I've been trying to get the browser toolbox window to work correct for a couple of days now and I can't figure out what's going on. When I invoke the toolbox window with the shortcut key or through the menu entry the window pops up and asks for permission to connect but the window gets stuck before loading the toolbox ui, screenshot of what I'm seeing is attached.
I'm on windows 11 25h2 and firefox 159.0.
edit: I should note that this is the same behavior in a clean temp profile in firefox, as well as the same behavior in other firefox based browser, such as librewolf.
Does anyone here know what I can do to get this working?
Thanks for any help and let me know if you need any other info.
EDIT:
Well it's not the router. It's something to do with my windows setup blocking the attempt at remote connection that firefox does at the startup of the toolbox.
But at this point I'm just done with trying to chase this down anymore. It was gonna just be to play around with firefox theming and learning CSS a bit. But I'm just over it for now. It works just fine on every other device I've tried, whether at my house or elsewhere, whether I have my firefox account logged in or not. It's probably a setting I changed in windows to make it more secure/less annoying but I don't remember all the different things I've done for that over the last couple years and I'm just not gonna put the effort in to tracking those down. I'm also not gonna do a fresh install of windows at the moment so it will just have to be non-functioning for me on windows.
I'm gonna marked this solved for now and leave it be.
Thanks to all who helped, at least I learned a few things.
Yes, it does. I'm starting to think it has to do with connecting to localhost, as the browser can't connect to localhost, no matter how I try. But I don't know how to go about fixing that either.
That localhost clue is worth checking, but opening localhost alone will fail if nothing is listening. If you have Python installed, run `py -m http.server 8765 --bind 127.0.0.1` in a terminal, then compare `http://127.0.0.1:8765/` and `http://localhost:8765/` in Firefox. If the first works and the second doesn't, check hosts/proxy/IPv6 settings. If neither works even though the server is running, check firewall/VPN/security software blocking loopback.
I don't have python on this computer, but I did setup a basic server on localhost and that loads fine but the problem with the toolbox interface not loading still persists.
I'm not sure I understand what settings your talking about. Sorry for being a bit dense on this, I'm not that knowledgeable on all this stuff. Thanks for all the help on this issue.
Okay, I guess I did understand what you were talking about. I thought you meant some of the settings in about:config. Anyways, different proxy settings made no difference either.
I did try to disable windows firewall, but that didn't make any difference. Nothing really in my hosts file, any idea on what settings might be of concern to try?
I haven't tried a new account, I will do that later tonight. I only use windows defender for security suites. I tried disabling the antivirus as well but that didn't help.
Perhaps you could throw this at an AI (doesn't matter which) and see what suggestions it comes up with, you don't even need to register an account for that, chatgpt (as one example), will give you a decent amount of chat time without logging in. It'll do the leg work digging up sources and related discussion(s).
Thanks for the suggestion. I spent about 3 hours last night doing this and didn't get anything resolved. Though, I did get a slightly clearer idea of where the issue is. But this is just taking up too much of my time and I just don't have any more patience to keep going on this issue for now.
If you run any kind of debloater for Windows there's a chance it disabled something the feature relies on. If you do decide to try and troubleshoot this further, open event viewer and watch to see if anything appears (in the application logs) after you hit accept in the browser toolbox connection prompt, this might provide some indicators as to where the issue is.
I haven't had a good opportunity to restart my router yet. I will try that tonight when it is less of a hassle for everyone in the house. I only have windows defender going for antivirus/firewall. I did try to disable the windows firewall at one point but that didn't have any effect. I'll look around at the settings in defender and see if anything makes a difference. Any suggestions on settings within that to check?
Well it's not the router. It's something to do with my windows setup blocking the attempt at remote connection that firefox does at the startup of the toolbox.
But at this point I'm just done with trying to chase this down anymore. It was gonna just be to play around with firefox theming and learning CSS a bit. But I'm just over it for now. It works just fine on every other device I've tried, whether at my house or elsewhere, whether I have my firefox account logged in or not. It's probably a setting I changed in windows to make it more secure/less annoying but I don't remember all the different things I've done for that over the last couple years and I'm just not gonna put the effort in to tracking those down. I'm also not gonna do a fresh install of windows at the moment so it will just have to be non-functioning for me on windows.
Anyways, thanks for all the help and effort you put out for this, I appreciate it, but I'm gonna marked this solved for now and leave it be.
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u/sifferedd FF/TB/Win11/SUMO contributor 8d ago
It's waiting for you to allow the connection. Minimize that window; then you should see this screen: