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Which extensions did I have installed?

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 40 views
  • Last reply by villdyr

villdyr
villdyr

Hi,

I just had to reinstall Firefox with a new profile because it gave me the "Firefox is already running but not responding" error, even though I'd just rebooted and it wasn't showing up in the processes. I tried many things but finally had to create a new profile. I got my bookmarks back, and a few of my extensions, but everything looks totally different and I can't remember the rest of the extensions that I had installed. The names of some of the extensions in the old profile look like this: 98247959872(*&#$@(^4917835. Is there a way to decipher that or find the real name somewhere else? How can I return to the look and functionality that I had before? I did it so long ago that I forgot how I got it.

Thanks so much for any help.

Hi, I just had to reinstall Firefox with a new profile because it gave me the "Firefox is already running but not responding" error, even though I'd just rebooted and it wasn't showing up in the processes. I tried many things but finally had to create a new profile. I got my bookmarks back, and a few of my extensions, but everything looks totally different and I can't remember the rest of the extensions that I had installed. The names of some of the extensions in the old profile look like this: 98247959872(*&#$@(^4917835. Is there a way to decipher that or find the real name somewhere else? How can I return to the look and functionality that I had before? I did it so long ago that I forgot how I got it. Thanks so much for any help.

Chosen solution

Hello,

The simplest thing to do is to temporarily start Firefox in your old profile. For example, if the old profile is named Muffin Man,

  1. Click the Windows logo orb on the taskbar.
  2. In the search box, type the following and press the Enter key: 
firefox.exe -p "Muffin Man" -no-remote

You can then open the Add-ons Manager (Ctrl+Shift+A) and have a look at your installed add-ons. You can also open Help menu — either from the orange Firefox button or the menu bar — and choose Troubleshooting Information. You can match add-on names with their IDs on that page.

If for some reason that's not an option, then you can install an add-on like JSONView, then drag and drop the extensions.json file from the old profile onto the Firefox window. That file is a database of installed add-ons, and sifting through it is a bit complicated.

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Gingerbread Man
Gingerbread Man

Chosen Solution

Hello,

The simplest thing to do is to temporarily start Firefox in your old profile. For example, if the old profile is named Muffin Man,

  1. Click the Windows logo orb on the taskbar.
  2. In the search box, type the following and press the Enter key: 
firefox.exe -p "Muffin Man" -no-remote

You can then open the Add-ons Manager (Ctrl+Shift+A) and have a look at your installed add-ons. You can also open Help menu — either from the orange Firefox button or the menu bar — and choose Troubleshooting Information. You can match add-on names with their IDs on that page.

If for some reason that's not an option, then you can install an add-on like JSONView, then drag and drop the extensions.json file from the old profile onto the Firefox window. That file is a database of installed add-ons, and sifting through it is a bit complicated.

villdyr
villdyr Question owner

Thank you so much! I got all my extensions back, I think. Something went wrong, and I thought I had more, so who knows? But I got back the ones I missed the most (they had generic names that are hard to find/remember).

(EDIT: In case anyone else has this problem, what I did was install the json viewer, drag the extensions.json file from my old profile folder onto a browser window, and press ctrl+f then search for "creator" including quotation marks. Since each add-on starts with a '"creator"' tag it is an easy way to find the beginning of each entry. I didn't see each extension listed by name (they're listed by author, developer, etc.), so I just clicked on the creator's name and looked through their published add-ons, then picked the ones I remembered using. Very easy!)


Do you have any advice for getting it to look the way it used to? It is way too busy now. I found the toolbar and bookmark toolbar files (so the bookmark icons, URL bar, refresh icon, etc., are all in the right place), but not whatever it was that I used to change the colors and "look." Sorry I can't be more specific. I may have downloaded something to make it look like an older version of Firefox, a long time ago. The most noticeable difference is that the toolbar is bright light blue and it didn't used to be. But everything looks weird. I looked for the chrome css files but those folders aren't there, if they ever were.

UPDATE: I fixed it! The problem was that the tabs were above the navigation toolbar, so the icons were weird and in different colors. I googled it and found this: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/put-tabs-back-on-bottom It put the nav buttons and bookmark icons up into the gray area above the tabs, where they look much nicer and less distracting. Yes!

PS: Thanks so much again!

Modified by villdyr