User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:70.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/70.0

Steps to reproduce:

I synced a fresh firefox

Actual results:

Firefox sync It not load most of the settings despite me having ticked the [x] Preferences box under sync. This has been an issue on Windows, Mac and Linux since the feature came out.

Expected results:

Firefox fails to:

• Sync my search engine preferences
• Sync my customized toolbars
• Sync my site permissions (e.g. always block notifications)

I'm submitting this as a defect because that is the absolute minimum I would expect as none of this even remotely depends on the platform firefox runs on. Anything clever with extensions etc. would be more like an enhancement.

Just to be clear, by customized toolbars i mean when i rearrange the UI using the customize feature from the main sandwitch menu, not any addons.

Hi, thanks for the report!

Unfortunately, this is a known limitation with preferences sync ☹️ It syncs a vague, largely undocumented subset of about:config prefs. Many of those map to options in Firefox preferences, but not all of them—some are in different databases and stores. We have bugs open for all of them, in various states of discussion and implementation.

• Search engine preferences are in bug 444284. Bug 444284, comment 80 summarizes the state of things there.
• Customized toolbars are bug 943182. Bug 943182, comment 21 has the latest there.
• Site permissions are bug 470699. Bug 470699, comment 8 has the summary.

Unfortunately, our team has been super busy elsewhere, so I can't say when we'll get around to implementing them. We've been building out sync and storage for Firefox Preview in the last year, and fixing reliability issues before then. We're definitely aware that pref sync is underdone, though, and we're sorry it let you down here.

I'll go ahead and close this as a dupe of our meta bug, since we already have bugs on file for the specifics. But we will take your feedback into account. Thanks again for filing these kinds of issues.