Restore Tabs / Windows / Sessions / History
Dear Firefox,
Yesterday 1-2-23 I lost my tabs. When I tried to restore them I followed the suggestions listed in "help". I clicked on the "menu" on the top right of my browser, found the "history" and selected it. The "restore" option did not appear. On my macbook pro 2012 os 10.13.6 I had 3 "desktop" selections. I had a browser window on each of the desktops that held multiple tabs. The third "desktop" was the "dashboard" which mostly had widgets. Somehow the browser window from one of the Desktops was applied to the dashboard and when I tried to remove it the result was that it closed and was removed from all desktops.
How can I find the sessions or tabs that were present on Jan 1 or before? I'm not that tech savy and would love to be able to speak with a real person that would be able to walk me through a solution if there is a solution.
All Replies (5)
Is "History -> Recently Closed Windows/Tabs" available to reopen the lost window(s) ?
Note that on Mac closing Firefox can be more complicated because you can close all open windows, but keep Firefox running with the menu bar visible or minimized in the Doc.
Make sure to use "Quit Firefox" with all windows still open, especially if you want to use "Restore Previous Session". Otherwise check "History -> Restore Previous Session" and "History -> Recently Closed Tabs/Windows".
Thank you for your reply.
History -> Recently Closed Windows/Tabs is NOT available as a selection.
You can try to restore a recent upgrade.jsonlz4-<build_id> in the sessionstore-backups folder in the Firefox profile folder when available.
You can use the button on the "Help -> More Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page (Root directory).
- Help -> More Troubleshooting Information -> Profile Folder/Directory:
Windows: Open Folder; Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data
You will normally find these files in the sessionstore-backups folder:
- previous.jsonlz4 (cleanBackup: copy of sessionstore.jsonlz4 from previous session that was loaded successfully)
- recovery.jsonlz4 (latest version of sessionstore.jsonlz4 written during runtime)
- recovery.baklz4 (previous version of sessionstore.jsonlz4 written during runtime)
- upgrade.jsonlz4-<build_id> (backup created during an upgrade of Firefox)
You can copy a file from the sessionstore-backups folder to the main profile and rename the file to sessionstore.jsonlz4 to replace the current file with Firefox closed.
- make sure to backup the current sessionstore.jsonlz4
You can look at this tool to inspect a compressed jsonlz4 sessionstore file. This tool works locally, so no uploading is performed.
Thanks again Cor-el
When I find the files that you sited above, how would I load it into the current session?
You can use the button on the "Help -> More Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page (Root directory).
- Help -> More Troubleshooting Information -> Profile Folder/Directory:
Windows: Open Folder; Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data
You can copy a file from the sessionstore-backups folder to the main profile and rename the file to sessionstore.jsonlz4 to replace the current file with Firefox closed.
- make sure to backup the current sessionstore.jsonlz4
Modified by cor-el