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Relationship between "When Firefox Starts" setting and "Firefox will: Never remember history" setting"

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If you have the "When Firefox starts" setting on the General preferences tab set to "Show my windows and tabs from last time" and you subsequently change the "Firefox will" History setting to "Never remember history", Firefox should warn you that the "When Firefox start" setting will be changed to "Show my home page" and "Show my windows and tabs from last time" will be disabled.

In addition, I would suggest the text of the "Show windows and tabs from last time" text should be updated to indicate that it is disabled because of the history setting in this scenario.

Lastly, when I re-enabled remembering history and changed the "When Firefox starts" setting back to restoring my windows and tabs from last time, it remembered the tabs I had open when I changed the history setting a few weeks ago!! This was unexpected. Perhaps selecting "Never remember history" should ask the user if existing history should be cleared.

P.S.: If there was some issue tracking system where I should have posted this, my apologies for not finding it. P.P.S: When I first submitted the question I was redirected to an "Access is denied" page. Apologies again, if this is posted twice.

If you have the "When Firefox starts" setting on the General preferences tab set to "Show my windows and tabs from last time" and you subsequently change the "Firefox will" History setting to "Never remember history", Firefox should warn you that the "When Firefox start" setting will be changed to "Show my home page" and "Show my windows and tabs from last time" will be disabled. In addition, I would suggest the text of the "Show windows and tabs from last time" text should be updated to indicate that it is disabled because of the history setting in this scenario. Lastly, when I re-enabled remembering history and changed the "When Firefox starts" setting back to restoring my windows and tabs from last time, it remembered the tabs I had open when I changed the history setting a few weeks ago!! This was unexpected. Perhaps selecting "Never remember history" should ask the user if existing history should be cleared. P.S.: If there was some issue tracking system where I should have posted this, my apologies for not finding it. P.P.S: When I first submitted the question I was redirected to an "Access is denied" page. Apologies again, if this is posted twice.

All Replies (4)

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hmmmmmmmmmmmmm, this is interesting. But this is a first world problem. Either use "When Firefox starts" setting on the General preferences tab set to "Show my windows and tabs from last time" or "Never remember history" not both

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"Never remember history" means that you switch to Private Browsing mode and in PB mode no data is saved to the profile folder, so it isn't possible to restore closed tabs on startup or otherwise keep history. You also can't store new passwords in the Password Manager.


You can get the "Access is denied" page if you block the referrer or if there is a problem with the CSRF token or cookies.

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Thanks. I understand the mechanics of why restoring the last session's tabs and windows was disabled when I switched to never remember history (although I did not think of it at the time).

I just think there may be a UX issue in that switching did not let me know what the consequences would be and that "Show windows and tabs from last time" was still available in the "When Firefox starts" dropdown list but mysteriously un-selectable.

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I don't know the best way to get in touch with the Mozilla user experience team to provide this feedback.

The team members are listed here: https://blog.mozilla.org/ux/who-we-are/

They have a Twitter account here: https://twitter.com/MozillaUX