Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Session restore loading Duplicates

  • 8 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 46 views
  • Last reply by maveet

more options

FF now loads duplicates of many pages (multiple tabs) when restoring session. When I attempt to close duplicates, it stalls. And seems to load up even more copies when I try again, after force-quitting. This has been going on for some weeks. Most recently, when I attempted to go through the windows before session restore, there was no time before the loading began. totally frustrated.

Prior to this, a couple months ago, session restore was totally unavailable for me. I read thru the many posts on this, but nothing was able to restore my sessions. Now, the opposite.

FF now loads duplicates of many pages (multiple tabs) when restoring session. When I attempt to close duplicates, it stalls. And seems to load up even more copies when I try again, after force-quitting. This has been going on for some weeks. Most recently, when I attempted to go through the windows before session restore, there was no time before the loading began. totally frustrated. Prior to this, a couple months ago, session restore was totally unavailable for me. I read thru the many posts on this, but nothing was able to restore my sessions. Now, the opposite.

Chosen solution

Such a relief to have windows open quickly and easily, no duplicates. thx.

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (8)

more options

PS, when I try closing individual pages, it also stalls.

more options

PPS FF 68.0.1

(no edit function showing Safari, so PS's)

more options

Re-upping this problem. Now problem not happening every time, but most times I crash or restart. I've learned now to wait until pages loaded, then I can more easily close the duplicates. No help last time I submitted, hoping someone might have an answer now. thanks

Mac OS 10.13.6; FF 69.0.3

Modified by maveet

more options

Hi maveet, sorry you didn't get a reply before.

Are you using only the built-in session restore feature, or are you supplementing/substituting that with an add-on?

Although it's possible to duplicate tabs using built-in features, it isn't something that should happen automatically. That is hard to explain.

Regarding the way you close unwanted tabs:

Firefox normally will only load the tab that was active at the time the window was closed, and other tabs will be loaded on demand. If you activate a tab and then close it, Firefox might need to continue loading for a bit before responding to the close command. If you know a tab needs to be closed, instead of activating it, you could right-click (Ctrl+click) it as a background tab and use Close Tab on the context menu. Maybe that will help?

If your Firefox is configured to load every single tab when a session is restored, you could undo that:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste restore and pause while the list is filtered

(3) If the browser.sessionstore.restore_on_demand preference is bolded and "modified" to false, double-click it to restore the default value of true

more options

You can check for problems with the sessionstore.jsonlz4 file in the Firefox profile folder that stores session data.

  • delete sessionstore.jsonlz4 and sessionstore.js

When sessionstore.jsonlz4 is deleted you lose pinned tabs and open tabs and you will have to recreate them, so if necessary make a note or bookmark them.

You can use the button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page.

more options

@jscher, I do have session boss extension, though I've never consciously used it. Maybe I should first disable it?

And only the open tabs are loading, the others not activated.

@cor-el thanks, if disabling session boss doesn't rectify things, I'll follow your directions.

Thanks both for responding. I'll se how it goes over the next days. cheers.

more options

First reboot since session boss disabled. Brilliant! Fast and easy loading. I'll wait until I've done this again before notifying problem solved. Thank you. :-)

more options

Chosen Solution

Such a relief to have windows open quickly and easily, no duplicates. thx.