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Firefox Sync is not syncing my desktop to my Android Phone.

  • 4 replies
  • 124 have this problem
  • 8 views
  • Last reply by broken

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I have signed into Mozilla on my desktop and on my Android Phone. On both devices Firefox is my default browser and both use the Beta 29.0 Firefox to utilize the new Sync. Is there a delay in the syncing process or what? I am unsure as to how this works and am simply becoming frustrated with the effort it is taking to get this done. Does anyone have an idea as to why they aren't syncing?

I have signed into Mozilla on my desktop and on my Android Phone. On both devices Firefox is my default browser and both use the Beta 29.0 Firefox to utilize the new Sync. Is there a delay in the syncing process or what? I am unsure as to how this works and am simply becoming frustrated with the effort it is taking to get this done. Does anyone have an idea as to why they aren't syncing?

All Replies (4)

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Hi please go to Settings > Sync and the new Firefox account profile will open up. from here you can select to sync bookmarks, history, open tabs, and passwords. Are all of these selected on the desktop as well? On the homepage in a new tab on the android you will see Bookmarks > Desktop Bookmarks folder. Are they there? if not you can try a remote debugging to see if there are any errors. Firefox for android debugging instructions and with this info we can open a bug for further investigation.

Please post back if you would like help. And thank you for reporting the issue. With more troubleshooting info we can dig further into what may be causing the issue.

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Same problem here as well. I made sure all 4 selections in android were checked and matched the PC as well. All I really want is Bookmarks and Passwords. No Sync.....

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I had the same problem on all devices, Android or otherwise, added after Firefox deprecated the old-fashioned sync. Devices added previously (last year or before) sync perfectly. No new devices show up.

I started with a Windows desktop browser that has been upgraded from a many-years-ago Firefox version. As mentioned above, all other devices (Android, Windows, Linux) that were originally synched using the old version of Firefox Sync are nicely up to date.

Any new device that started with a Firefox version too new to support the legacy sync, however, did not pick up any information. Checking the sync information from either the desktop browser or the previously connected devices shows all is synced. Newly added devices can log in to my account, Firefox happily notes that my details will "start synching momentarily", but nothing happens beyond that point. Yes, all the relevant boxes were checked. This happened on both Windows and Android.

Opening the Sync setup options on a new Windows Firefox install and comparing it to the original Windows desktop FF screen (the one I originally set up Sync on) pointed me towards the answer. All new Firefox installs showed the sync screen displayed on Mozilla's (recent) documentation. The original Windows Firefox (all windows FF using version 30.0 ) options still displayed the old-fashioned sync setup options (create a key, etc.). Also shown was an "Unlink this device from sync" (may not be exact, as I can't see this anymore) option. Unlinking the Desktop Firefox install that all syncs were originally made through and reconnecting to the new sync login finally allowed new Firefox installations to sync properly.

Unfortunately, this only solved one of the sync problems. On Android at least, I needed to do a full uninstall and reinstall of Firefox to get sync working correctly. This included both the old devices which were originally synced using the deprecated sync setup as well as new devices that I had unsuccessfully tried to sync. Firefox has a long way to go to catch up to Chrome's seamless syncing.

Another potential gotcha is that this method only worked if I unlinked the Firefox device (the Windows desktop in my case) that was used as the original sync source for all Firefox installations.

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Same problem here... First i had to update my firefox to the shittest new version which i hate... The more firefox desktop updates the worse it gets. I'm still using firefox 28 cause its the best version ever...

Anyways so i updated my fiefox to latest 32 something version and installed firefox beta on android. It syncs everything except passwords. And no, i do not use the master password its always disabled!

Can somebody tell me how to sync the passwords from firefox desktop to android on latest version and perhaps maybe on firefox 28 to if thats still possible?


I can only say that syncing doesn't work for me on the latest firefox 32 and android beta firefox!