Mozilla Firefox is one of the most used browsers across the world. Firefox is one of the safest browsers, hence the user base for Firefox is increasing day by day. Firefox has been designed to download updates in the background, while you use the browser. It downloads and keeps the updated files in the background, so the next time when you restart your computer and restart Firefox, then those updates get installed automatically.
Hence in a perfect world, you don't have to do anything for updating your Firefox browser, but if you're the person who doesn't close their browser windows or maybe doesn't even restart your computers for a few days or weeks, then you might have updates pending in the background that have not been installed.
Quick Commands to Update FireFox in Ubuntu
If you want the commands to run and update the Firefox browser in Ubuntu, then just run the below 3 commands, and that's it.
# update package list
sudo apt update
# upgrade the firefox browser
sudo apt install --only-upgrade firefox
# reboot system
reboot
Run the above 3 commands in the same order and your Firefox browser will be updated.
Update Mozilla Firefox
To check the version of the Firefox browser and whether any updates are available or not, simply go to the Hamburger Icon, at the top right side of the toolbar in Firefox, then go to the bottom of the menu dropdown and select the Help option, and from the Help menu, click on About Firefox option.
It will open a small window and in this window, you'll be able to see the current version of Firefox, build details, and other details.
Now to confirm that you have installed the latest version of Firefox, visit the official web page of Firefox here and confirm.
If you leave the automatic updates on for the Firefox browser, then, in case of any pending updates, they are downloaded automatically, and then you are prompted to restart the browser so that the updates can be installed.
In case, for some reason, your browser is not getting updated automatically, then you can update Firefox browser yourself, by running a few commands. So let's see what are these commands required to update/install the Mozilla Firefox, if the Firefox updates are unavailable in your Ubuntu repository.
How to update Firefox in Linux?
Run the below command to update the sources list of your Ubuntu:
# update package list
sudo apt update
The following command will refresh the list of all the available packages along with their version. This command will not install or upgrade anything.
Next, run the below command to upgrade the packages.
# upgrade all the packages
sudo apt upgrade
Thi command will install updates for all the packages for which updates are available in the source list mentioned in /etc/apt/sources.list.
You need to have a proper internet connection to make this process run smoothly. Wait for some time; it takes time to update those files. When you run this command, the system will ask you for confirmation, and you will have to approve the progress by inputting Y, when prompted.
You can also run the below command as an alternative to the upgrade command,
sudo apt full-upgrade
This command performs the same function as apt upgrade, but it will also remove any outdated dependencies that are no longer required and will install or remove packages as needed to resolve dependencies.
Now you have to reboot the PC using the following command to reflect the updates in your browser.
reboot
If you don't want to update all the packages, and you just want to update Firefox, then you can run this to install/update Firefox
sudo apt install --only-upgrade firefox
And that's it.
Conclusion
Sometimes users don't prefer the automatic updates of the Firefox due to network usage or some other issues, but if they wanted to update their Firefox, This article gives them a clear picture of how to install and update Firefox using Linux on Ubuntu.
Hope you like this article.
