
History is only kept for three months
Firefox version 122.0 Mac: Sonoma 14.1.1 apple silicon
The problem emerged about a little over a year ago (around September 2022). It started with an installation of firefox on another machine running BigSur, and I guess the problem got ported when I restored a time machine backup on this current machine. I attempted to troubleshoot the issue by following mozilla support and reddit threads but to no avail. I, at the time, settled on monthly time machine backups, but now finally decided to address it properly.
Troubleshooting steps that I have followed:
- going into the about:config page and changing the places.history.expiration.max_pages and places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages to 2147483647 then to 999999 after reading about how a value too high might be ignored (both values didn't seem to change anything)
- going into the about:config page and changing the places.history.expiration.transient_optimal_database_size to 85534800
- removing the add-on/extension manager as seeing that it might remove history for some reason (from a [thread] by IceTemple)
- In the privacy and security tab, history is set to Firefox will use custom settings for history
Things I suspect might be the problem:
- I originally used the Chinese version of firefox (downloaded from the .cn website) and reinstalled the international version (from .com) after getting annoyed by the built-in ads. For convenience sake, I ported the profile folder over which might have carry the problem over. That being said, I don't think this problem existed when I just started using firefox but appeared awhile later.
- result of an update, don't know which though
- certain extensions (I haven't went through them individually since I installed a lot)
My questions:
- How to stop Firefox from doing this ever again?
- Alternatives of storing history if nothing works
- Why did my troubleshooting steps not work? Is there something wrong with my version of firefox that prevented the about:config changes from working?
- If I have to resort to backing up the places.sqlite history file, how do I restore/reintegrate them with current history file?
English isn't my first language so I apologize for any confusion that may arise due to how I articulate. Any help is much appreciated
Geändert am
Alle Antworten (3)
places.history.expiration.max_pages is the only recognized way to increase the history limit. The settings with the word "transient" don't do anything.
zeroknight said
places.history.expiration.max_pages is the only recognized way to increase the history limit. The settings with the word "transient" don't do anything.
Thanks for your comment, I see what you mean. However, I found that changing the settings without the word "transient" didn't appear to have any effect, and that is my main problem.
Firefox determines automatically how many pages can be kept without affecting performance. In current releases you can find this value if the click "Verify Integrity" on the "Help -> More Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page.
- History can store a maximum of xxx unique pages
You can create a new Number pref named places.history.expiration.max_pages if you want to override the automatically calculated number of pages.
If you keep less history than this maximum then you likely have some cleanup software that removes older history.