Add-on Guidelines Update

Since we introduced the Add-on Guidelines, we’ve had a much better way to tell developers what is allowed or not for non-AMO add-ons. We also have a much clearer set of rules for blocklisting add-ons that we think don’t provide a good user experience. We also told you that we would announce any changes to the policy in this blog, which is what this update is about.

I updated the guidelines to make it clearer that it’s not okay to install “setting protectors”. These are generally implemented as system services that are installed alongside an add-on, to ensure that the search settings that were changed by the add-on can’t be changed again by other add-ons (and sometimes users themselves). This clearly limits the control users have over their own settings, and will predictably lead to stability problems if more than one of these services ends up being installed in the user’s system.

We will blocklist add-ons that are installed with setting protectors because we believe that users come first and should always be in control of their browsing experience.