How to use KDE global menu with Firefox?
To use the global menu with Firefox currently requires a patch. Archisman Panigrahi explains:
Global menu used to work with Firefox in KDE Neon 18.04 (and probably Kubuntu 18.04 as well), because (as far as I know) Ubuntu developers used [to] patch it for compatibility with Unity (which also had global menu). As Unity was dropped, the patch was discontinued
Specifically, the patch exports the menu via dbus. Without it, Firefox does not export the menu, so other applications can't access it. No global menu.
The current options:
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Find and use patched binaries. Firefox in 18.04 repositories continue to apply the menu patch. There are other patched and renamed versions of Firefox, but they should probably be avoided for various reasons. You can prevent the package from upgrading to an unpatched version with
sudo apt-mark hold firefox.- This answer describes how to pin the firefox package to a specific repository.
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Recompile the source with the patch. This is the "safest" option. A minimal development toolset can be installed to upload the source to launchpad.net for compilation and inclusion in a PPA.
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Live without Firefox global menus, and hope they're eventually implemented upstream. (There isn't really anything in the menubar that can't be accessed elsewhere.)
See also:
- Get HUD & Global Menu working with Firefox
- Firefox bugzilla search: global menu