Firefox

Firefox is a graphical web browser developed by Mozilla. It can be used with a Firefox Sync Server.

Installation

Set programs.firefox.enable to true in your system or Home Manager configuration. Keep in mind that the NixOS and Home Manager modules have different options, so choose accordingly.

Firefox Variants

There are several Firefox variants that you can choose to install. To choose a variant, set programs.firefox.package accordingly. Note: The packages for the variants listed below are installed instead of the normal firefox package. Thus, you'll have to choose one among these options.

Variant: Official Binaries

Mozilla provides official pre-built Firefox binaries. This is the firefox-bin package and will be downloaded directly from the Mozilla servers.

Variant: ESR

firefox-esr is the Extended Support Release of Firefox provided by Mozilla, which receives only security updates and a more relaxed cadence of feature implementation.

Variant: Nightly

Nightly builds are daily builds of Firefox from the central Mozilla repository.

Reproducible

This method uses flakes to pull in nightly versions of Firefox in a reproducible way, and is recommended for use. If you don't want to use flakes, check out the next section.

First, add the following inputs to your flake:

inputs = {
  firefox.url = "github:nix-community/flake-firefox-nightly";
  firefox.inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
};

Then, using the specialArgs attribute to pass flake inputs to external configuration files, add the nightly package to your system:

{ pkgs, inputs, config, ... }:
{
  environment.systemPackages = [
    inputs.firefox.packages.${pkgs.system}.firefox-nightly-bin
  ];
}

The downside of using this method is that you'll have to update the flake input before you can get a new nightly version, which also means that you might miss new builds since the flake lags behind the nightly release.

Non-reproducible (Impure)

Using this method is bad for reproducibility since it fetches resources from non-pinned URLs, but it also means you always get the latest nightly version when you build your system.

Tip

If you don't want to use flakes but you still want to reproducibly install Firefox nightly, you might want to use this method with niv.

nixpkgs.overlays =
  let
    # Change this to a rev sha to pin
    moz-rev = "master";
    moz-url = builtins.fetchTarball { url = "https://github.com/mozilla/nixpkgs-mozilla/archive/${moz-rev}.tar.gz";};
    nightlyOverlay = (import "${moz-url}/firefox-overlay.nix");
  in [
    nightlyOverlay
  ];
programs.firefox.package = pkgs.latest.firefox-nightly-bin;

Once you've added the overlay, you'll need to pass the --impure option to nix commands. For example, in order to build and activate your configuration, you'll have to run:

$ nixos-rebuild switch --impure

Customizing with Home Manager

Home manager allows more customization for firefox. Such as extensions, search engines, bookmarks, userChrome and user.js. The example below shows a basic config defining Nix packages & options as a search engine. More options are available on Home Manager's site

home-manager.users.username = {
  programs.firefox = {
    enable = true;
    profiles = {
      "user" = {
        id = 0;
        isDefault = true;

        search.engines = {
          "Nix Packages" = {
            urls = [{
              template = "https://search.nixos.org/packages";
              params = [
                { name = "query"; value = "{searchTerms}"; }
              ];
            }];
            icon = "${pkgs.nixos-icons}/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/nix-snowflake.svg";
            definedAliases = [ "@np" ];
          };
          "Nix Options" = {
            definedAliases = [ "@no" ];
            urls = [{
              template = "https://search.nixos.org/options";
              params = [
                { name = "query"; value = "{searchTerms}"; }
              ];
            }];
          };
        };
      };
    };
  };

FAQ

How do I use ALSA with Firefox instead of PulseAudio?

programs.firefox.package = (pkgs.wrapFirefox.override { libpulseaudio = pkgs.libpressureaudio; }) pkgs.firefox-unwrapped { };

Tips

=== Enabling Plasma Browser Integration === 1. Add the following line to your configuration.nix (note that enabling Plasma automatically does this):

programs.firefox.nativeMessagingHosts.packages = [ pkgs.plasma5Packages.plasma-browser-integration ];

2. Install KDE's Firefox extension.

Use KDE file picker

You must instruct Firefox to use the file picker offered by the XDG Desktop Portal framework. This setting can be found in Firefox's about:config as widget.use-xdg-desktop-portal.file-picker. The value 1 means "always". To set it using NixOS, add to 'configuration.nix'

  # Make Firefox use the KDE file picker.
  # Preferences source: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/firefox#KDE_integration
  programs.firefox = {
    enable = true;
    preferences = {
      "widget.use-xdg-desktop-portal.file-picker" = 1;
    };
  };

Use xinput2

You can make Firefox use xinput2 by setting the MOZ_USE_XINPUT2 environment variable. This improves touchscreen support and enables additional touchpad gestures. It also enables smooth scrolling as opposed to the stepped scrolling that Firefox has by default. To do this, put the following in your config:

environment.sessionVariables = {
  MOZ_USE_XINPUT2 = "1";
};

Troubleshooting

If you can't start the browser because of a configuration error

For example:

firefox
1554035168269	Marionette	FATAL	XML parsing error: undefined entity
Location: chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
Line 2526, column 13:            <toolbarbutton id="tracking-protection-preferences-button"
JavaScript error: resource:///modules/aboutpages/AboutPrivateBrowsingHandler.jsm, line 28: TypeError: this.pageListener is undefined

An easy way to get away from this is to start firefox with the firefox -safe-mode command. Then you can troubleshoot your actual problem or you can call your luck by calling the refresh option (a special button will appear when firefox starts in this mode). This will reset your configuration to a sane state and you will be usually able to start the browser again, but you will lose most of your customization.

`nativeMessagingHosts` doesn't work

Such as enablePlasmaBrowserIntegration, enableGnomeExtensions, and enableBrowserpass.

They do not work with the firefox-bin derivation^[1] or with firefox installed via nix-env

↑ https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/47340#issuecomment-476368401

Screen Sharing under Wayland

When using Firefox with Wayland, screen sharing options might be limited and require additional configuration (exact capabilities vary with different compositors).

add Pipewire support to Firefox:

environment.systemPackages = [
  # Replace this
  pkgs.firefox
  # With this
  (pkgs.wrapFirefox (pkgs.firefox-unwrapped.override { pipewireSupport = true;}) {})
];

Enable PipeWire

services.pipewire.enable = true;

Enable xdg desktop integration:

xdg = {
  portal = {
    enable = true;
    extraPortals = with pkgs; [
      xdg-desktop-portal-wlr
      xdg-desktop-portal-gtk
    ];
  };
};

Set environment variables to hint Firefox to use Wayland features. E.g.:

# Classical NixOS setup
environment.sessionVariables = {
  # only needed for Sway
  XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP = "sway"; 
};

# Home Manager setup
home.sessionVariables = {
  # only needed for Sway
  XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP = "sway"; 
};

Ensure that the environment variables are correctly set for the user systemd units, e.g.

# Sway users might achieve this by adding the following to their Sway config file
# This ensures all user units started after the command (not those already running) set the variables
exec systemctl --user import-environment

[1] ttps://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/47340#issuecomment-476368401

[1]