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How to setup Firefox Developer Edition on Ubuntu

Harrsh Patel on October 08, 2021

Do you want to install and use Firefox Developer Edition on your Ubuntu and don’t know how to go about it?! If your answer is yes, then this articl...
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Francisco Zapata • Edited

Thanks a lot bro!!!
Only one note: "StartupWMClass=Navigator" worked for me to avoid duplicated icon on dock
I have Ubuntu 22.04

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46and2

For some reason it didn't help. I had to set it to StartupWMClass=firefox-aurora on my Ubuntu 22.04.1.

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andrei-the-developer

This issue is likely related to the .desktop file of your Firefox Developer Edition. Specifically, the StartupWMClass property in the .desktop file may not be set correctly. The StartupWMClass property helps the GNOME Shell to associate the running application instance with the correct .desktop file and, consequently, the right icon in the dock.

To fix the issue, follow these steps:

1)Open the Firefox Developer Edition and then open a terminal.

2)In the terminal, run the following command to get the WM_CLASS property of the Firefox Developer Edition:

xprop WM_CLASS

After running the command, your cursor will turn into a crosshair. Click on the Firefox Developer Edition window. The terminal will display the WM_CLASS value, which should look something like this:

WM_CLASS(STRING) = "firefox", "Firefox Developer Edition"

Take note of the second value (in this example, "Firefox Developer Edition").

3) Open the .desktop file for Firefox Developer Edition with a text editor. The file should be located in ~/.local/share/applications/ and named firefox_dev.desktop. If you can't find it there, look for it in /usr/share/applications/.

nano ~/.local/share/applications/firefox_dev.desktop

4) In the .desktop file, find the StartupWMClass line and update its value to match the second WM_CLASS value you found in step 2. In this example, the updated line should look like this:

StartupWMClass=Firefox Developer Edition

5) Save the changes to the .desktop file and close the text editor.

6) Restart your Firefox Developer Edition, and the issue should be resolved. The new instance should now be associated with the existing icon in the dock.

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ARIF

Brother you have any idea how to uninstall that?

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NeilFranci

I think u can just delete the firefox..bz2 file in opt folder

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Emílio Vieira

Thanks Guy.

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Gabe Pérez

Thanks for sharing this. I've applied it for Firefox Developer and Thunderbird Test on Ubuntu 22.10 as live USB installation.

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Sebastian Zelonka

Thanks!

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Gareth McNicol • Edited

Thank you for posting this, just a quick note: you do not need to chown the directory in /opt/

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Zmatelj89

Thanks, it worked on Endeavour OS

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Barbaros Yıldırım

Thank you so much, this article helped me a lot!

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SoHeil-SS

Thanks. worked fine for me .Kubuntu 20.02

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robin-UI

Thanks bro its working

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Uyioghosasere Daniel Obasuyi

Awesome. Thanks

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Aman Khys P N

thanks a lot mate... really helped me out.

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Lucas Almeida

Thanks a lot bro, this helped me.

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Shayan

thanks bro Harrsh

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Salaheddin AbuEin

Thank you so much.

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Muhammad Saeed

Thanks a lot brother. It Worked perfectly on ubuntu 20.04.

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Abdelrahman Shaheen

Thanks

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MrGultekin

Thank You So much .....

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Ahmed Abdelaziz

Thank you, its working !

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Ivan García Aguilar

Thank you very much! You helped me :D

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Amirmoh Divani

Thanks it worked for me on Ubuntu 22!
Just one question does it update automatically as well?

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Amirmoh Divani • Edited

Someone said you can just delete the fierfox.bz2 file in /opt directory but idk

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Teryn

Any idea on how to have both regular firefox and firefox dev installed at the same time? I had the regular installed before doing this and it just got installed over the old one

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Pavlo Zhukov • Edited

You can't use "Add to Favorites" action on Ubuntu 22.04 with this config. StartupWMClass should be without spaces to fix it. So, I used StartupWMClass=firefox-developer-edition.

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Lakshmanshankar C

amazing blog everything works just like that. steps are clear and sweet

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Khemendra-Bhardwaj

Thanks a lot, Very helpful post

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Alex Córdova

Its work! Thanks!

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Kirby 🐷

Thank you, work beautifully in openSUSE.
I put it in my home folder instead (doesn't require root)
Then I begin at step 10 to register the app.

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Nabil Shaikh

Thanks so much, worked like a charm. Recently booted my system to POP!OS so I was pretty happy to learn this worked right off the bat

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Kepler D. Filemon

Thanks, I'm a beginner and was surprised that it worked for the first try

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Eng kue

Thanks a lot, i was using chrome all alone but i don't like it anymore

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dhinesh20022806

Thank you so much, what if in future how can i update the firefox developer edition.