Can’t use default Firefox on latest Ubuntu

[andrewdotn]

Current behavior

When trying to use Firefox from Cypress on a fresh install of Ubuntu 21.10, it just hangs with
“Firefox is already running, but is not responding.”

Desired behavior

Cypress should open Firefox.

Test code to reproduce

cypress open

Cypress Version

9.3.1

Other

Ubuntu 21.10 has moved Firefox to a snap.

The snap is configured to confine Firefox using the home interface, which allows “access to non-hidden files.” The firefox profile Cypress creates at ~/.config/Cypress/cy/production/browsers/firefox-stable/interactive is considered hidden because of the . in .config. Firefox can’t access the profile folder and gets confused and says it is already running.

A similar issue was already fixed for Chromium in #7039.

As a temporary workaround, if I run, XDG_CONFIG_HOME=$HOME/cypress cypress open so that Cypress creates and uses a firefox profile in a non-hidden directory, then Firefox opens and cypress tests run successfully.

[larryh]

Hi,

The same thing happened to me. I was always able to run Cypress tests in "interactive mode" using Firefox (which is also my Development browser) and then all of a sudden I couldn't. Took me awhile to figure out why, and doing so allowed me to finally supply the correct search string/terms to Google... where this Issue came in first in the search results.

Anyway, just confirming that this is still an issue.

Thanks for all of the work that you do!

-- Larry

P.S. Cypress 9.5.4 ; Firefox 99.0.1 ; Ubuntu 21.10

[flotwig]

Full error text for SEO:

Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To use Firefox, you must first close the existing Firefox process, restart your device, or use a different profile.

Started running into this myself after upgrading to Kubuntu 22.04. Sigh. $#%! snaps. I opened a PR to fix this: #21328 It was a little tricky to detect if FF is installed as a Snap but this appears to work well.

[cypress-bot]

The code for this is done in cypress-io/cypress#21328, but has yet to be released.
We'll update this issue and reference the changelog when it's released.

[cypress-bot]

Released in 9.6.1.

This comment thread has been locked. If you are still experiencing this issue after upgrading to
Cypress v9.6.1, please open a new issue.