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My firefox is not saving downloads. The download location is simply ~/Downloads and chrome for instance happily saves in there. Oddly, if I "download" a PDF from google drive, the firefox sprouts a new tab and shows me the downloaded PDF. But anything else doesn't seem to work. This even extends to "print to file" - it offers the "save as pdf" option but then does not go any further when pressing the "Save" button.

It is also not letting me upload files, e.g. attachments for webmail.

The "about firefox" info says version 111.0 (64-bit), Mozilla Firefox Snap for Ubuntu, canonical-002-1.0

This is on Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS, 64-bit, with GNOME 42.5

Thanks for suggestions so far. I have tried:

  • uninstalling firefox using apt and snap: sudo apt remove firefox; sudo snap remove firefox; rm -rf ~/.mozilla ~/snap/firefox. Then I installed fresh with sudo snap install firefox

  • refreshing Firefox

  • verifying the snap connections, with snap connections | grep -e home -e "personal-files" -e "removable-media" which all seemed in order, giving home firefox:home :home, personal-files firefox:dot-mozilla-firefox :personal-files, and removable-media firefox:removable-media :removable-media

  • using Private Browsing

Still no good. Any other ideas?

Mr Felix U
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    The snap version of Firefox is unable to save anything outside for $HOME directory, so it should not have any problems saving into ~/Downloads, but it ___will___ have problems saving into /tmp. BTW, you question is not clear: You say you uninstalled Firefox, but still using its snap version. – FedKad Mar 17 '23 at 09:43
  • Thanks @FedKad - I have set the downloads location back to $HOME/Downloads, still no use. Yes, to try to have a clean start I did sudo apt remove firefox and sudo snap remove firefox as well as rm -rf ~.mozilla $HOME/snap/firefox. Then I installed with sudo snap install firefox – Mr Felix U Mar 17 '23 at 09:52
  • @MrFelixU have you verified the snap connections? You can list them with:

    snap connections | grep -e home -e "personal-files" -e "removable-media"

     – Diogo Constantino Mar 17 '23 at 10:35
  • @DiogoConstantino not sure what I'm looking for - I've run the command and I see connections for firefox under all those 3 headings: home firefox:home :home, personal-files firefox:dot-mozilla-firefox :personal-files, and removable-media firefox:removable-media :removable-media – Mr Felix U Mar 17 '23 at 10:55
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    @MrFelixU please [edit] your question and add *all* your comments into your original Question. Comments may be deleted in the future. The content of the Question is what matters. – FedKad Mar 17 '23 at 11:03
  • Please, try *Help → More troubleshooting information → Refresh Firefox* tool. – FedKad Mar 17 '23 at 11:13
  • I was suspicious that some of these could be missing, and could somehow be related, but it appears they're not missing, so at this point, I'm sorry but don't know how else I can help. – Diogo Constantino Mar 17 '23 at 12:31
  • You can try with a newly created Linux user. – FedKad Mar 18 '23 at 10:11
  • @FedKad Same again - I made a new user, logged in, started firefox, tried to print to file. Nothing :-( – Mr Felix U Mar 26 '23 at 09:23
  • Anything in /var/log/syslog? Or firefox logs (don't know where they are, maybe ~/.mozilla/firefox/, or somewhere under /var/log/)? – GChuf Apr 15 '23 at 15:52
  • Maybe you should try to update the package or if it is not working try reinstalling the package through Snap Store (GUI) or with the terminal. – Arth Mane Apr 18 '23 at 05:37
  • Thanks everyone for trying to help. Good news is that it's now working ok again without any special interventions, after a few weeks and many rounds of sudo apt dist-upgrade and sudo snap refresh. Bad news is I can't tell why it happened or help anyone else who experiences this. – Mr Felix U Apr 24 '23 at 06:37

1 Answers1

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I switched from the Firefox snap to the official Mozilla apt repository 3 months ago. You can find the PPA installation instructions on this article from OMG! Ubuntu

The major problem I have with snap installations is that snaps are sandboxed for security, but this becomes very annoying when trying to access files on your disk (e.g. Firefox). I believe there is a way to configure snap's permissions (called connections), but I didn't find a way to correctly configure it.

Milo Moisson
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