Remove Comcast/Xfinity start page from Firefox (Mac)

by Ryan Parman • July 7, 2011 • Tutorials • 14 comments

The Comcast/Xfinity installer adds crap to your Mac, including forcibly setting an Xfinity portal as the homepage. It’s a really douchey thing to do.

I set up my new Comcast Xfinity internet service today using the self-install kit. After walking through the necessary questions, it then forced me to download and install their crap-ware onto my Mac before it would register the flow as “completed”. Being given no choice, I begrudgingly ran the installer. Afterwards, I ended up with extra Comcast/Xfinity bookmarks in multiple browsers (Firefox & Safari), and the homepages for both browsers were set to an Xfinity portal page.

Fixing the homepage in Safari was easy — you just change it how you always change it. Unfortunately, fixing Firefox’s homepage was trickier. The installer disabled my ability to change my homepage back to whatever I wanted it to be. BAD COMCAST! BAD!

I did some Googling around, but nobody seemed to know WTF was going on or how to fix it. I ended up dropping into Terminal and running cd /; grep -ri comcast . in order to find the solution. Here it is: they add a custom user.js file to your Firefox profile which overrides certain settings from the about:config panel (including the browser homepage). Ass-hats! This is how I fixed it:

Fixing the issue

In your address bar, go to about:support.
Click the button that says “Show In Finder” (Mac) or “Open Containing Folder” (Windows). This should show you your profile folder.
Go inside of that folder, and look for a file called user.js. Delete it.
Go into the preferences, and reset your homepage.
Restart Firefox, and your preferred homepage should be back.

Update (2011-11-09):

When I originally posted this, it was after I had hunted across the Comcast FAQ, forums and Google as a whole to try to find a solution. Nothing was written about this issue when I came up with my workaround.

After I posted the solution to this problem and it caught the attention of some bloggers (Brian Krebs from Krebs on Security and Tim Cushing of Techdirt), Comcast wrote up the same set of instructions (although with a less anti-Comcast tone) and added them to the Comcast FAQ. While they didn’t directly rip me off, they didn’t even give me a hat tip for bringing the solution to light.

Stay classy, Comcast.

Discussion

skegley

July 15, 2011

Thanks for your assistance with this. It’s infuriating to have Comcast install software on your machine and have them force you to accept it to get online. After doing so, I went and scoured my Mac for anything Comcast or anything (including hidden (invisible) files) that were modified at approximately the same time I installed the software. I found “.cim_install_log”, a hidden file that is an installer log of what happened. It’s a shell script that adds all the bookmarks to your browser, but it doesn’t seem to do much else. Full install log below.

To add to the rant, someone should bring a class-action lawsuit against Comcast. I wish there were an alternative in our area. Verizon 4G Mobile Broadband looks good, but not enough Gb of data for the price. We can only hope for Comcast’s demise!

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zeal17

July 27, 2011

Why was Firefox unable to update this file? Was the permissions set wrong, or do you think it’s just a badly formed file?

janetkamiri

July 30, 2011

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Ryan Parman

August 7, 2011

@ZEAL17: It’s because Firefox (and Mozilla before it) use user.js to override any other settings in the browser. The homepage preference was being stored correctly, but was being overridden by the user.js preferences.

clinpath

November 9, 2011

i can’t even begin to thank you for all you have done. to skegley, i could not even agree with you more. here in houston, time-warner used to be THE cable service provider in >85-90% of the metro area. then when comcast came in, they WERE okay, then HORRIBLE, then they seemed to be catching on and now is just above BARELY TOLERABLE…moved into a home and had to have a second story dropped performed; not unexpected, but after having them cancel on me 4 times and then have their “understudies,” i.e., their subcontractors who do the work THEY should be doing out right lie about the appt times, i almost switched. still might…

hug your kids for me and tell them how lucky they are to have you as their father, and that this is coming from a middle-aged, married physician who doesn’t have any of his own. you, sir, are one of a rare breed, a working man who shows how it should be to be a father. bless you.

Comcast locks Mac/Firefox to its own home page | Firefox Extension Guru's Blog

mcjudy

December 9, 2011

Thanks much for this posting. So annoying Comcast did this. And using XMarks it infected a bunch of other systems too (although as I recall the other systems didn’t pick up the user.js file so at least I could change back the home page).

Kolmashekidim

March 14, 2012

Thanks for the lead on this. Everything is as you say except the last step, where I do not find any user.js file. There are two other .js files there named prefs.js and sessionstore.js however.

My problem is not the homepage, but that the Xfinity page keeps popping up at random times trying to get me to install Comcast software. Any suggestions?

FloRain

September 10, 2012

I’d like to add that for Win neither removing the whole FF profile nor creating a brand new profile worked.
Comcast software is really like some kind of virus. I had to re-install chrome and FF with all the addons.
And, yes… I had to loose all the user data (thanks to synch features it isn’t much… but still)…

cha_siu_bao

September 11, 2012

First of all, I’d like to thank you for trying to bring this issue to light.

I have Windows 7 installed on a MacBook Pro and I very rarely use Mac OS 10 (Lion). My default (and only) web browser is Firefox. I used ‘Add or Remove Programs’ to find any Comcast software, and found none. Every time I open Firefox it opens FOUR Xfinity tabs. Although this doesn’t affect Firefox functionality, it still makes me feel like my web browser no longer belongs to me.

Your solution worked perfectly in Mac OS 10 (Lion). But I tried it in Windows 7 and can’t find the user.jp file in the containing folder. Does the Comcast file go by another name in the Windows 7 version of Firefox?

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