Firefox Lockwise says I have 158 saved logins, but when I select "Logins and Passwords" nothing shows up
I have searched every support post that has anything remotely to do with my problem. I have tried booting in safe mode, downloading Firefox ESR and performing folder acrobatics with key3 and key4 files, I have disabled my anti-virus software. To no avail.
This morning, I was forced to log back in to my Firefox Browser "due to security reasons" and when I did all of my logins and passwords were gone. if I go to about:protections and scroll to the bottom of the page, Firefox Lockwise tells me that I have 158 passwords saved securely. But if I go to Logins & Passwords, there are only the 5 passwords that I have saved today since the issue began.
I NEED HELP!!!!!
All Replies (9)
Hi tjwilson1987, there are so many different passwords. Let me describe a few:
(1) Master Password
This is an optional local password you can set to secure your locally saved logins. If you had a Master Password, and you forget it an reset it, Firefox will erase your saved logins. Hopefully this is not what happened.
(2) Windows or MacOS system login
If you don't use a Master Password, Firefox 76+ requires your OS login to show or copy the plain text of saved passwords. More on this new feature here: Firefox asks for authentication (password, voice, face or fingerprint) when accessing passwords.
(3) Firefox Account login
When you connect to your Firefox Account, Firefox will sync data among your installations of Firefox. If you forget your password and reset your Firefox Account login, the data stored in your account will be deleted. This could lead to a mismatch of data on your Firefox installations that are connected and those which are disconnected, so you might be able to rescue data by NOT connecting those other installations which were previously sync'd.
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It sounds as though you might have reset #3. It's odd that there are entries in the file that are inaccessible to Lockwise. I don't know how to explain that, but please immediately make a backup of two files:
Open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either
- "3-bar" menu button > "?" Help > Troubleshooting Information
- (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
- type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter
In the first table on the page, on the Profile Folder row, click the "Open Folder" button. This should launch a new window listing various files and folders in File Explorer.
- right-click > Copy the logins.json file and paste it in a safe location such as your Desktop
- right-click > Copy the key4.db file and paste it in the same location
If you drag and drop that logins.json file onto a Firefox tab, Firefox should, after a few moments, show a structured view of the file contents. Does it seem to have 150+ saved logins? Of course, the password will be gibberish; it was encrypted, probably using the key in key4.db. Or possibly a previous key4.db file. Hopefully someone more familiar with these files can suggest a possible recovery method.
Yes, when I copy the "logins.json" file into a Firefox Tab, it lists what appears to be all of the missing logins and passwords, but they are obviously encrypted. Why don't they show up in Firefox itself?
Modified by tjwilson1987
I do not know why they are "invisible" in Lockwise. My thought was that perhaps a reset changed the key in key4.db and now Firefox cannot decrypt those so it is ignoring them. If that is true, to recover them, you would need to find a copy of the old key4.db file in a backup.
Since you run Windows, you could try this third party program that understands how logins.json and key4.db work together, and see whether it can decrypt the invisible logins.
Thank you!!! PasswordFox was able to read all of the saved logins and passwords!
That's great to hear. I still don't know how to make them visible in Firefox but at least you have the info.
Lockwise in about:protections counts the number of logins records in logins.json. If you do not see logins on the Lockwise (about:logins) page then possibly something is wrong with the key file (key4.db). Maybe check the Browser Console for logins or password related messages.
- https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Tools/Browser_Console
- "3-bar" menu button or Tools -> Web Developer
Same problem, same symptoms.
- Disappeared after upgrade to Firefox 76. - Passwords show correctly in PasswordFox - about:protections shows 150-ish passwords saved, correctly. - Lockwise shows up as if zero passwords were saved
Hm. I'm not sure what fixed it, but it's fixed for me right now. When I say it "worked" I mean LockWise shows all passwords, when I say "broken" I mean the passwords still work correctly and get prefilled on websites, but show empty UI in LockWise.
- Worked in 75
- Broke in 76
- Still broken in 77
- I downgraded to 75, but it was broken here
- I turned off MOZ_FORCE_DISABLE_E10S and upgraded to 77.0.1 and started testing the same profile with Mozregression for builds between April and June only to realize that all builds work, and then found out that my main 77.0.1 installation also works.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Disabling multi-process breaking Lockwise was one of the reasons for removing this from about:config, but they still left the MOZ_FORCE_DISABLE_E10 environment variable.
In Firefox 77 having this environment variable will break a lot of of websites because it will show garbled pages due to gzip content encoding not working.