Configure Firefox with Ansible

[apatel762]

Now that I've configured Brave Browser (Flatpak) with the playbook, it would be good to do the same with the system Firefox installation. You can use policies to configure the browser^1, similar to how you can do it with Chromium.

Would be good to get this set up so that I can use Firefox for most things and switch to Brave where I need a Chromium-based browser.

Interesting policies to play around with:

• AppAutoUpdate
• Certificates | Install (for home server certificates)
• Cookies
• DisableFirefoxAccounts
• DisableFirefoxStudies
• DisableFormHistory
• DisableMasterPasswordCreation
• DisablePocket
• DisableProfileRefresh
• DNSOverHTTPS
• DontCheckDefaultBrowser
• EnableTrackingProtection
• ExtensionSettings
• FirefoxHome
• HardwareAcceleration
• Homepage (for integrating with local home page)
• ManagedBookmarks
• NetworkPrediction (DNS pre-fetching)
• NewTabPage
• OfferToSaveLogins (turn this off)
• PasswordManagerEnabled (don't need this as I'm using a different password manager)
• Permissions (websites that are allowed to use camera, mic etc.)
• Preferences (can set and lock some preferences)
• PromptForDownloadLocation (ask where to save downloads)
• SanitizeOnShutdown (Selective) (may overlap with the Cookies settings a bit?)
• SearchBar
• SearchEngines | PreventInstalls
• ShowHomeButton
• StartDownloadsInTempDirectory (never seen this before!)
• UserMessaging (stop Firefox from displaying messages)

If it's difficult to get the policy to install uBlock Origin, the alternative would be to layer this package: mozilla-ublock-origin. I'd be surprised if it doesn't work though, because the example ExtensionSettings policy includes uBlock Origin in there...

{
  "policies": {
    "ExtensionSettings": {
      "*": {
        "blocked_install_message": "Custom error message.",
        "install_sources": ["https://yourwebsite.com/*"],
        "installation_mode": "blocked",
        "allowed_types": ["extension"]
      },
      "uBlock0@raymondhill.net": {
        "installation_mode": "force_installed",
        "install_url": "https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/downloads/latest/ublock-origin/latest.xpi"
      },
      "https-everywhere@eff.org": {
        "installation_mode": "allowed"
      }
    }
  }
}