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A pop up tells me that my Firefox profile is absent or not accessible and I cannot access Firefox what to do?

  • 4 replies
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by edacoinc

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I used a Mac Cleaner which may be an agent of Safari to eliminate Firefox as my default browser. How do I regain access to Firefox as my default browser, which I've used as such for the last eight years?

I used a Mac Cleaner which may be an agent of Safari to eliminate Firefox as my default browser. How do I regain access to Firefox as my default browser, which I've used as such for the last eight years?

Chosen solution

Did you somehow remove the Firefox profile folder?

  • ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/<profile>/

This happens when Firefox can't find the profile that is marked as "Default=1" in the profiles.ini file.

This can also be a problem with permissions/ownership of involved folders/files that is preventing access.

See:


You can try these steps to get a new profile:

You can find the profiles.ini file in this hidden location:

  • Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/

You can recover an orphaned profile via these steps:

See "Profile was moved or renamed":

Note that you should never use "Choose Folder" to specify a folder that already contains files that do not belong to Firefox. Only use "Choose Folder" to recover an profile that isn't listed in the Profile Manager.

If this didn't work then check the read/write permissions and owner or remove the Mozilla/Firefox folder in both main/root and cache locations.

Location of the cache files.

  • Mac: ~/Library/Caches/Firefox/Profiles/

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Chosen Solution

Did you somehow remove the Firefox profile folder?

  • ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/<profile>/

This happens when Firefox can't find the profile that is marked as "Default=1" in the profiles.ini file.

This can also be a problem with permissions/ownership of involved folders/files that is preventing access.

See:


You can try these steps to get a new profile:

You can find the profiles.ini file in this hidden location:

  • Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/

You can recover an orphaned profile via these steps:

See "Profile was moved or renamed":

Note that you should never use "Choose Folder" to specify a folder that already contains files that do not belong to Firefox. Only use "Choose Folder" to recover an profile that isn't listed in the Profile Manager.

If this didn't work then check the read/write permissions and owner or remove the Mozilla/Firefox folder in both main/root and cache locations.

Location of the cache files.

  • Mac: ~/Library/Caches/Firefox/Profiles/

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problem solved. You were both most helpful. Thanks

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Again, all resolved quickly and simply. Thanks to both of you. /s/ Edgar D. Aronson