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JCCyC
Asked: 2022-05-10 09:42:35 +0800 CST

Firefox AND Chrome refuse to download anything except in Downloads folder

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This is Ubuntu 22.04, x86_64. Any download I make from either browser just isn't done, and silently. It just proceeds, does not show me any error message, and no file appears. When the selected folder is the default Downloads folder (I configured both browsers to ask), the download happens normally. Smells like a security thing, but there's no user feedback.

In Firefox, I tried setting browser.download.improvements_to_download_panel in about:config to False. No effect.

firefox

2 Answers

  1. It is because of Ubuntu use snap to install and run Firefox. Nowadays only right way to install Firefox is to remove snap Firefox, download Firefox from Mozilla site and unpack to ~/firefox
    Then just run ~/firefox/firefox
    In the case Firefox can use its own auto update system.

    You will not find another right way to do it. No relevant official PPA (for current release), no official flatpak, no official AppImage. You can find .deb but most likely it will be outdated build made for Ubuntu or Debian. Ubuntu and Debian make new Firefox builds very slow, may takes weeks after release.

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  2. Best Answer

    I ended up following directions similar to these:

    sudo snap remove firefox
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa

    Then put the following in /etc/apt/preferences.d/mozilla-firefox:

    Package: *
Pin: release o=LP-PPA-mozillateam
Pin-Priority: 1001

Package: firefox*
Pin: release o=Ubuntu
Pin-Priority: -1

    Then

    sudo apt install firefox

    The .deb is at version 100 now and it works perfectly well. Downloads to anywhere too.

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