Forum der Gemeinschaft Firefox

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.

I recently bought an new HP Win 11 PC to replace my current Win 10 machine. Running latest FF 144.0.2 on both. How do I transfer my complete FF profile (bookmarks, bookmark bar, login data, EVERYTHING) to the new PC? Want the new install to be an exact functional copy.

THANKS!

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.

I recently bought an new HP Win 11 PC to replace my current Win 10 machine. Running latest FF 144.0.2 on both. How do I transfer my complete FF profile (bookmarks, bookmark bar, login data, EVERYTHING) to the new PC? Want the new install to be an exact functional copy.

THANKS!

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.

Hello, I reset my PC yesterday.

I didn't know my Firefox password anymore and clicked "Forgot password."

Then I created a new one.

Now my saved online pages and everything else are gone. So synchronization isn't working.

I have an account recovery key.

Will that work? And how?

Please help me.

Regards, Daniel

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.

Launched this morning and the interface is totally different. That's not the problem All my bookmarks are gone and I'm unable to restore them

Can I move back to the previous version of FF?

Using firefox 144 on Kubuntu 24 LTS, on wayland, with Nvidia drivers.

I'm one of those guys with 500+ tabs. I also have a bunch of tabs open in specific containers and I recently spent a lot of time sorting most of my hundreds of tabs into a bunch of neat tab groups.

I'm not using any "sync between devices" functionnality

At some point, I open firefox like usual, and I noticed that it appears to be glitched. The rightmost tab (the last tab I had opened) seems to be working fine, but every other tab has no text, and I cannot switch to them. However, the colored line indicating that a tab is opened in a specific container still appears, it's just the tabs names that are missing. Also, firefox seems to generally not be responding, so I decide to close and reopen it.

Upon reopening, firefox restores my tabs, but I'm left with only the last tab I mentionned earlier. The "restore last session" button doesn't appear in "history". Neither "recently closed windows" nor "recently closed tabs" contain my 500+ tabs

I still have my extensions

I still have my bookmarks

I still have my base "new tab" setup, with my background image and my "pinned" websites (I don't know how it's called)

I still have my container "rules" (i.e, firefox still proposes to open specific domains with specific containers, even if I have lost old tabs that were opened in those containers)

I still have my "auto sign-ins" (i.e, I can still log into some websites without re-typing my password)

I have lost my tab groups

I'm used to losing my tabs. So I close firefox, and I go look in it's files.

The image firefox-mpris in the files still displays a youtube tab I was watching (yet this tab doesn't get restored)

I make a copy of sessionstore.jsonlz4 and sessionstore-backup, and try restoring from each backup by replacing sessionstore.jsonlz4 :

- the default sessionstore.jsonlz4 doesn't have my tabs of course

- previous.jsonlz4 has only the single last tab I mentionned earlier.

- recovery.jsonlz4 contains only 20-ish of some of the most recent tabs I had

- the "upgrade" files contains a bunch of tabs but it's from a few months ago so I'm missing the most recent stuff

Using this "scrounger" tool, I can look at what these files contain

https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/scrounger.html

- sessionstore.jsonlz4 and previous.jsonlz4 both contain the single tab we talked about before (plus closed windows I don't care about)

- recovery.jsonlz4 contains exactly 25 recently opened tabs (plus closed windows I don't care about)

- upgrade.jsonlz4 contains 500+ tabs (with container ids, yay), but not the most recent ones of course (plus closed windows I don't care about)

From I saw online it looks like firefox only stores the last 25 tabs in these files, which are the last tabs I actually opened, even if more actually exist. What I really don't understand is : - Why does my upgrade.jsonlz4 file have more than 25 tabs then ? - Where are the other tabs supposed to be stored then ? the .jsonlz4 stores the last 25 tabs, yet firefox (usually) remembers all my 500+ tabs anyway, so where are they stored ?

Also, y'know, pls help me restore my stuff. Thanks.

I recently had an issue with my computer screen. The computer itself worked fine, but the screen needed to be replaced. Stupidly, I went to the Bestbuy I bought it from to use the warranty for repair. They sent it out, I just got it back, and it says they replaced my motherboard for whatever reason. My downloads and such back up automatically, but because I didn't expect them to do something so drastic, I neglected to create a backup key for my tabs and bookmarks. Obviously, they're all gone now. Is there any way I could possibly get any of this back, or am I screwed out of luck because those morons made a drastic decision that did not need to be made? I'll apologize ahead of time for my lack of technical know-how.

Thanks

I rebooted my laptop with both firefox windows I had open and possibly a private window too, then rebooted again without touching firefox, and now I can only restore one of the two windows. I checked my recently closed windows in history and there was nothing there at all. Is there anything I can do at all to restore that other window or is it just gone for good now?

144.0.2 firefox version has an issue with bookmarks keep, they keep dissapearing & i have to use firefox fix from uninstall option to restore. unable to use email links as it requests that i close firefox window before it can open links, when i do this all bookmarks are gone & i then have to start again. I'm running win11 25h2 with all updates done both chrome & edge are not causing issues

Firefox has been going dormant (browser will not open), along with Task Manager and all Windows Admin Tools, whenever Windows 10 tells me it's time to update. I finally uninstalled Firefox and reinstalled, and now the browser opens, but all of my passwords and bookmarks are gone. I cannot find a "Profile" folder on my PC.

Google appears to be taking over control of my firefox page. When I open Firefox, Google search and other functions appear on screen and take over. Also, most of my saved bookmarks have disappeared .This probably happened when I got tech help to deal with problems accessing my MS and Google accounts. I have always used the Google search engine but it only when I clicked on the search bar. Now it seems to have taken over and I seem only to be ableto access sites using Google Can I restore lost bookmarks so I can go direct to internet sites?