Enable Displaying of Update Badge in Mozilla Firefox

Automatic updates of various software including Windows operating system is a very good defense against known vulnerabilities but it becomes very annoying when a software starts to update itself while you are busy working on something. The popular Mozilla Firefox web browser also supports automatic updates, but it does not interfere with user’s activities. Whenever an update is available, it asks you whether you want to download an install the new version. And if you find even this simple prompt annoying, then starting with the version 36 of Firefox, you can make it display an update badge. This small star-like icon in the toolbar indicates that an update is ready and you can restart the browser to install the downloaded updates.

You can actually click on the menu icon (three horizontal lines icon near the top-right corner of Firefox) to access the option that allows you to restart the browser and apply the updates whenever you want.

Firefox Update Badge

But his update badge is not displayed in Firefox by default. You have to enable this feature from the Firefox settings. Here is how you can enable displaying of the update badge in Firefox:

  1. First of all make sure that you are running at least version 36 of Firefox. If not, then just visit http://www.getfirefox.com/ and download a copy of the latest version.
  2. In the Firefox address bar, type about:config and press the Enter key. It will show warning, but you can click on I’ll be careful, I promise button to proceed.
  3. In the search field, type app.update.badge to find the setting we want. Then double-click on the app.update.badge setting and change its value to true.Firefox Update Badge
  4. That’s it. From now on whenever an update is ready to be installed, you will see the update badge icon on the Firefox menu. You will be able to restart the browser through the menu in order to install the updates.

Conclusion: Firefox update badge helps avoid the annoying update-available messages in the browser so that you can concentrate on your work or other browser related activities and update the browser at your own convenience.

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