extensions->Install instead of ExtensionSettings, we don't reinstall. This is something I need to do better.