The Reset feature first appeared in Fx 13. Over the last two years it's been very effective in fixing Firefox problems. We improved it in Fx 25 by adding the ability to restore your windows and tabs after a reset. When Firefox takes a long time to start up or when you haven't started it in a long time we show you an info-bar that links to the reset instructions.

Goal: Improve reset and make it discoverable

As successful as the reset feature is, the main issue is that it's not very discoverable. If you've determined that there is a problem with Firefox that you don't know how to fix, the only way you'll learn about the reset feature is by visiting the support site. We'd like to change that. The two main strategies are adding reset to the help menu and offering it when someone reinstalls the same version of Firefox that they're already running.

There are also a couple of improvements that will make reset more valuable. Instead of deleting all add-ons and their data we can migrate them but leave them disabled. We can also come up with a better name and clearer dialogs. "Reset" feels a bit scary. We can come up with something more appropriate, that has connotations more in line with what the feature actually does.

Related Bugs & Documents

• TRACKING Bug 851364 - (reset-firefox) [meta] Reset Firefox to its default state

Discoverable

Reset on re-installation:

• Bug 750979 - Offer profile reset option upon re-installation of the same application version
• Bug 1027318 - Download button should offer a reset option before download of the same Firefox version
• Bug 988725 - Override Firefox UA on *.mozilla.org to include the real version and channel
• Bug 880884 - Polish the page displayed after a Firefox Reset
• Bug 891095 - [UX] Implement a nicer replacement for the Reset Firefox dialog
• Bug 860238 - Breakdown: Handle "Profile Reset" gracefully in FHR
  • Round 1 design explorations - June 11
    • Round 1 feedback - June 11
  • Round 2 design explorations - June 17
    • Round 2 feedback - June 26
    • 2-button mockup that Bram did for sumo
  • Reset button on mozilla.org idea - July 3
    • Reset button feedback - July 3
  • Round 3 design explorations - July 3

Add reset to the help menu:

• Bug 872241 - Promote "Reset Firefox" in Help menu
• Bug 872240 - Replace "Restart with Add-ons disabled" with "Reset Firefox" in Help Menu
  • Presentation
• Bug 1027884 We need a more appropriate name for "Reset Firefox"

Improvements

• Bug 1017919 - Reset Firefox: Preserve extensions but disable all of them
• Bug 862203 - In-product about:support API