Firefox issues another browser update to fix issues relating to disabled extensions

Over the weekend, Mozilla accidentally disabled many users’ add-ons on both desktop and Android installations. Many issues were resolved once Mozilla pushed Firefox 66.0.4 but the firm acknowledged there were still some residual issues. With the new Firefox 66.0.5, users with master passwords will now have web extensions re-enabled.

Kev Needham, from Mozilla’s add-on team, said in a blog post:

“Firefox 66.0.5 has been released, and we recommend that people update to that version if they continue to experience problems with extensions being disabled. You’ll get an update notification within 24 hours, or you can initiate an update manually. An update for ESR users will be available tomorrow. We’re also working on a fix for older versions of Firefox, and will update this post and on social media as we have more information.”

There’s not much more to the update than that but the firm may end up releasing other point releases addressing any lingering issues from the incident over the weekend. The update is available for Firefox on desktop and Android, and there will also be an update pushed out to Extended Support Release (ESR) users tomorrow. Needham said other older releases that are still supported will get an update too and that it’ll post a note to social media channels once those updates are ready.

Several issues that still lingered after the release of Firefox 66.0.4 included:

• A small number of add-ons are listed as unsupported or may not appear in about:addons, the data isn’t lost and users should be able to re-install the add-ons and recover the data.
• Add-ons that use container functionality may have lost site data or custom configurations and may need to be set up again.
• Themes may not have automatically been re-enabled but users can re-enable them manually in about:addons.
• Home page and search settings that were customised by an add-on may have been reset to default, requiring users to customise the settings again.

The update is available now, in order to update just head to the Firefox menu, press Help and then check for updates. If you don’t update manually, you’ll get the update automatically over the next few days.