Geolocation API always turns on

[Fritz66]

What happened?

I prefer to disable the Geolocation API, but everytime I start Waterfax it's enabled again. Is it only me experiencing this issue? Version G6.0.13

Reproducible?

• [ ] I have checked that this issue cannot be reproduced on Mozilla Firefox.

Version

G6

What platform are you seeing the problem on?

Linux

Relevant log output

No response

[MrAlex94]

How are you disabling it? I was under the impression geo didn't work on Linux.

[Fritz66]

I tried it via about:preferences#general, but I noticed that there is no switch available under about:config. In order to disable it I set the URL to about:blank.

https://freeimghost.net/images/2024/05/15/Bildschirmfoto-zu-2024-05-15-17-07-43.png

[kubatron]

I tried it via about:preferences#general, but I noticed that there is no switch available under about:config. In order to disable it I set the URL to about:blank.

https://freeimghost.net/images/2024/05/15/Bildschirmfoto-zu-2024-05-15-17-07-43.png

Just go to about:config -> geo.enabled -> and change to false

it is very weird that Waterfox has some issue with GUI option that are not able to change like API Geo, OSCP Queries and that should be fix in my opinion.

[Fritz66]

@kubatron Did you read my OP? Please re-read the first sentence.

[LAURAilway]

I poked around the preferences config trying to fix this. Turns out, this is more or less intended behavior. The radio buttons for the geo api don't actually change the geo.enabled setting, as one might assume, they change geo.provider.network.url, toggling between "https://location.services.mozilla.com/v1/geolocate?key=%MOZILLA_API_KEY%" and "". This is probably to facilitate the default value for geo.provider.network.url being "", as to prevent any calls to Mozilla that aren't strictly necessary. The buttons, however, seem to be struggling with detecting the current setting, therefore making it appear as if the setting itself did reset on restart.

tl;dr: the setting works as intended, this is simply a ui problem

[Fritz66]

@LAURAilway , thanks for your reply.

Just curious: does about:blank the same job as "" ?

[LAURAilway]

It should, however, the setting that actually controls the geo api url isn't browser.geolocation.warning.infoURL, but geo.provider.network.url, which is actually already being changed by the settings page. (The setting you changed in about:config seems to just configure the information page for the geo api, you can try that yourself by visiting the original url [https://www.mozilla.org/%LOCALE%/firefox/geolocation/] and replacing %LOCALE% with any locale). Setting geo.provider.network.url to about:blank should do the same as leaving it empty tho.

[Fritz66]

The funny thing is that geo.provider.network.url was already empty, but the Geolocation API settings still show it's enabled: https://postimg.cc/5jbYmqdc Am I right that I can just ignore the Geolocation API settings as long as geo.provider.network.url is empty?

"Turns out, this is more or less intended behavior." Well, maybe the developers will rethink that.

[LAURAilway]

Yes, you can ignore it if geo.provider.network.url is empty. As stated above, this is just a bug with the display, the functionality works as intended (that is what I meant with intended behavior).