Downgrading Firefox

13 Jun, 2026

Firefox recently started spamming me with update box dialogues. As it happened that unfortunate day, I misclicked on "Update" instead of closing the dialogue box. Everything broke for me. Videos, full screen, etc. I wanted to roll back but downloading older releases and booting them resulted in infinite loops.

These instructions are for OSX:

• Install your version of choice from the Firefox FTP server.
• Back up whatever you don't want to lose.
  • See this for backing up bookmarks.
• $cd ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/
• $rm -rf *
• Open the new Firefox to see if it works. Then, close it.

I also wanted to completely disable checking for updates.

• Quit Firefox.
• $sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/org.mozilla.firefox EnterprisePoliciesEnabled -bool TRUE
• $sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/org.mozilla.firefox DisableAppUpdate -bool TRUE
• Boot up Firefox and go to about:policies. You should see DisableAppUpdate set to True.
• You can import your bookmarks and set preferences in about:preferences. The Preferences panel will say "Your browser is being managed by your organization". This is because, in order to set policies, you need to enable Enterprise Policies. See this. Anyhow, you needn't be worried about this statement. It won't affect your browser experience whatsoever.