Determining source of an extension

Firefox allows installing extensions from AMO or any other source.

How does the user tell from where an extension was installed? The info does not appear in about:addons

If the addon doesnt make it clear i dont think you can find out. Im not sure, try checking the addons.json file in your profile folder.

Thanks noitidart. Thanks also for all your great extensions.

Mozilla really needs to add a way for Firefox to disclose from where extensions are installed, and consequently from where they will get updates.

I took a look inside addons.json, but there is much more in that file than I expected… I’ll have to get a tool to format the json in a more readable format.

There really isn’t a way to tell where you got it from. They’d have to record it, and just assume anything that isn’t recorded was placed locally by you. The closest thing I can find would be the em:updateURL in the install.rdf in the extension.

Thanks Jerod. I’ll take a look in install.rdf as well. That won’t indicate the source of an extension, but should specify from where updates will be installed.

Thanks man which extensions of mine are you talking about?

Im so busy with new dev on addons I havent maintained my out there addons :frowning:

If there isn’t an update URL it came from AMO. (currently) Otherwise it’s likely from the distributor in the updateurl.

Not necessarily. There are non-AMO add-ons that don’t have an updateURL and are updated in other ways. There’s no reliable way to know where an add-on was installed from, unfortunately.