As you might be knowing, Mozilla Firefox can update itself automatically. If you didn't change the default settings when you installed it, it will be configured to check for updates periodically and install them, so you will always have an up-to-date browser. However, there is no clear indication that an update is available for Firefox until you restart it, so Mozilla has finally added a special badge to indicate that updates are available for Firefox. The update badge is disabled by default. Here is how to enable it.
Previously, to see if updates were available for Firefox, you needed to open the About dialog. In Firefox 36, which is still in the Nightly branch, Mozilla added a special update badge. It is a tiny icon which appears on the Hamburger menu button as a red or green star.
A red star icon is used to indicate a browser update, and a green icon is for plugin updates.
To enable the update badge icon, which is disabled by default, you need to do the following:
- Open a new tab and enter the following text in the address bar:
about:config
Confirm that you will be careful if a warning message appears for you.
- Enter the following text in the filter box:
app.update.badge
- You will see the app.update.badge parameter. Just set it to true to enable the update badge.
When an update arrives the next time, a star icon will appear on the menu button's icon. You can click on the menu button to restart the browser and apply the update.
That's it.
Support us
Winaero greatly relies on your support. You can help the site keep bringing you interesting and useful content and software by using these options:
FireFox 33.1 on Win 8.1 – no app.update.badge in the about:config list, in fact no badge at all
You need Firefox version 36.x. It is in “nightly” channel.
It was already enabled for me in the developer edition of Firefox.
Ohh! I am using only Nightly, so I was not able to notice this.
Thank you for mentioning.