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I've got a new installation of Xubuntu (20.04 LTS). I'm using Firefox web browser, but it acts strange - when I open a http(s) link from some applications, it opens normally, but for others, the link opens in a new window. This window has different settings (search engines, shortcuts, ...) and none of the plugins are there.

Looking at the task manager, enter image description here

I see there are separate processes for FF that's working fine and the one without plugins/settings, ... But both processes use the same binary /usr/lib/firefox/firefox

The applications from where the links take me to the "broken" FF seam to be installed by Snap (Slack, PyCharm, ...), but there are some applications installed by Snap that work fine (Kate)

Both xdg-open http(s)://example.com and exo-open http(s)://example.com open the link in the correct instance of FF.

How do I get rid of the double instance/settings/plugins FF?

EDIT:
Both FF instances seam to be installed by apt:

user2583501
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3 Answers3

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After more research I have found the problem ...

There were 2 different Firefox profiles set and links from some applications were using a different profile.

To solve, I navigated to about:profiles with FF and deleted one of the profiles (along with all of it's files). Before deleting I had to close all the windows that were opened with that profile.

Thanks everyone for your help!

user2583501
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Did you try to remove the Firefox snap package? This can be done in the terminal by using this command:

sudo snap remove firefox

Hope this helps.

Kind regards

EDIT: I'm able to reproduce the issue with the slack snap and I found the following answer that may help you. You should be able to proceed in the same way for the Pycharm snap.

slack shows opened links as another slack instance in taskbar

nicdm
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As said, you may have 2 Firefox installations from 2 different sources, one is the apt package and the other is the snap package or you may have 2 firefox profiles running at the same time.

Solution 1: Check your Firefox installation source

Determine wich version of firefox you're running

In each firefox instance go to ☰ Menu > Help > About Firefox

  • Firefox installed from apt is:

Mozilla Firefox for Ubuntu

canonical - 1.0

  • Firefox installed from snap is:

Mozilla Firefox for Snap for Ubuntu

canonical-002 - 1.0

Different Firefox instances running at the same time installed from different sources

Remove unwanted version of firefox

Open a terminal, then remove the version you don't want on your system:

sudo snap remove firefox < removes snap package

sudo apt purge firefox < removes apt package

Or use the graphical Ubuntu store in Whisker Menu > Ubuntu Store, then search for firefox and use the red [Remove] button to remove unwanted versions.

Set your preferred browser

Go to Whisker Menu > Settings Manager > Preferred Applications and select Firefox from the drop down options in Web Browser

Solution 2: Check how many profiles you have

  1. Close the non-working instance of Firefox
  2. In the working instance, open a new tab and navigate to about:profiles
  3. Check the profile that has This is the profile in use and it cannot be deleted., this is your current working profile.
  4. Remove additional profiles using the [Remove] button under listed profiles

Firefox profile manager opened in a new tab

Source: Firefox Support: Profile Manager

Marco R.
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