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I installed a Firefox addon to my Tor Browser and I need to adjust some settings in this addon for it to work properly. Yet, Tor Browser does not save my changes whenever I edit the settings through about:addons. These settings do not even persist in the same session, let alone when I open a new Tor Browser process.

How can I set and save an addon's settings in Tor Browser?

EDIT:

So I played around with this some and it seems that my addon's data is stored in a JavaScript file under the browser-extension-data folder.

I know that Tor Browser does everything possible to keep itself from writing to the disk... is there a way to disable that just for stuff under browser-extension-data?

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    Some might tell you that it's unsafe to use addons and things like that, but I agree with you, it would be handy to be able to use some addons and save their settings.
    – ylluminate
    Commented Oct 17, 2017 at 3:28
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    @ylluminate Yes, moreover, the plugin I want to use does not have the usual concerns of fingerprint-ability. To anyone out there reading this: you usually don't have to worry about addons which are popular, vetted, and / or open-source.
    – GDP2
    Commented Oct 17, 2017 at 3:38
  • "you usually don't have to worry about addons which are popular, vetted, and / or open-source" <- wrong.
    – cacahuatl
    Commented Oct 17, 2017 at 22:33
  • @canonizingironize How so?
    – GDP2
    Commented Oct 17, 2017 at 23:18
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    @canonizingironize Sorry, I should have clarified that having all three of those traits is what is desirable to trust an addon. I.e., if you have a popular addon that is open-source, and can therefore be vetted for fingerprint-ability (which you could do yourself), you're 99% likely to be fine. Anyway, this is outside the scope of my question and it's just my opinion.
    – GDP2
    Commented Oct 18, 2017 at 0:04

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Ok, so it seems that all I had to do was to temporarily tell NoScript to allow scripts globally. After doing that, I went to about:addons as per usual and changed my settings. Sure enough, my settings actually got saved. I.e., they worked for the rest of the session and also persisted to new Tor Browser processes. To verify that my settings saved, I checked under Tor Browser's browser-extension-data folder. Luckily, there was a file there with my custom settings.

I guess the lesson is that some addons need JavaScript to set their settings. To others reading this: you should temporarily disable NoScript's protection for such addons. After changing the addon's settings, you can set NoScript back to globally forbidding scripts.

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