Does Flock put viruses or spyware on my computer?

No, but be sure to download and install Flock from the Flock.com website. Any versions from other website or P2P programs may not be the real Flock or may be altered.

Flock Crashes At Startup

We've had a couple reports of Flock crashing at startup. Our investigations lead us to believe this is caused by a corrupted index file that supports the search history feature. To resolve this issue please remove the "historysearch" folder. Unfortunately the history of all the web pages you have visited will be lost. The historysearch folder is located inside your configuration information folder called Profile. The profile is stored on your hard drive in a profile folder. The profile folder has a weird name -- a string of eight characters followed by ".default"; for example, "942ur3pf.default". Here's where to find it:

Mac OS X: The profile folder is in a folder named "Flock," and you'll find it on this path:
(your home folder)>Library>Application Support>Flock

Linux: ~/.flock/browser/

Windows Vista: C:\Users\Yourloginprofile\AppData\Roaming\Flock\Browser\Profile
2000 and XP:C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\Flock\Browser\

Flock is not available in my languages

Currently Flock is available in American English, Chinese (Simplified), German, Russian, Spanish (Latin American) and Spanish (Spain), and a few other languages. Download here.

Zbigniew Braniecki, Andy Xiang, and a global volunteer team are working on translating and localizing Flock. You can find more information about the work and get involved at Flock's Localization Home Page.

How Can I Change my User Agent String?

This should usually only be done when a user wants to impersonate another browser. A reason for wanting to do this would be that a website refuses to work in Flock (i.e.: Disney.com, ABC.com) .

To change this, type "about:config" in your URL bar. Once there, type “useragent” (minus quotations) in the filter/search box. Find general.useragent.override and set this preference to the user agent string you want to use.

To impersonate Firefox 2.0.0.12, for instance, you would set this preference to:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080228 Firefox/2.0.0.12

If you don't see general.useragent.override then it doesn't exist to begin with and you will need to create it as a new String preference. Right-click, choose New and then String. Type “general.useragent.override” (minus quotations) into the box that pops up and set the new User Agent String value from there.

To reset the User Agent String back to Flock, right-click on that string and choose Reset.

How Can I Make Flock Remember What My Last Set Of Tabs Was?

You can set Flock to remember what your last set of tabs was by going to Options>Main and choosing "When Flock Starts: show my windows and tabs from last time".

How do I delete feeds, favorites, and media streams?

To Delete Feeds:

1. Open the Feeds Sidebar
2. Right-click (ctrl-click on Mac) the feed you wish to delete
3. Choose "delete" from the context menu.

To Delete Favorites:

1. Open the Favorites Sidebar
2. Right-click (ctrl-click on Mac) the favorite you wish to delete
3. Choose "delete" from the context menu.

To Delete Favorited Media Streams:

1. Open the Media Bar
2. Open the Media Streams menu
3. Open the Favorite Streams folder
4. Click the stream you wish to delete
5. Once the stream is loaded, click the yellow star next to the Media Streams menu to unfavorite

How do I disable collection of anonymous usage metrics?

If you don't wish to participate in Flock's anonymous collection of metrics, you can opt out during the installation process on Windows. You can also disable metrics reporting in Flock at any time by completing the steps below. (To read Flock's privacy policy, click here.)

Warning: the Flock configuration window contains numerous settings which, if incorrectly changed, may render Flock inoperable. Please follow these instructions exactly as indicated to avoid this risk.

1. In your browser's urlbar, type "about:config" and press return.
2. In the "Filter" textfield, type "flock.metrics.enabled"
3. If no results appear in the result pane below:
   1. Context-click (right-click) to produce a context menu
   2. Select "New" and then "Boolean" from the resulting menu.
   3. When prompted, provide "flock.metrics.enabled" as the preference name
   4. Select "false" for the preference value.
   5. Restart Flock.
4. If a value does appear in the result pane below, verify that it is
   set to "false" or context-click (right-click) and select "Toggle" to
   toggle it to false.

How do I disable the splash screen?

To disable the splash screen, run Flock with the --no-splash option. To do this in Windows, right click the Flock shortcut and select Properties. In the Target line, add --no-splash at the very end (after the quotation marks).

Alternatively, you can set an environment variable as FLOCK_NO_SPLASH=1

How do I export my favorites?

To export your favorites as a .html file:

-Open the Favorites Manager
-Open the File menu
-Choose "Export"
-Name and Save

How do I get Firefox keywords back?

Enter "about:config" (minus the quotation marks) into the url bar and press enter. Type "flock.favorites.showKeyword" (minus the quotation marks) into the "Filter" bar at the top of this window. Change the value to true.

Warning: the Flock configuration window contains numerous settings which, if incorrectly changed, may render Flock inoperable. Please follow these instructions exactly as indicated to avoid this risk.

How do I import my favorites, feeds, and settings from another browser?

Flock supports the import of favorites (bookmarks), feeds, saved passwords and a number of other settings from Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Netscape 8 and Netscape 9.

You can import settings during installation, or you can import by following these instructions:

1. Open the File menu
2. Choose "Import"
3. Choose the browser you would like to import from
3. Click "Next"
4. Choose which items to import
5. Click "Next"
6. Click "Finish"

How do I install Flock on Linux?

Flock is not yet packaged for any Linux distribution (with the notable exception of Ultima Linux).

This guide should work for most distributions of Linux

Before you install Flock on Linux, please note:

* The Flock binaries are only for GNU/Linux on x86
* libstdc++5 is required

Installing Flock on Linux is relatively easy. First, download the latest version of Flock and save it to your home folder.

Open up a terminal window (not as root) and enter the following:

tar -C /home/yourusername -xzvf flock-*.linux-i686.tar.gz

Make sure you change the actual filename to match the version you have downloaded. This command extracts the contents of the package to your home folder

Now that you have done that, we need a desktop entry:

gedit /home/yourusername/Flock.desktop

You can use your preferred text editor, gedit is being used simply for example.

Enter the following in to the new file:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Flock
Comment=Flock Web Browser
Exec="/home/yourusername/flock/flock"
GenericName=Flock Web Browser
Icon=/home/yourusername/flock/icons/mozicon128.png
Path=$HOME/flock
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
TerminalOptions=
Type=Application
X-KDE-SubstituteUID=false
X-KDE-Username=
Categories=Network;Application;
GenericName[en_US]=Flock Web Browser

This creates a desktop shortcut to run Flock in your home folder. Feel free to drag it on to your panel or desktop to make it more convenient to access.

There you go! You're all set to start using Flock!

For Flock 2 users: if the extension is .tar.bz2, instead of: 'tar -C /home/yourusername -xzvfflock-*.linux-i686.tar.gz' use 'tar C /home/yourusername -xjvf flock-*.linux-i686.tar.bz2'

How do I reset my master password?

If you have forgotten your master password and wish to reset it, please go here, http://kb.mozillazine.org/Master_password#Reset_your_master_password, for further instructions.

How do I run Flock in safe mode?

Flock has an untested safe mode inherited from Firefox, so please use sparingly. You can run Flock's safe mode by following these steps:

Windows:
1. Open the Start menu
2. Click Run
3. Type "flock.exe -safe-mode" without the quotations
4. Click ok

Mac OS X:
1. Go to the Utilities directory (in the Applications folder)
2. Open Terminal
3. Run: /Applications/flock.app/Contents/MacOS/flock -safe-mode

Linux:
1. Open Terminal
2. Cd to the flock directory
3. ./flock-bin -safe-mode

I was using the Flock 1.1 beta. Where did my data go when I installed the 1.1 general release?

The Flock 1.1d beta used a separate profile folder from the one that general releases of Flock use. This is because we wanted to protect your data in case there were profile-damaging bugs in the beta (there weren't).

When you install the Flock 1.1 general release, it will return to using the default Flock profile folder. If you have a version of Flock before 1.1, it will use that data. If you didn't, it will start a new profile.

If you would like the Flock 1.1 general release to use the data from the Flock 1.1d beta, please follow these instructions:

On Windows Vista:
1. Shut down Flock
2. Go to C:\Users\[your login profile name]\AppData\Roaming\Flock
3. Make a copy of the “BrowserBeta” folder
4. Delete the "Browser" folder (this will delete any favorites, feeds, etc you had in versions of Flock previous to 1.1!)
5. Rename the copy of the "BrowserBeta" folder to be “Browser”
6. Open Flock

On Windows 2000 and XP:
1. Shut down Flock
2. Go to C:\Documents and Settings\[your login profile name]\Application Data\Flock
3. Make a copy of the “BrowserBeta” folder
4. Delete the "Browser" folder (this will delete any favorites, feeds, etc you had in versions of Flock previous to 1.1!)
5. Rename the copy of the "BrowserBeta" folder to be “Browser”
6. Open Flock

Mac OS X:
1. Shut down Flock
2. Go to (your home folder)>Library>Application Support
3. Make a copy of the “FlockBeta” folder
4. Delete the "Flock" folder (this will delete any favorites, feeds, etc you had in versions of Flock previous to 1.1!)
5. Rename the copy of the "FlockBeta" folder to be “Flock”
6. Open Flock

Linux:
1. Shut down Flock
2. Go to ~/.flock/
3. Make a copy of the “browserbeta” folder
4. Delete the "browser" folder (this will delete any favorites, feeds, etc you had in versions of Flock previous to 1.1!)
5. Rename the copy of the "browserbeta" folder to be “browser”
6. Open Flock

If you need further assistance, you can find it on our support forum or send a message via our feedback form.

Mozilla Firefox patches and Flock Maintenance Releases

Approximately every six to eight weeks Mozilla usually releases a patch containing bug fixes and possible security patches. Emergency patches may require a shorter cycle. Since Flock is built on Mozilla's code base it is important that these patches get incorporated into Flock as well. Our goal is to release a tested patch for Flock within 48 hours available on the website and as an automatic upgrade.

In general we like to be cautious with regards to rolling out patches (depending on its contents and criticality). This way, in the unlikely occurance of a new major bug being introduced, we can limit how many users are affected. We follow a few basic steps:

1. 1. After a QA is complete we make the patch available as a release candidate for anyone to download.
2. 2. After a few days of exposure and within 48 hours of Mozilla making the patch available for Firefox we we place the updated version of Flock (bumping the version number) as the downloadable version on the website.
3. 3. After another day or so of exposure and if there are no serious issues reported, we make the patch available for automatic updates for a few hours. A percentage of users will get an alert announcing that there is an update available.
4. 4. Again, if no issues are reported, after another day or so we'll turn on the automatic updates permanently.

My window shakes, what is causing this?

If you are experiencing a jittering window, check out your favorites toolbar. If the toolbar is empty, this may be the cause of the problem. To remedy this, add a favorite to the toolbar.

For more information on this, see this MozillaZine article.

Where can I find a list of keyboard shortcuts for Flock?

There is a list of keyboard shortcuts here.

Where can I find my browsing history?

You can view your history by going to the favorites manager (Favorites->Manage Your Favorites) and clicking on the history icon on the left side. We realize that the favorites manager is not exactly the first place you would check to find your history, and there is a bug open to expose the history section of the manager a bit better. Our next version will include a much improved History menu right in the menu bar.

Additionally, you can search your history from the search bar in the upper right of the browser. Flock indexes each page you visit, which makes it easy to find any page you have looked at. Simply type in some terms you remember about the website in the search bar and Flock will display the four history items that match your search the closest. Adding more terms will narrow the search down.

Where does the Flock community hang out?

If you want instant communication join us on our IRC server irc.flock.com in the #flock and #flock-dev channels.

Don't know what IRC is? Don't worry about it! IRC is simply a form of chat, and you can use a website like mibbit.com to connect to it through your browser. Just enter irc.flock.com as the server and #flock as the channel.

Where's the stop button?

The Stop and Reload buttons have been combined into one button.

Why Can't I Connect to the Internet with Flock?

Often connectivity issues have to do with firewall software. Sometimes even if the firewall is supposedly disabled or uninstalled, it may still be active. The Firefox FAQ item on this subject is very in-depth, and since Flock is built upon their code their advice will be very applicable to our browser. Please click this link to go to their page: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Cannot+connect+after+upgrading+Firefox

Why Does My Windows Account Have To Have Administrator Privileges To Install Flock?

In a nutshell, it shouldn't, but it does. We will have this fixed in the 1.1 version of Flock due out in a couple of months.

Why doesn't Flock work on Mac 10.3.9?

We are currently investigating why Flock doesn't work on 10.3.9 but haven't found the solution just yet. You should also know that in the very near future this operating system will NOT be supported by Mozilla (which Flock is based on).

Why don't some features work correctly with a full hard drive?

Flock creates and edits several files in the Flock profile folder that control some features such as the feed reader or history search. In a situation where the hard drive is full, Flock cannot edit and save these files. You may find that other application have difficulty running when you have a full hard drive, and it is likely due to similar reasons.

We would suggest that you free up some space on your hard drive in order to use Flock's features to the fullest.

Why is 0.9.1.4 broken and how can I get rid of that white bar at the bottom?

Many of you may have had a less than optimal experience with the 0.9.1.4 automatic upgrade. The 1 inch bar at the bottom of the screen bug has been fixed in 0.9.1.5 which is now available.

Please select "Check for updates...." in the Help menu to get the latest update to fix this issues. Our apologies and thanks for your patience.

Why Won't a PDF File Open in Flock?

First, make sure you have the latest version of Adobe (and Flock!) Then please open your Adobe Reader and go to the Edit menu. Choose Preferences and then the "Internet" tab on the left hand side. You should see "Display PDF in browser" please have this checked and hit OK. Adobe should take a couple seconds to configure and once this is done, please close Flock and re-start it.

If you are opening a PDF outside the browser, it will always open in Adobe Reader. The way that Flock's settings work is that if you go to a web page with a PDF file, it should open directly in the browser. In other words, "Display PDF in browser" only works for links to PDFs you encounter while browsing in Flock.