How to restore the green lock icon in Firefox's address bar

[harlan4096]

Mozilla's Firefox web browser used to display a green padlock icon in the browser's address bar when secure sites were opened in the browser. Additionally, the browser would display extended information for sites with EV (Extended Validation) certificates.

Mozilla launched a change recently in Firefox that changed the green padlock icon to a gray icon and removed the EV certificate information from the browser's address bar entirely.

The organization revealed plans in August 2019 to change the information that Firefox displays in the address bar in regards to sites using HTTPS and implemented the change in Firefox 70.0 released recently.

Firefox users who open a secure site in the browser see a gray padlock icon in the address bar in Firefox 70 and newer versions of the browser. Sites with EV certificates are not highlighted in any way anymore as well.

The main idea behind the changes -- Mozilla is not the only browser developer that made it -- is that the majority of Internet sites are using HTTPS on today's Internet and that the number will increase even more in the coming years. HTTPS is the new default and the reasoning is that sites that don't support it should be highlighted instead of sites that support it.

One of the issues with the approach is that generations of Internet users have been trained to look for these locks in the address bar to verify that the connection is secure. While that is still possible as the gray padlock icon indicates a secure connection, some may prefer to get the green icon restored instead as it provides a better visual indicator.

Making Firefox`s padlock icon green again

Firefox comes with built-in configuration options to restore the green padlock icon. Here is what you need to do:

1. Load about:config in the Firefox address bar.
2. Confirm that you will be careful if a warning screen is displayed.
3. Use the search at the top to find security.secure_connection_icon_color_gray.
4. Toggle the preference so that its value is FALSE.

The change is applied immediately, a browser restart is not required. You should notice that all sites that use secure connections are displayed with a green padlock icon again in the Firefox address bar. To restore the gray icon, set the value of the preference to TRUE instead.
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