Disable Firefox Add-on Compatibility Checking
By XPS on November 19, 2011. What do you think of this article?
This article is updated for Firefox 21.
In an article I wrote last April concerning the Firefox 4 add-on compatibility checker, I explained how to quickly disable said tool in order to allow older add-ons to run. That tutorial worked great for Firefox versions 4-7, but it has to be updated for Firefox 8. In this tutorial, I’ll walk through removing the old configuration and adding the new.
- 1.) Open up Firefox’s Configuration page by typing
about:configin the address bar. Read the prompt and click the button saying you’ll be careful. (See how to re-enable that warning prompt) - 2.) Inside the filter field, enter in
extensions.checkto shorten the list of preferences - 3.) Right-click the extensions.checkCompatibility.4.0 preference and choose the Reset option. You will notice the Type changes from a boolean (True/False) to a string and the Value goes blank.
- 4.) Create a New > Boolean with a preference name
extensions.checkCompatibility.21.0and set the boolean value to False. - 5.) Restart Firefox and your new preference will function just as it did for Firefox 4-20. The old preference you reset also disappeared from the Configuration page because it was an empty value.
Notice: Starting with FF 8, the old Preference needs to be removed and a new Preference with the proper major version number needs to be added each time Firefox updates. If Firefox goes from version 19 to 19.0.1, no change; if it goes to 20.0, you need to apply the change.
If current.date < (article.date + 550 days) {
print 'Some articles were manually closed before their time due to massive attempts of SPAM adverts. They may or may not be reopened in the future.';
} endif;
end humor;