Test Updates for Firefox and Thunderbird
Warning: Changing your update channel may result in undesired updates. Further, it may result in no updates at all when the channel is not being used on a regular basis (such as "beta"). Change your update channel at your own risk.
Firefox and Thunderbird both come with an automated mechanism for installing updates when new versions are released. It is possible to change these update settings in order to download beta or nightly builds as well.
By default, if a user installs a nightly build, that build will use the update channel for nightly builds, not the normal release channel. This allows users to continue to update on a daily basis if they want to keep up to date on nightly builds.
The update channel indicates which updates you what to have automatically update you version of Firefox.
The channels are:
- beta - beta test programs
- nightly - the nightly builds
- release - release channel
For Firefox
You can confirm your current setting by typing in about:config in the URL field of Firefox and filter for "channel". The preference, app.update.channel, shows what channel you are currently set to use. You can also open the channel-prefs.js file to see the same information.
On Windows
- Look in {Thunderbird install dir}\defaults\prefs\channel-prefs.js using a text editor.
On MacOS:
- Right click (<ctrl> click) the Firefox app in the Applications directory or whever it is installed.
- Select the "Show Package Contents" menu item.
- Navigate in the resulting Finder window to Contents -> MacOS -> defaults -> pref -> channel-prefs.js.
If line 2 looks like this of channel-prefs.js:
pref("app.update.channel", "beta");
you are on the beta channel.
If you want to only receive the final release updates you can simply change this line to:
pref("app.update.channel", "release");
and then save the file and restart Firefox.
For Thunderbird
The preferences are here:
Windows
- Look in {Thunderbird install dir}\defaults\prefs\channel-prefs.js using a text editor.
On MacOS
- Right click (<ctrl> click) the Thunderbird app in the Applications directory or whever it is installed.
- Select the "Show Package Contents" menu item.
- Navigate in the resulting Finder window to Contents -> MacOS -> defaults -> pref -> channel-prefs.js.
change:
pref("app.update.channel", "release");
to:
pref("app.update.channel", "nightly");
and you will receive the nightly builds every day when they are built.
