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  • mccmcc@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:19 PM

    Okay so the first thing I want to do on Librewolf, obviously, is disable strict tracking protections. That's a feature. I hate features. The only reason I'm using Librewolf is so that they'll turn features off automatically instead of me having to do it.

    Last time I used firefox, there was a choice in this box. Now there's only one option, "Strict", inexplicably with a radio button.

    Can I turn off tracking protection and make Librewolf into basically a copy of Firefox, or is about:config time?

    Enhanced tracking protection box in firefox
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Replies

  • mccmcc@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:21 PM

    Alternately, am I confused, and "ResistFingerprinting" is the obnoxious shit that breaks web pages, and 'tracking protection:strict" is something minor like third-party cookie protections that Firefox Baseline also has? (If so, that's REALLY strange that the high-impact feature is a tiny unlabeled checkbox lower down, whereas the low-impact feature is this big box with lots of warnings and explainers on it.)

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  • mccmcc@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:26 PM

    Okay another LibreWolf question. They've got these two questions about WebGL. But they don't mention WebGPU. What should I take that to mean? Firefox on Windows supports WebGPU by now. I guess Librewolf… doesn't? Or they do, but they don't have the "warning about to enable webgl" popup? Or what?!

    * Always allow WebGL * Hide the WebGL per-site popup
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  • mccmcc@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:27 PM

    Librewolf disables offers to save passwords, offers to save credit cards, and offers to save addresses by default. Finally. Fucking finally.

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  • mccmcc@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:33 PM

    Man setting up a browser is so slow. I wish it was possible to self-host the settings syncing in Firefox instead of it being fake possible

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  • mccmcc@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 5:05 PM

    OK here's a question. And I thank you all for your patience with my questions and my cussing and whatnot.

    In the last browser I enjoyed using—mid-2023 Chrome—there was a "V" button on the right side I could click to search my open tabs.

    Firefox has, oddly, 2 versions of this, neither adequate. (A) brings up this complex "Firefox View" thing. (B) is a menu that allows an awkward tab search. I think I like (A) better, though I wish it had fewer clicks.

    Librewolf is missing (A). Can I enable it?

    Firefox diagram showing a weird shelf icon on the left and a "V" icon on the right.
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  • mccmcc@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 5:08 PM

    Also, as long as I'm now highly customizing my browser instead of simply accepting whatever slop Mozilla gives me… what I *want*, what I *really want*, is to remove the "V", put the "drawer"/"Firefox View" on the *right* side where the V is, and have clicking the button auto-select the text entry box in either "recent browsing" or "open tabs"? To replicate the old Chrome mid-2023 behavior?

    Could I do this fancy thing with… "User Chrome"? or "XUL"? Or "ZOOL"?

    Game Boy box art for "Zool: Ninja of the Nth Dimension"
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  • mccmcc@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 5:08 PM

    Back in the 00s I wrote a bunch of "XUL". The "XUL" called out to a web service I operated using "XML-RPC". I thought this was so cool. I thought this was the future of technology.

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  • mccmcc@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 5:14 PM

    More things I wonder but I think I know the answer to

    1. Does "Add tab to taskbar" add the tab to… the *Windows* taskbar?

    2. Container groups are still a plugin, published by Firefox. Does that mean if I install the container groups plugin on LibreWolf, I'm still gonna be getting ads for Firefox's VPN service or whatever even in LibreWolf?

    3. Librewolf doesn't make "Profiles" any easier to use then their (wildly impractical) state in baseline Firefox 140esr, does it?

    "Add tab to taskbar" button
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  • Gourdgourd@indieverse.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:23 PM

    @mcc ResistFingerprinting is the thing that breaks many webpages, IMHO.

    I like Librewolf, but paranoid Firefox as a project probably shouldn't be the main slop-free version for normal people to use. Waterfox was/kinda is that but...

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  • :blahaj: Why Not Zoidberg? 🦑WhyNotZoidberg@topspicy.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:24 PM

    @mcc Yes, this is correct. "Strict tracking protection" is the baseline feature in Firefox.

    I use Waterfox, because Liberwolf was just too annyoing and restricting, and I find it a good middle ground, but I don't think I can go back to Firefox.

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  • bipolaronbipolaron@scholar.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:28 PM

    @WhyNotZoidberg @mcc when I was picking between librewolf and waterfox I could have sworn waterfox leadership was not lending confidence. wish I remembered what the drama was.

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  • Faraiwefaraiwe@mstdn.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:35 PM

    @mcc it would be way too convenient if we could save settings to a file :/

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  • ErinChateauErin@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:45 PM

    @faraiwe @mcc I've had good success copying the profile folders between installs, except that...there was something weird about actually switching between them? I *think* my successes have been when I overwrite the profile folder in the new install with the old profile

    many of my current tabs are technically older than this computer

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  • mccmcc@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 4:52 PM

    @coelacanthus @faraiwe like yeah i'm sure i can scrounge around and figure out where firefox stores prefs and where librewolf stores prefs and copy them between and hope they work, but the point of the built in syncing is that it does all the scrounging for you

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  • damien 🥖🐈‍⬛🧣eramdam@erambert.me
    Oct 14, 2026, 5:06 PM

    @mcc it might just not be in the toolbar? is the Firefox View button available as an option when you customize the toolbar in LibreWolf?

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  • Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
    Oct 14, 2026, 5:18 PM

    @mcc 1. Yes. I'm not sure if it's exactly the same as PWAs. I think it's like "install PWA" if there is a PWA, but otherwise just makes the tab into its own window/taskbar item that you can pin to the taskbar if you want.

    2. If you get it from a.m.o, probably. I assume you can get a build from outside of a.m.o without that. I'm not sure.

    3. AFAIK no. I find Profiles largely useless except for testing how things would behave in a completely vulnerable browser, and for that just running with $HOME pointed to something else (and a suitable sandbox since it's wide open) works better for me than Profiles. Container tabs and First-party Isolate meet my needs better for everything else.

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  • mccmcc@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 5:19 PM

    @dalias i didn't know about. First Party Isolate. I think I'm going to have to do a certain amount of reading to understand how it's different from regular firefox isolation

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  • Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
    Oct 14, 2026, 5:24 PM

    @mcc First-party isolate makes it so all cookies/storage for embedded third-party resources are scoped under the domain in the URL bar. It was developed by/for Tor Browser and upstreamed in Firefox. The Mozilla folks don't much like that it exists, and have developed their own much weaker heuristic 3p tracking protections that it replaces.

    The canonical example is that embedded social media widgets can never see your logged-in state on their own site. Basically, embeds for tracking don't work at all.

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  • mccmcc@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 5:25 PM

    @dalias To your knowledge, how different is this from "Strict" tracking protection in Librewolf?

    Also, I want to have the option to share data across domains, for example if a bank or something has spread a webapp across multiple domains for valid engineering reasons, I assume this can still be opted into?

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  • Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
    Oct 14, 2026, 5:30 PM

    @mcc There's no way to disable 1p-isolate on a per-site basis or anything. It's global.

    I have not run into anything that seems to be broken by it. Normal SSO-type workflows nowadays know they have to pass data thru redirects and stuff rather than relying on being able to access cross-domain cookie state.

    But if you're concerned, using a weaker tracking protection that can be turned off per-site might be a better choice for you. You cannot switch later without losing all your saved cookies (because of how the re-scoping works; actually I think the scoped ones are still there, but scoped in a way they'll never get used unless you switch 1p-isolate back to how it was set before).

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  • Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
    Oct 14, 2026, 5:31 PM

    @mcc I'm not sure exactly what "Strict" tracking protection does. I would assume LW has it behaving the same as upstream Mozilla's. My use of 1p-isolate predates "Strict" mode, so I never really evaluated the latter's technical design, but I tend not to trust Mozilla to get things like this right. They *always* want there to be some workaround for their slimy adtech buddies...

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  • mccmcc@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 5:32 PM

    @dalias Well, the reason I'm asking is Librewolf has this big box for a "strict" mode, and opt-outs to a "strict" mode, and this is unique UI not in base firefox, and I know this corresponds to SOMETHING that is either an option in Base Firefox or actively on in Base Firefox but I'm still a little confused about what.

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  • Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
    Oct 14, 2026, 5:34 PM

    @mcc Then I'm confused, because upstream Firefox has a "Strict" setting for "Enhanced Tracking Protection" too. Sorry, I don't want to speculate more about details I don't know about.

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  • 波鉄 (Hatetsu)HaTetsu@mastodon.com.pl
    Oct 14, 2026, 9:36 PM

    @mcc Firefox letting you put toolbar buttons in the tab bar has been a thing for well over a decade and a hundred releases, I think they called that redesign "Australis"? Pretty neat thing if you insist on having maximum space for the address bar

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  • poetasterpoetaster@mastodon.gamedev.place
    Oct 14, 2026, 5:33 PM

    @mcc yeah, I also thought XUL was cool. But even being an xslt and xml schema junky of yore, I inevitably learned XUL IS CRUEL.

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  • Jef Poskanzerjef@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 6:43 PM

    @mcc You reminded me that I wrote a command-line XML-RPC caller in 2005. It probably still works.

    Oh god, looking at the code it uses XSLT to format the results. I just got XML-PTSD.

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  • Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
    Oct 14, 2026, 5:14 PM

    @mcc It seems like "Firefox View" is just an item you can add/remove/move with Customize Toolbar, so I think you can put it on the right of the tab bar, or on the main toolbar.

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  • j-r conlin, in the shadowsjrconlin@mindof.jrconlin.com
    Oct 14, 2026, 5:57 PM

    @mcc

    Not sure if it helps, but:

    "A" is "Firefox View" which was a failed project and is probably being sunset. Like you, though, I really like it. You can get to it via about:firefoxview, and you can pin that tab to have it available.
    "B" is the "new and improved" Search and Manage Tabs flyout, which also has a link to Firefox View at the very bottom. It will also show things like Tab Groups (which I never really use) or other "smart tab" crap. You can move it from the main bar with Customize. I threw it in the overflow menu.

    I also tend to use the URL shortcut of % to search open tabs, and ^ to search my history. (* lets you search bookmarks, if you ever wanted. Those are nice because they're all keyboard accessible.

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  • mccmcc@mastodon.social
    Oct 14, 2026, 5:58 PM

    @jrconlin I'm confused. Clicking B gives me the same dropdown (a very brief conventional menu) as I got in 140ESR. Is this because I disabled Nova?

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  • j-r conlin, in the shadowsjrconlin@mindof.jrconlin.com
    Oct 14, 2026, 6:29 PM

    @mcc

    Possibly? It could also be that you haven't gotten the update that has the new menu in it (I tend to run "nightly" because I clearly need help and refuse to get it).

    The menu I see looks like what I've attached. The older menu is just the list of tabs. Not quite sure how to get that to display again, so might be more a "Heads up" about an incoming feature.

    A Search and Manage tabs menu from Firefox.
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  • Enola Knezevicrhelune@todon.eu
    Oct 14, 2026, 5:11 PM

    @mcc I simply copied everything from my FF profile to LW profile, and it worked. Only, delete cookies on close was automatically checked, so I lost those (shopping baskets I keep until there's a discount, word games results, and, of course, I got logged out of everything). But my addons were there, all the open tabs, pinned tabs, history, bookmarks were there.

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  • Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
    Oct 14, 2026, 8:43 PM

    @mcc I copy the prefs.js file. That covers everything but getting the necessary addons installed, I think.

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  • technomancytechnomancy@hey.hagelb.org
    Oct 14, 2026, 8:55 PM

    @dalias @mcc in a reasonable browser you'd be able to point it at a list of opensearch.xml URLs and have them added instead of clicking around over and over

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  • technomancytechnomancy@hey.hagelb.org
    Oct 14, 2026, 9:00 PM

    @dalias fair but opensearch.xml is a pretty tiny wrapper that gives the %s substitution pattern just a little bit of metadata (icon and name mostly)

    <OpenSearchDescription>
<ShortName>Technomancy Search</ShortName>
<Description>Technomancy's search engine</Description>
<Url type="text/html" method="get" template="https://search.technomancy.us/q?q={searchTerms}"/>
<Image width="16" height="16">https://search.technomancy.us/favicon.ico</Image>
</OpenSearchDescription>
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  • Cassandrichdalias@hachyderm.io
    Oct 14, 2026, 9:14 PM

    @technomancy Yeah, but it's coming from a URL that could get changed out from under me unless I control the domain. As a user I have no idea what stability properties it will have on my side. Will my browser load it once and save the contents permanently? Will it re-query it periodically? What happens if it's down? Will the owner of the site gain information that I'm using the search they published? Etc.

    All of these are artificial headaches made by using a URL rather than a text entry box where you type/paste a pattern.

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  • technomancytechnomancy@hey.hagelb.org
    Oct 14, 2026, 9:32 PM

    @dalias ah sure; I was thinking of just pointing it at a set of openxmls from my dotfiles repo

    I'd rather have Normal Dotfiles like every other damn program on my system, but Firefox has just gotta be Special

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