Firefox Community Forum

A few days ago (today is November 9th 2025), my PC restarted itself while idling and when I got back, all my bookmarks in Firefox were just gone. The bookmarks toolbar, which I use constantly, was also gone. Furthermore, I can't even create new bookmarks. And I mean of ANY sort. Doesn't matter if click the little bookmark star when I'm on the page I want to save, or if I manually try to type it in by right-clicking the toolbar and choosing "Add bookmark..." None of it works!

I tried going to "Manage Bookmarks -> Import and Backup -> Restore" where I see 12 restore points. I've tried them all, but I get the same message every time: "Unable to process the backup file"

I've searched the Mozilla support articles and have only found one other entry from a person who seems to have had the same problem, here: https://support.mozilla.org/gl/questions/1504803

This person managed to solve it themselves by using the "Refresh Firefox" option, so I tried that, but it didn't work. The only thing I got out of it was losing all my extensions. I had been warned about that beforehand, so while it's a little more than just annoying that I've lost my Avast! Password Manager, which had a LOT of passwords I can't remember, not backing that up manually before running the refresh was entirely a brain fart on my own part.

Just to be sure, I've checked my Windows Update history to see if the culprit could be Windows rather than Firefox, but the last one was the 25H2 update that ran on October 17th. If that had been to blame, the problem would have manifested itself much earlier, so I'm fairly certain that has nothing to do with it.

So, two problems to solve here:

1. 1 - How do I fix this bookmark problem?
2. 2 - Is it perhaps possible to restore my Avast! Password Manager?

I would be VERY grateful if someone could help me with this! Like the person in the linked post, collecting these bookmarks has taken me over a decade and they've been used so frequently that - at least for some of them - I don't even remember the URL's of the sites anymore, because I literally haven't typed them in manually for years.

Every once in a while, my pinned tabs and/or my tab groups disappear. this usually happens after an update, but not always. Sometimes I type a lot of commands, and FF seems to get upset and freezes or goes black. I restart and poof, they're gone. I made a screenshot of my standard pinned tabs so I can restore it from that, which is a nuisance in itself. But the tab groups are gone forever along with the urls I painstakingly researched. I read the answers to two previous queries along these lines, both of which gave extensive, tedious procedures to recover them. I'm not willing to go through all that just to use Firefox. I've switched my tab groups to Edge just to keep them safe and although I prefer not to be captured by Google or Microsoft, am thinking about just switching to either of them.

Over the last couple of updates, FF has seemed less and less stable. I tried the vertical tabs and liked them but the open sidebar on hover stopped working and when the sidebar itself got stuck on open it hid the history and AI sidebars. Plus FF was very slow to open. I reverted to horizontal tabs and now it's faster but still the pins and tab group problems persist.

I'm using it on an HP desktop in Windows 11. Sorry I don't have any screenshots.

So this morning I sat down at my computer which was already on and working fine yesterday. Today my bookmarks had disappeared. I rebooted several times, closed and reopened firefox several times and I don't remember what else I clicked on but my bookmarks had reappeared. I sat down at the computer a while ago and opened firefox and my bookmarks seemed to have disappeared again. Before when I clicked on bookmarks up on the toolbar my bookmarks would appear. Now I have to click on bookmarks then bookmarks toolbar to see them and now all of my logins are gone. Should I just ditch this browser and use chrome or is there some simple fix? I never have had as many problems with a browser as I've had with firefox and I no longer see an advantage in using it.

hi i was wondering if there is a way to remove this shadow cuz i have the adaptive tab bar extension and i think it will look way more better without this shadow enabled

Went to bed last night & firefox was fine.

Opened it this morning & I don't see my bookmarks. The folders on the toolbar from Africa to Healthcare all say empty. Lottery thru web cameras have links in them that I can see. I I open another tab & go to google, then save that bookmark in the google folder it won't let me yet edit bookmark shows.

If I click edit bookmark it tells me that it's in the google folder already yet when I click on the folder, it says empty..

Ran a virus scan. It was clean. I tried restoring bookmarks from a previous day. Firefox was unable to do it.

What is going on? If the bookmarks are there, why can't I see them?

I've used this browser for years without a problem. Now all the sudden it's one problem after another. I'm ready to jump ship to a different browser.

I'm on version 144.0.2 (64-bit) using Windows 11 Pro.

when i try go log in on certain sites i keep getting a message asking for a fingerprint my computer doesn't have a finger print and i have no clue what it is asking for.

I am using the new profile switching feature in the UI, from top of the hamburger menu. Firefox is my default browser on Windows.

Now, I want all links I activate from other Windows programs to open in a specific profile. I use the other profiles for auxilary tasks.

Is there any way to achieve this?

)Frode

i have a firefox account on my old windows 10 computer. Firefox is having trouble "finding that site" for some sites I've used for years. I've checked internet settings in Firefox, reset my WIFI router, etc. with no response for connectivity. But I really guess I don't know what or where to check... Thought it was a VPN setting, not fixed. What should I try to find and correct my problem?? Ray ([edited email from public forum])

How do I disable the cruft which appears in the URLbar? Specifically, the trackers detected symbol, the certificate verified symbol, the bookmark this page symbol, and the question mark symbols which appear on both the URLbar and the searchbar.

Hi,

I generally have 20~30 tabs open in Firefox. So as of now, if I scroll on the tab bar, 6~7 tabs will move left/right per scroll. I want to modify this number of tab scroll to one per mouse wheel scroll.

I searched for this tweak but did not get any workable solution.

I'm using Firefox 144.0.2 (64-bit) on windows 10.

If you have any tweak, pls share.

Thanks ..

Greetings.

Several times today I have had messages not sent because of this error message: "Did Not Connect: Potential Security Issue". I am sending political messages and am concerned that Mozilla is blocking me. I have sent hundreds of similar messages over the years with no problem.

What's up now?

Thank you. Sincerely, Gail Forrest

Hi, I like to use the Inspector window to modify layouts for printing &/or save as pdf only portions of a page or a whole page that's not laid out in a printer friendly way. Lately in the "Rules" pane of the Inspector window, I've noticed something I've never seen before. Normally it shows a list of rules for properties, attributes, etc...(CSS) which I can select or locate and change/modify with virtually no problems. Lately in that pane I've been seeing an item with an italicized title "element attributes style" and a lock icon on the upper left next to that text and it doesn't show show a link to the CSS page on the right side, nor does it allow me to select anything within. Does anybody know about this ?...is it some new setting or something that's changed in the newer versions of the browser. A couple of months ago I updated FF, which I hadn't done for awhile, and also just by chance, since that update I hadn't really used the Inspector for one reason or another, so I'm wondering if it's just a coincidence, since I had never seen it before. I'd appreciate any info or opinions about this. Thanks and wish everyone all the best.

THE ABOVE ERROR MESSAGE HAS PREVENTED ME FROM ACCESSING 3 WEBSITES - PaddyPower, Ladbrokes, & UK National Lottery. None of the suggested remedies has had any effect. Can you fix it?

some of my icons on the location bar do not appear, or only appear when I have the window maximized. How can I reorder thewse icons so the ones I want to see most often are on the left? this refers specifically to the add-on icons, but I would think all the icons are controlled the same way (that is, if one can control them).

2 days ago you tube is suddenly blocked. 11/6/2025 i would click a video, it would "blink" at me and do nothing. i updated firefox, ublock was updated about a month ago and now i can't even get a home page to load. i have refreshed and restarted