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

What is the -stringPrefs command line option of firefox?

  • 2 cavab
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by Utilao

more options

Hi, I'm using Firefox with gnome (linux). Version of Firefox is 56.0.2. For some reason I was checking Firefox process on the command line (with "ps -elf | grep firefox"). Everytime I do that I get the process of Firefox with a very lengthy command line. There seems to be many options some of which using weird looking characters. I was wondering if this is normal and if so where I could find explaining about these options. One of those options is "-stringPrefs". Searching for "-stringPrefs" with google doesn't give any result. I've looked also at one support page listing the command line options of firefox (https://developer.mozilla.org/fr/docs/Mozilla/Command_Line_Options) but I couldn't find anything related to "-stringPrefs" or "string" or "Prefs". What are these options? Where could I find out?

Hi, I'm using Firefox with gnome (linux). Version of Firefox is 56.0.2. For some reason I was checking Firefox process on the command line (with "ps -elf | grep firefox"). Everytime I do that I get the process of Firefox with a very lengthy command line. There seems to be many options some of which using weird looking characters. I was wondering if this is normal and if so where I could find explaining about these options. One of those options is "-stringPrefs". Searching for "-stringPrefs" with google doesn't give any result. I've looked also at one support page listing the command line options of firefox (https://developer.mozilla.org/fr/docs/Mozilla/Command_Line_Options) but I couldn't find anything related to "-stringPrefs" or "string" or "Prefs". What are these options? Where could I find out?

All Replies (2)

more options

Looks that it is related to this file of the source code:

more options

Thanks indeed this seems to be options passed in string form to firefox. I'm still trying to understand what are the specific preferences I have in my command line.