How to force to restart firefox in a clean way?
Update:
Now it is possible to do it directly in the url bar, asking for the special page about:restartrequired
about:restartrequired
It opens a page with a button to restart firefox that should preserve pages, tabs and windows.
Fast Internal answer:
Press ShiftF2, write restart in the opened bar, then press enter.
On old versions, e.g. the 41.0.2, it was needed to write the word true too: restart true.
Some words more:
It's possible to force Firefox to restart through the Developer Toolbar, usually accessible via ShiftF2 or via menu (Firefox/Tools >> Web Developer >> Developer Toolbar in the English version).
A bar will be opened in the bottom of the page where it will be possible to write the command
restart
It is possible to use restart --nocache true or restart --nocache false in order to force it the refresh of the tabs content or to use the local cached instead.
In a similar way it is possible to force the safe mode upon restart.
Synopsis: restart [--nocache] [--safemode]
Restart Firefox
Options:
[--nocache] (boolean, required) Disables loading content from cache upon restart [--safemode] (boolean, required) Enables Safe Mode upon restart
- It works on Firefox 45.0.2. For the old synopsis check in the history of this answer.
An alternative way; pick a firefox Add on:
Another option was to pick one of the many add-ons available for Firefox from the add-on page, such as Restart Button, or Restart... that can add a button or a line in the the menu. However these examples are not compatible with Firefox 57 or later.
In Firefox 62, the browser CLI (ShiftF2) was removed (change tracker, release notes). I found two ways to restart Firefox 62 or newer:
Using about:profiles
- Navigate to
about:profilesin the URL bar. - At the top-right corner of the page, click
Restart normally....
Keyboard shortcut in browser console
- Press CtrlShiftJ (or CmdShiftJ on Mac) to open the Browser Console.
- Press CtrlAltR (or CmdAltR on Mac) to restart the browser.