I had an extension FastStream installed on all my FF and forks on my various devices (this install is on Windows 10 if it matters). But the extension got de-listed because it no longer passes whatever requirements Mozilla has for getting signed. The dev is working on getting it through, but offers it through their github via zip file. I normally use Zen, so I didn’t have issues loading it and just turned off the auto update stuff that would remove it.
The old previously listed version was on my desktop that has the stable release of FF. So I removed it so I could update, but was blocked. No big deal, I went into about:config and set “xpinstall.signatures.required” to “false” per instructions. Restarted FF and now still blocked because it isn’t signed.
Some searching says that stable is a no go, while other results still say to just flip that signatures.required to false. The AI assistant on DDG says that the “xpinstall.signatures.required” option isn’t available on stable (even though it is and able to be flipped between “true” and “false” (I saw some people say that they see the option, but is grayed out and not able to be changed at all).
Kind of annoying that FF has been so much easier to load extensions not on the add-ons site. I have had issues trying to side-load on Chromium browsers I use, and FF never gave me this problem. I imagine it will eventually be an issue for the Bypass Paywalls Clean extension (not sure if extensions not listed on the site can get signed).
Is there any simple way to force it on stable? If not, can I simply “upgrade” my stable to beta or dev, keep my profile, and remove stable without losing anything? Would like to avoid ESR since I do like to know when features/UI changes happen so I can help people (I work on consumer PCs) that use stable on their devices.
Thanks in advance for any guidance!
it works on unbranded (“Nightly”) builds, the “Developer” build, and also the ESR build but doesn’t work on normal/default firefox. afaik you can still load it temporarily in about:debugging or something. I personally just use ESR.
edit: i see you’re on windows… i tend to use this firefox fork there. https://github.com/e3kskoy7wqk/Firefox-for-windows-7
patched to be compatible on win7, but it works fine on 10/11 and supports unsigned addon
Since I mostly use the extension to download videos from various sites (currently YT is broken but I use yt-dlp with SponsorBlock for that). It might be fine to just load it with the debugging option as needed. I already use the Zen fork a lot, so another fork may just be overkill (though I am glad you shared one I wasn’t aware of). Thanks for the info!
you can upload the code to the amo as private, mozilla signs it but it doesnt get uploaded tp the page, then you get the signed .xpi and it should work. its annoying but it should work afaik.
If your extension consists of just a single JavaScript file you can simply add that to your Violentmonkey script collection. Otherwise, you can unzip the XPI file and load it as a temporary addon (AFAIK temporary addons are removed when you close Firefox).
It is possible on Firefox Stable, by using an unbranded build.
Didn’t think about that at all. I might play with that option at some point since I haven’t tried compiling a browser before. Would just like to periodically contribute to the ever shrinking percent of FF share of the browser space (which I believe forks and would guess the unbranded version don’t count towards). Really lame reasoning on my part, but do like to think their percentage needs to stop falling against the flood of Chrome/Chromium stuff. Maybe there is a extension that can spoof the specific telemetry used for that kind of statistic. Wouldn’t mind sending that while benefiting from others that are removed in different forks.
Hmm, don’t think you should need to compile it yourself? They offer downloads for Windows and macOS, and on Linux, the normal Firefox from the distro sources generally already has this compile flag enabled, as far as I know.
I mean, I actually never had a need for unsigned extensions, so never tried it myself, and obviously I wouldn’t know, if every single distro does it the same.
As for wanting to contribute to the statistics, I do understand that desire. But I believe, for the most part, it’s the user agent that counts. I doubt, they would set that to something else in the unbranded builds…
