Also had all my add-ons disabled and can’t redownload anything from add-on site

Seems to be a pretty common thread around here today, but also doesn't have any attention or fixes beyond "maybe play with your clock see if that magically works".

And when I try to install anything, I get "Download failed. Please check your connection."

Anybody figure anything out yet? Is it just going away after a while for people?

85 thoughts on “Also had all my add-ons disabled and can’t redownload anything from add-on site”

  1. same just happen to me. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling firefox. Still not working.

    edit: weird, but the firefox on my office computer is working just fine

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  2. I’m on 66.0.3. Left it open with some tabs loaded and when I came back, all addons were gone. Can’t download any addon, too.

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  3. My… Annoyed 2 minutes of searching seems to indicate there’s something wrong with the signing process that invalidated all the add-ons.

    Probably a time issue or something go pushed out that shouldn’t have.

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  4. A bug in their new system that allows to block malicious adding. At least now we know it works well. Will probably be fixed very soon.

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  5. Same here, just up and flagged all my addons suddenly. I rely on several of them intensely, without other alternatives, so unless they push a fix pretty soon I can’t be bothered with this kind of behavior. I have to use too much garbage software already.

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  6. I just had it happen to me but only 2 add-ons were considered as legacy and needed to be removed. These 2 add-ons were updated last month and I as just browsing when I got hit with the message of my add-ons being legacy and needs to be removed or replaced. Don’t know what is happening.

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  7. I’m having the same issue running FF Quantum 67.0b16 (64-bit). Changing system time back and forth did nothing. Toggling the option `xpinstall.signatures.required` to `false` didn’t help either. Life has become pain. Ad by ad I’m driven closer and closer to insanity…

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  8. Why do the devs hate add-ons so much, it was not that long ago the nuked all of them and now they are doing it again.

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  9. Same issue here, just out of nowhere. The 2 extensions/ad-ons I always use stopped working and now I can’t install any extensions. Glad to hear its not me, lets hope it gets fixed soon!

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  10. Yikes, I thought it was only me! Is this a brand new update or something? Literally all of my add-ons got blocked 🙁

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  11. i preached firefox to all my friends when i switched this year from chrome… this is going to hurt me at this weekends gathering. also any update on a fix?

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  12. Nothing happens to my fox even after a cold restart.

    It that because I disabled telemetry along with something else with enterprise policies?

    I wonder if it has anything to do with `profile/blocklist.xml`.

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  13. Well, shit, everyone. Just got home from work, having the same issues as everyone else. Every time I try to download an adblocker it says my internet connection is down. lol I hope this is resolved soon. Should I just not use Firefox for the time being? What do you all think is a decent alternative browser?

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  14. Guess what?! Just had almost all my add-ons disabled. Did a google search and end up here.

    So I.m not the only one. Happened about 10 minutes ago. Disabled add-ons are:

    \- adblock plus

    \- ghostery

    WebRTC add-on is still enabled

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  15. I’m fine with mistakes, everyone makes mistakes. What is not excusable though is that there is no option for us users to overwrite this. It’s fine if the default is to only allow only the signed addons, but there should always be an option for users to user anything they want if they so chose. The final say should always be with the end user, that’s why we use free software.
    And no, the config option does not work on Windows, I just tried it.

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  16. From Mozilla.com:

    >Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR), Firefox Developer Edition and Nightly versions of Firefox will allow you to override the setting to enforce the extension signing requirement, by changing the preference xpinstall.signatures.required to **false** in the Firefox Configuration Editor (*about:config* page).

    Thankfully I’m using 52.9.0 ESR so this worked for me. Sadly this won’t work for the latest versions of Firefox on Windows. Although I’m glad that this fix worked for me, this is nonetheless a MAJOR screwup on Mozilla’s part. If they don’t fix this soon, maybe I should just go back to using Opera.

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  17. Ya know what’s sad is I may not remember all the addons I used 🙁

    DON’T refresh firefox on the chance they will magically work again once updated.

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  18. I thought I was losing my mind. I automatically keep multiple backups of my full profile and all of them were having this issue. What is Mozilla doing?

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  19. Same here. BetterTTV was the only add-on that made it through. Weird thing is that it is the only add-on I have that I did not install through their add-ons page. I downloaded it from BTTV website and installed separately.

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  20. It’s frustrating that a) they can randomly disable all your shit without your consent and b) there isn’t a ‘stfu and do what i tell you’ option that overrides this.

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  21. So basically, something happens on Mozilla’s side and the stuff already on my computer gets invalidated? Like am I renting any of this or something, is this software as a service by any chance?

    This is horrendous. I don’t care that Mozilla’s infrastructure got knocked into orbit or anything, but it absolutely mustn’t be able to disrupt my stuff from my computer. Am I running The Man’s software or free software?! What is this?

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  22. Yeah, just happened to me too. I had firefox open too which is crazy its not like it happened after first opening firefox.

    I’m so lost without ublock Origin. I forgot how horrid Internet ads are!

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  23. same thing is happening to me :(. My addons are disabled and i can’t install anything on the add ons site. keep getting the “download failed” error. frustrated

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  24. Firefox has been my goto. Internet is hot trash without real adblockers. Time to fire up chrome with ublock origin until this all blows over.

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  25. Same happened to me. I didn’t even notice until I went on YouTube to watch a few videos and saw the page covered in ads. I never realized how spoiled my ad blocker made me.

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  26. From Bugzilla, yes, they are aware and they do care:

    “This seems like an urgent matter we want to get fixed as quickly as possible, at a high cost if necessary.”

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  27. I’m genuinely pissed. It is dangerous for Firefox to quietly disable Noscript functionality on someone’s browser who is used to and expecting the protections that Noscript offers to be active.

    Quietly disabling that service (or any security extension) is bullshit.

    \————————————-

    Dear Fireox

    Please DO NOT disable any of the security features that I’ve purposefully installed.

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  28. Firefox engineers are working on this.

    [Here’s their Bugzilla page](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1548973) (where the bug was officially reported to engineers and is being discussed).

    [Here’s a Firefox Support page](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1257893) with an “I have this problem, too” button that lets you subscribe to updates.

    The Bugzilla page specifically notes that the engineers are watching Reddit. They see what’s going on. We’re all human, and we all make mistakes, but hopefully this particular one is resolved quickly.

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  29. In other news, over the weekend Firefox looses all but a fraction of it’s users and Chrome now rules the world. Thanks Obama.

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  30. A true MAX 8 moment for Mozilla. They know better than their users! Seriously, no session suspend + popup alerting users to a cert issue and allowing them to choose which addons to potentially bypass checks on? Nah, just rip all the addons out of an active connected session. What the fuck were they thinking? It is not as if new code was being pulled. Even if it were a cert revocation (not merely an expiry), this would still constitute a heavy handed fail-close (again, new code wasn’t being pulled). I thought Mozilla couldn’t top their Mr. Robot default opt-in page content compromise, but, whelp, the beer was held.

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  31. This may be anecdotal, but I work in the tech industry and things have been odd all over this internet this week. Azure outage for a bit, and I think one of the other providers got hit too.

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  32. How on earth was this even allowed to go into production/autoupdate? Someone needs to lose his/her job for this. Anything short of this requires an absolute and total mutiny among browser users.

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  33. I’ve been using FF for 10 years but starting from today I’m looking for a replacement.

    You don’t wake up in the morning to find out that YOUR browser on YOUR computer kicked out YOUR add-ons without YOUR permission.

    This is not a software that I will tolerate.

    It’s not about them screwing things over in a certain release and not fixing it or w/e. It’s a thought that THEY remotely control stuff on MY computer.

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  34. Maybe they should use Google Calendar…ya know…to set reminders when certs are about to expire. – \_ -‘

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  35. Mozilla needs to spend less time on signalling its woke progressivism and more time on making functional software

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  36. Workaround:

    1. Locate your ‘vanished’ extensions (see below) or download the .xpi file (righclick>save as)
    2. Navigate to ‘about:debugging’ in firefox
    3. Click the ‘Load Temporary Add-on’ button
    4. Load the .xpi file you downloaded or those in your profile directory.

    don’t close firefox or you have to repeat this!

    Profile directory:

    1. in firefox navigate to: ‘about:support’
    2. open your profile folder

    OR

    Windows:

    C:\Users\{your username}\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\{profile id}.default\extensions

    Linux:

    ~/.mozilla/firefox/{profile id}.default/extensions/

    MacOS:

    ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/{profile id}.default/extensions

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  37. I’ve been a Firefox user since the Netscape/Mozilla days. That’s it. I’m done.

    Yes, I realize this was just a mistake, and that mistakes happen and people are human.

    But for me this is just the event that caps off what I perceive to be a very long, painful downhill slide for Firefox. I’ve put up with all sorts of previous bullshit becuase “Hey, at least we’re not Google.” Or, “Hey, we’re doing this for your own good.” But no more.

    For every app, service, or website that I used to use but eventually stopped using, there was a singular moment in time when I decided it was no longer worth it. This is, for me, that moment with regard to Firefox. I’m done. This is the moment where Firefox gets permanently thrown in the dustbin alongside Netscape, Yahoo, MySpace, and so on. They’ve lost my trust one too many times, and I’m tired of fighting to maintain a consistent browsing experience on a browser that keeps shifting under my feet.

    And just to be clear, it’s not merely the fact that some doofus (or more likely, several doofuses) at Mozilla forgot to renew a certificate. It’s that they yet again decided to implement a new security feature with the potential to break everyone’s addons, with no workaround and no opt-out for tech-savvy users.

    I could easily forgive the “Oh shit, we forgot to renew the cert” thing. What I can no longer forgive is the Apple-like mentality Mozilla has repeatedly demonstrated with regard to their user base, wherein users are assumed to be incompetent and incapable of determining for themselves which addons can be trusted.

    I’ve been using computers since the Commodore 64 days. I don’t need or want Firefox disabling NoScript and uBlock Origin because Mozilla has decided that the only acceptable approach to privacy and security issues is to assume that all users are incompetent and will only end up (if you let them) installing some shady malware-infested addon that turns your mouse cursor into a unicorn that poops Skittles. This is MY computer. This is MY browser. These are MY addons. And I am fully capable of telling the difference between a suspect addon and a trustworthy addon. If I wanted a browser that treats me like an infant in order to protect me from myself, I’d get an iPad and run Safari.

    Improving security is a noble pursuit, and undoubtedly many millions of non tech-savvy users will benefit greatly from the inability to install unsigned addons. But doing it \*this way\*, with no ability for knowledgeable users to override, is just one step too far away from the FOSS principles that drew me to Firefox in the first place, the most important of which (to me) has always been giving users control of their own hardware.

    It’s been fun, Firefox, but you’ve lost me forever.

    And no, I don’t suffer any delusions that \*anyone\* at Mozilla will lose any sleep over this. It’s clear that they long-ago made their choice as to which direction they want to go in. If anything, the most consistent and predictable thing about Firefox in the past few years has been their steadfast determination to \*keep\* going in that direction. But that road, IMO, leads to Firefox being just another Chrome/Safari/Edge variant (and an inferior one at that), and I have no desire whatsoever to keep riding on that train.

    Reply

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