While you are using Firefox, the headless Firefox process will not check for updates to avoid affecting the user experience by inadvertently forcing restarts.
The underlying mechanism behind the OS-level scheduled update tasks is Firefox running in a stripped-down headless ' Background Task Mode.' 'Background Update aims to address this problem by allowing updates to be downloaded and installed, even when the user doesn't run Firefox.' How the background update feature worksįirefox background updates will be scheduled for the default profile every 7 hours when the browser is not running to check for new updates, download them, and install them without requiring user interaction. 'It also means that if they open Firefox again in response to a marketing campaign, they may not immediately get the features advertised.
This means that users that use Firefox infrequently are often out-of-date,' according to Kirk Steuber, Platform Engineer at Mozilla. 'Until now, Firefox has only downloaded and installed updates when the user runs it. This feature will allow Firefox to update, even if it is not running,' the Firefox 90.0 Beta release notes read. 'Background Update is now available on Windows. The Windows version of Firefox can now automatically upgrade itself to the latest version in the background when the web browser is not running.
