{"id":3143,"date":"2016-07-29T11:42:36","date_gmt":"2016-07-29T00:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/?p=3143"},"modified":"2016-07-29T17:09:49","modified_gmt":"2016-07-29T06:09:49","slug":"how-to-switch-to-a-64-bit-firefox-on-windows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/2016\/07\/29\/how-to-switch-to-a-64-bit-firefox-on-windows\/","title":{"rendered":"How to switch to a 64-bit Firefox on Windows"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I recently wrote about <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/2016\/07\/22\/firefox-64-bit-for-windows-can-take-advantage-of-more-memory\/\">64-bit Firefox builds on Windows<\/a>, explaining why you might want to switch &#8212; it can reduce the likelihood of out-of-memory crashes &#8212; and also some caveats.<\/p>\n<p>However, I didn&#8217;t explain how to switch, so I will do that now.<\/p>\n<p>First, if you want to make sure that you aren&#8217;t already running a 64-bit Firefox, type &#8220;about:support&#8221; in the address bar and then look at the <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.mozilla.org\/en-US\/docs\/Web\/HTTP\/Gecko_user_agent_string_reference#Windows\">User Agent<\/a> field in the Application Basics table near the top of the page.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If it contains the string &#8220;Win64&#8221;, you are already running a 64-bit Firefox.<\/li>\n<li>If it contains the string &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/WoW64\">WOW64<\/a>&#8220;, you are running a 32-bit Firefox on a 64-bit Windows installation, which means you can switch to a 64-bit build.<\/li>\n<li>Otherwise, you are running a 32-bit Firefox on a 32-bit Windows installation, and cannot switch to a 64-bit Firefox.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Here are links to pages contain 64-bit builds for all the different release channels.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mozilla.org\/en-US\/firefox\/all\/\">Release<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mozilla.org\/en-US\/firefox\/beta\/all\/\">Beta<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mozilla.org\/en-US\/firefox\/developer\/all\/\">Developer Edition<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/nightly.mozilla.org\/\">Nightly:<\/a>\u00a0 This is a user-friendly page, but it only has the en-US locale.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/ftp.mozilla.org\/pub\/firefox\/nightly\/latest-mozilla-central-l10n\/\">Nightly:<\/a> This is a more intimidating page, but it has all locales. Look for a file with a name of the form <code>firefox-&lt;VERSION&gt;.&lt;LOCALE&gt;.win64.installer.exe<\/code>, e.g. <code>firefox-50.0a1.de.win64.installer.exe<\/code> for Nightly 50 in German.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>By default, 32-bit Firefox and 64-bit Firefox are installed to different locations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><code>C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Mozilla Firefox\\<\/code><\/li>\n<li><code>C:\\Program Files\\Mozilla Firefox\\<\/code><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you are using a 32-bit Firefox and then you download and install a 64-bit Firefox, by default you will end up with two versions of\u00a0 Firefox installed. (But note that if you let the 64-bit Firefox installer add shortcuts to the desktop and\/or taskbar, these shortcuts will replace any existing shortcuts to 32-bit Firefox.)<\/p>\n<p>Both the 32-bit Firefox and the 64-bit Firefox will use the same profile, which means all your history, bookmarks, extensions, etc., will be available in either version. You&#8217;ll be able to run both versions, though not at the same time with the same profile. If you decide you don&#8217;t need both versions you can simply remove the unneeded version through the Windows system settings, as normal; your profile will not be touched when you do this.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, there is <a href=\"https:\/\/wiki.mozilla.org\/Firefox\/win64\">a plan<\/a> to gradually roll out 64-bit Firefox to Windows users in increasing numbers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently wrote about 64-bit Firefox builds on Windows, explaining why you might want to switch &#8212; it can reduce the likelihood of out-of-memory crashes &#8212; and also some caveats. However, I didn&#8217;t explain how to switch, so I will do that now. First, if you want to make sure that you aren&#8217;t already running [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3143"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/nnethercote\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}