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I let Firefox auto update and I don't like some new feature, the new GUI, or it broke something. How do I roll back or downgrade?

NOTE: Potential duplicate questions (1, 2) did not come up in a search of SuperUser, but they did as suggested questions when I typed the title. Weird. Those other questions do not give instructions on how to downgrade Firefox, simply pointing to where you can find older versions. Such referring-only questions are no longer welcome on SuperUser.

Nemo
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YetAnotherRandomUser
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5 Answers5

9

There is no built-in rollback or downgrade function within Firefox. In fact, on their support page for the subject, they strongly insist that you do not roll back.

I rolled back a longstanding, many times upgraded, Firefox 57 to the specific version and bit depth below. I did not manually uninstall Firefox, but was prepared for things to go sideways. YMMV.

If you know better and don't want to heed their warnings, then do these steps:

  1. Download an older version of Firefox here. If you are trying to back down from 57, you'll want to grab 56.0.2, (Windows US English version 32 bit exe) here. You can look at all of their 56.0.2 releases here.
  2. Wait until the download finishes.
  3. Find your profile folder. You can find where that is here. Also, this Mozilla Support article covers steps 3, 4, and 5 of this answer.
  4. Close Firefox.
  5. Back up your profile folder. You can simply copy the folder somewhere else, just in case stuff goes sideways.
  6. Find the executable you downloaded in step 1.
  7. Run it.
  8. Go through the installer, and when its complete, launch Firefox.
  9. My previous session, extensions, and settings were all as they were before the upgrade/downgrade. I was pleasantly surprised.

If your install is broken, try the usual steps to fix installation problems:

  1. Completely uninstall Firefox via Programs and Features
  2. Reboot
  3. Run a cleanup utility like CCleaner.
  4. Manually remove the leftovers and profile folder if you have to.
  5. Install from the 56.0.2 executable you downloaded.
  6. Verify it works with a new profile.
  7. Restore your backed up profile (Mozilla Support)

See also: gHacks, MozillaZine.

YetAnotherRandomUser
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7

I didn't roll back my 16.10 installation of Firefox 57, but installed Firefox-ESR alongside it.

https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

all my extensions seem to work fine

better yet.. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all/

Barry vT
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1

This answer is based on my answer on AskUbuntu - it suggests and describes howto install Firefox ESR 52.5 on Ubuntu and Mint.

I think it is better to downgrade to Firefox ESR 52 (this branch is planned to be supported until 2018-06-26 and will get security updates).

You have two options here:

  • Get Firefox ESR 52.5.0 from Jonathon F's PPA. See my answer on a similar topic. You can install the package on 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) and 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) from this repository with the following commands:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/firefox-esr
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firefox-esr

Or

  • Get Firefox ESR 52.5.0 from Mozilla Team's PPA (the first versions were published here at 2017-10-11 as the result of discussion on the ubuntu-desktop maillist). You can install the package on 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr), 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), 17.04 (Zesty Zapus), 17.10 (Artful Aardvark), and 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) from this repository with the following commands:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firefox-esr

For your information:

Debian already have official firefox-esr package.

N0rbert
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0

There is no "rollback" option with Firefox. You can find old versions on oldapps(dot)com, but make sure you completely remove 57, I would use RevoUninstaller to uninstall and clean and then run CCleaner afterwards. When installing an older version I would disable your internet and disable auto-updates in Firefox upon install completion before reconnecting. I've personally switched to Cyberfox and Palemoon permanently. I'm done with Mozilla.

Murdock
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0

I used this to downgrade to the latest ESR version after trying to pin down yet another font rendering bug in the last Release channel version, but it should work for any Firefox edition. If you do want to downgrade, I recommend the ESR edition - because it's designed for enterprise customers that need stability and predictability (as opposed to us plebs that obviously don't), it receives no shiny feature updates (and therefore no new bugs) while still receiving regular security updates.

  1. Download your desired version of Firefox and install it - it's not necessary to uninstall the old version as the installer is capable of installing in-place (to the same directory) without touching your data.

  2. Once installed, try opening Firefox. If by some miracle you don't get the dreaded "warning" that won't let you go any further because your user profile is too new, you're good to go and you can skip the rest of these steps. If you do get this warning, click Exit.

  3. Open %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles (copy and paste into the Explorer address bar if using Windows) and click on the folder containing your user profile - this should be the only one that has your name at the end of it.

  4. Look for a file called compatibility.ini - delete it, then restart your PC. When you next open Firefox, you should now be taken through to your user profile as normal.

Hashim Aziz
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