The shortcut on my MacBook Pro to Firefox suddenly stopped working. How do a get this shortcut to open Firefox again? If an email has a hyperlink, I now cannot open that either, as Firefox is my primary browser.
MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)
Hello
Try searching for Firefox first - it may just have got accidentally moved. At the top right of the screen is the Spotlight magnifying glass. Click that to get a search box, and type in Firefox. The top hit should be the application.
If you can open it that way, once it's running, right-click or command-click on the icon in the dock and select Options - Keep in Dock. That'll fix it there for next time.
If you can't locate it with Spotlight, you may need to re-download from http://firefox.com. It'll download the installer to your Downloads folder, and you should open the install image and drag the application to the Applications folder (there should be a shortcut in the installer window). Then launch from Applications and do the "Keep in Dock" trick as above.
Matt
Hi Matt,
Thank you so much for replying. Unfortunately, my problem persists. When I click on the Firefox in the Applicaitons folder from the search engine, nothing opens. using Safari, I try to download a new Firefox and it circles and circles... and then stops and nothing downloads. I have been using FIrefox on this computer with no problems for years and suddenly I have this problem. Any other suggestions?
Pam
Hello
When you go to search in Spotlight, does the Firefox icon look exactly like this (with the orange and blue logo)?
Is there a small arrow in the bottom left corner of the icon, at all? for example:
If there IS an arrow, it's actually an alias (a shortcut) and not the program itself - you'll need to delete the alias and try to download the app from the Firefox site. Not sure why it's not downloading - perhaps try a reboot and see if that helps.
In either case, I would also try repairing your permissions. Again in Spotlight, search for "Disk Utility". When the Disk Utility window comes up, click on your hard drive on the left, and click "Repair Permissions" at the lower right. Let the repair process complete. Try the download or launching Firefox again.
Matt
Thanks again. The problems persist. The icon in the search was the app, not the alias. I pepaired permissions and restarted (I always restart in response to almost all technical problems.) I continue to be unable to open Firefox or to download it. From the download window there was a small arrow on the upper right corner that suggested maybe the downloads had occurred multiple times. So I dragged that app icon into the application folder and tried to open it from there. Still no success.
OK, let's focus on the download problem for now. I'm going to go through the process in detail. Can you verify that this is what you're doing, and let me know at what point your process differs/throws an error?
In Safari, when you go to the Firefox website, and click Download, you should see the download pop down into the Downloads folder in the Dock, and the Downloads icon at the top right should progress with a blue bar. When it's done, and you click on the Downloads icon, you should see this:
Double-click on the icon, and it should open a new window to verify the download - and should then open a window that looks like this:
In theory you should be able to drag the icon on the left into the shortcut folder on the right, which will copy it to your Applications folder. If you already have an older version of Firefox there, it should give you a warning that you will overwrite that version.
If all that goes as above, and it still won't launch, I suspect a Firefox preference file is corrupt. We can look at that option if the above process fails.
Matt
accessing Firefox on MacBook Pro
