Firefox 90: page actions button(s) missing: pin tab, copy link, etc

Question

After updating to Firefox 90 in Linux (Kubuntu 20.04) the "copy link" and "pin tab" buttons are missing. The 3-dot button under which all the other buttons could be added or hidden is missing too.

Before the update (and in older versions like 80, see below) one could see this:

Now that button is absent:

I see no such change in the release note.

Refreshing Firefox did nothing.

Is this intended? is it some error?

Is there a way to fix this beside maybe deleting all Firefox settings and reinstalling?

This happened after the last update, which is version 90. Testing version 89 the same problem is present though. Installing version 80: the problem is absent.

Answer 1

I have Firefox Version ESR on Kali and the Page Action (...) button is there.

I have Firefox 90 on Ubuntu and the Page Action button is gone.

This is apparently by design.

It is pickier now as the tools need to be picked out from other submenus.

I will watch for changes.

FF Page Action button gone

As others have said it has been removed, I've been missing it too!

That was removed in 89. Assuming its the same as Windows, the options themselves should be in the customization panel at More Tools > Customize Toolbar.

Answer 2

I am posting this as a complement to the first answer.

I have initially considered this change too brutal (I was getting used with those options and they went missing all of a sudden) but now I realize that addons provide similar options anyway. Having many default GUI options already covered by addons comes against what might be the present purpose of Firefox' designers: making the GUI as clean/bare as possible and leave the user add the rest. Also, short-keys can be used. Therefore, I will start with workarounds for latest version.

(The buttons that interest me personally are "pin tab" and "copy link".)

• copy address: Ctrl+L to select the address field, Ctrl+C to copy the address. (An exception is stackexchange edit mode where Ctrl+L is reserved for inserting link when editing. It works after closing edit mode though.) There are many addons for this, I think the best for now is Copy Link Button, which provides a button (which optionally can be shown inside the address bar) and a custom shortcut (based on Firefox' in-build option to manage extensions shortcuts).

• pin tab: install Pin Unpin Tab to add a button and use Left_Alt+P. There is also the Toggle Pin Tab addon (provides the same key combination but no button).

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The above solution is a good alternative for me. Anyway, considering previous versions, the last version of Firefox which has the buttons is version 88. (Also, that is not affected by the GUI change that came with version 89. That change can be easily disabled in about:config by setting to false the options shown when searching proton; but not the problem discussed here.)

Version 88 can be installed in Ubuntu as said under the question How to install previous Firefox version?; deb files can be downloaded from UbuntuZilla. (Installing Firefox from deb creates an executable called firefox-mozilla-build. This is usefull if you want to launch or uninistall it in terminal.)

Firefox ESR is a good solution too: now it features version 78, available for Ubuntu as snap and as PPA (as said here).

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install firefox-esr

For snap version:

sudo snap install firefox --channel=esr/stable