Do you use Policies in your browsers?

[Sampei.Nihira]

It is possible to use the policies in both Chromium-based and Firefox-based browsers.

In Firefox to see the policies that may be used, if any, you need to type:

about:policies

In Chromium-based browsers you need to type:

browser name://policy

This poll wants to see if you use the policies in your browsers and how many policies, if any, you have activated.

 

P.S.

I use in:

Firefox = 1 policy

Edge = 16 policies

 

Edited June 25 by Sampei.Nihira

[Sampei.Nihira]

No MSFN members are using the policies? 
I could never use my Microsoft Edge without having any policies set up.

Flags are often removed over time, in Chromium-based browsers, and only proper use of policies allows a desired feature to be available again that is no longer available.

There is also the case of some features being available exclusively through policies.
This happens in both Chromium-based browsers as when I blocked the automatic addition of search engines to the list,and eliminated Bing Search.

A former colleague of mine uses the right policy available in Firefox because he does not like the automatic browser update.

However, I will include the policies I use in Edge.
Thank you for your attention. 

[j3w9k]

Thanks for the thread and pool.

I use in Windows 7 x64:
LibreWolf = 0 policies
Supermium = 3 policies

[Saxon]

Inconvenient 'cause those reset with a clean profile, unlike flags.

[Sampei.Nihira]

Just two examples to promote the benefits.
I used to use this flag:

Show feature and workflow recommendations

in Edge which has now been abolished.
Without the right policy I would be inundated with pop-ups:

It is not possible with flags to get some functionality.
For example removing the default "Bing" search engine from the list of search engines,or removing the automatic addition of search engines.

Then of course who is content to use browsers with their various drawbacks........

 

Edited May 18 by Sampei.Nihira

[UCyborg]

Policies may live longer, but they can still disappear. I'm not sure any Chromium fork can be trusted in that regard unless it's backed by the community interested in keeping them despite the decisions "upstream".

[Sampei.Nihira]

2 hours ago, UCyborg said:

Policies may live longer, but they can still disappear. I'm not sure any Chromium fork can be trusted in that regard unless it's backed by the community interested in keeping them despite the decisions "upstream".

From June 2024 there will be many users in this forum who will have problems with some extensions used in chromium-based browsers if they do not use the specific policy.
Not the Command Line Switches.
The policy is needed.

Also because, in my opinion, for the applicability of the (corporate) policy, the browser needs to be managed by an organization.
But only time will tell whether that will be the case or not

So policies are certainly predominant over Flags/Command Line Switches.

Edited May 22 by Sampei.Nihira

[Dixel]

No, I don't. Policies are a moot point, they change in the upstream way faster than flags, they reset when you update the core, they reset with a new profile. They reset each time you move the browser onto another PC (like passwords, cookies, etc).

[j7n]

My RoyTam1's browsers don't have this, and my Opium 93 is too old to have this. If these are switches that enable and disable stuff, why hide them under a secret menu, and then say that nobody uses them?

[UCyborg]

UXP browsers indeed don't, see https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?t=29766.

For Chromium: https://www.chromium.org/administrators/policy-templates/
For Edge: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/configure-microsoft-edge
For Firefox: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customizing-firefox-using-group-policy-windows

For personal usage, you put .admx files in C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions, then you can change settings via gpedit.msc.
Afterwards, it's also possible to backup settings: https://www.thewindowsclub.com/import-or-export-group-policy-settings

For Edge, there are extra hoops to jump through for some settings to even work on non-domain-joined devices: https://hitco.at/blog/apply-edge-policies-for-non-domain-joined-devices/

General idea for group policies is to have certain Windows and other programs' settings/restrictions apply to all computers on the network and having them managed from central location.

https://www.howtogeek.com/125171/htg-explains-what-group-policy-is-and-how-you-can-use-it/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_Policy

[Sampei.Nihira]

I added the 16th policy to Edge.
I was getting annoyed with the news advertisement after each version update.

[Sampei.Nihira]

I added 1 policy in Firefox

OverridePostUpdatePage

 

[Sampei.Nihira]

Now,I use 3 policies in Firefox:

 

With the version update, what happened is what you see in the image:

I set the policy in an attempt to block the pop-up forever.

Edited July 28 by Sampei.Nihira

[Sampei.Nihira]

Added this "ShowDownloadsInsecureWarningsEnabled" new policy to Edge.

[Sampei.Nihira]

Despite this information,which I believe is inaccurate because I cannot find this hidden extension in Edge,yesterday I set up a policy blocking the extension ID.

Quote

...In further posts, the discoverer writes that this function is also available in Microsoft Edge exclusively for *.google.com domains.

 

https://borncity.com/win/2024/07/13/user-identification-via-chromium-browser-chrome-edge-brave/

Although I never frequent Google.* websites.

The policy is correctly working.

 

P.S.

Performed a new test:

https://simonwillison.net/2024/Jul/9/hangout_servicesthunkjs/

Without result.

 

The extension ID blocking policy is not needed.

So the author of the article is wrong to write that Edge has this extension hidden.

Edited August 26 by Sampei.Nihira