Firefox Release Candidate Channel

[Muse]

I discovered in the course of trying to get rid of "Buzzdocks ads" adware nuisance that I'm on the firefox release candidate channel. Evidently Firefox is updating automatically and behind the scenes with release candidates. I'm right now on version 17.x. I figured this might not be such a great idea, but searching in the Firefox menus I don't see any way to change the way Firefox updates or doesn't update. WTH. Do I have to uninstall FF and reinstall to get some control? 😕

 

[Chiefcrowe]

AFAIK you would have to uninstall the release candidate version and reinstall the standard release channel version to go back, I don't think there is a way to do it otherwise.

 

[Muse]

AFAIK you would have to uninstall the release candidate version and reinstall the standard release channel version to go back, I don't think there is a way to do it otherwise.

Aha, I had no idea I had the release candidate installed in the first place. I'll have to uninstall it. Thanks.

 

[bruceb]

Muse, see this link: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2280605

To change your update channel:

1. Close Firefox.
2. Go to the Firefox program directory.
3. Enter defaults\pref
4. Edit channel-prefs.js in Notepad.

Change:

pref("app.update.channel", "release");

to the one you desire. Update channels to choose from:

nightly
aurora
beta
esr
release

Example:

pref("app.update.channel", "beta");

5. Save and exit.
6. Re-open Firefox.

To check the change, open about:config and enter: app.update.channel. The channel should now be the one you chose.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

Thanks bruce. Didn't realize you could do that!

 

[Muse]

Muse, see this link: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2280605

At that link the post says:

To check the change, open about:config and enter: app.update.channel. The channel should now be the one you chose.

The next post says:

Changing app.update.channel in about:config and then restarting Firefox should also do it.

Where is about:config? 😕

Edit: I did a search on it and it seems you enter that in the Firefox location bar. OMG. I see I could change it from "release" in there but have no real idea what those other choices would do...

 

[Jodell88]

At that link the next post says:

Changing app.update.channel in about:config and then restarting Firefox should also do it.

Where is about:config? 😕

You just type about:config in the address bar.