Cannot install any add-ons or themes: "Download failed. Please check your connection."
Hi,
I cannot download & installed any add-ons or themes. After clicking the install button, I always get a red bar saying "Download failed. Please check your connection.". This happens on Firefox, Firefox beta and Firefox nightly.
I did some googling and found similar posts from a few years ago. These seem to suggest I don't have the correct certificate used to verify extension signatures:
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1257997
- https://support.mozilla.org/bm/questions/1258023
I checked my certificates and I don't have anything from "Mozilla Corporation - signingca1.addons.mozilla.org" (there's a screenshot of this cert in the first forum link above), so I think this is indeed the issue? I've attached a screenshot of my cert list where the Mozilla cert should be.
Please note I am on an M3 Pro macbook pro. It's a work laptop and I thought maybe our network settings were interfering with things, but my previous work laptop (Intel) could install add-ons just fine.
Would appreciate some help!
P.S. I found a workaround where I copied over all extension JSON and XPI files from my old laptop. So I am using my previous extensions just fine but still cannot download any new ones. Also I don't have access to my old laptop anymore so can't copy over any new ones.
All Replies (10)
If you right-click (or Ctrl+click) the blue button and click Save Link As, can you get a more informative error message? You also could check the Browser Console (Command+Option+J) to see whether there is an error with the CDN redirect or some kind of block.
Note that you posted with a Nightly build, does this also happen with the current release?
You can create a new profile as a quick test to see if your current profile is causing the problem.
See "Creating a profile":
If the new profile works, you can transfer files from a previously used profile to the new profile, but be careful not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over problems.
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer said
If you right-click (or Ctrl+click) the blue button and click Save Link As, can you get a more informative error message? You also could check the Browser Console (Command+Option+J) to see whether there is an error with the CDN redirect or some kind of block.
- "Save Link As" downloads the extension as an xpi file to my Downloads folder, so that seems ok?
- On the dev tools network tab, I can only see GET requests to googleanalytics when I click the blue button
cor-el said
Note that you posted with a Nightly build, does this also happen with the current release? You can create a new profile as a quick test to see if your current profile is causing the problem. See "Creating a profile": If the new profile works, you can transfer files from a previously used profile to the new profile, but be careful not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over problems.
It happens on a brand new profile. I've updated Nightly a couple of times in the past 2 days already.
yusufmahtab12 said
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer said
If you right-click (or Ctrl+click) the blue button and click Save Link As, can you get a more informative error message? You also could check the Browser Console (Command+Option+J) to see whether there is an error with the CDN redirect or some kind of block.
- "Save Link As" downloads the extension as an xpi file to my Downloads folder, so that seems ok?
- On the dev tools network tab, I can only see GET requests to googleanalytics when I click the blue button
Thank you for testing. #1 sounds good. For #2, the retrieval probably won't appear in a given tab's Network list, you would need to enable network logging in the Browser Console (gear icon at the right end of that window's filter bar).
yusufmahtab12 said
It's a work laptop
Do you see any active policies if you visit about:policies in the address bar?
Are you able to install the downloaded xpi manually?
Hi both, thanks for your help so far. I realised that our company is using Netskope to control traffic on our laptops and addons.mozilla.org (or something similar) wasn't allowlisted. I asked for it to be added but the response was that Firefox has some security issues (I'm not sure what exactly) and it's not a supported browser for us, so unfortunately I'm going to have to use Google Chrome.
I also checked my personal PC and addons can be downloaded there without any issues. It also doesn't have the Mozilla certificate I mentioned in the original post. At this point I'm confident the issue is due to the company's network configuration.
Modified by yusufmahtab12
Well, that's frustrating!
If they do not block or prohibit extensions in Firefox but merely block the Add-ons website, then you can always download the extension elsewhere to a removable USB device and install the extension locally.
Did you try manually installing the extension xpi file like I mentioned?