Firefox Community Forum

I want to copy/clone information in my Firefox Profile (Bookmarks, Logins, ..) from one device to another. Once that was accomplished, then I would enable Firefox Sync for the two devices.

Scenario: Device “A” (Profile A): Primary/Original/Source Device “B” (Profile B): Copy/Clone/Duplicate

I understand that if I set up Firefox Sync first and then sync the two devices what I will get is a combination/fusion of the information on the 2 devices, i.e., all the “good” stuff in Profile A plus all the superfluous stuff in Profile B that I would just as soon ignore/delete – which is not what I want. This issue has been raised in a number of other posts on this forum but with no suitable resolution offered (that I could find). I’m wondering if there might be a “work-around” that would achieve the desired result.

So ... would this work?

1) Back everything up first (of course!) 2) Glean any unique information to be preserved (Logins, etc.) from Profile B and incorporate it into Profile A (Profile A now has everything essential!) 3) Purge Profile B

   a) Create a New Profile on Device B (and delete old?)
   b) Delete everything possible from the new Profile B (default bookmarks, etc.)

4) Login to Mozilla account and enable Sync

The idea is to create a “blank” Profile on Device B so that when Profile A and Profile B are Synched together (combined), Profile A remains unchanged, and Profile B is populated with everything in Profile A (a perfect copy!). The result that I want after Sync is essentially A+B=A, the solution of which is of course B=0, hence the focus on creating a "blank" Profile B.

Instead of purging Profile B as above, an alternate method might be to first “pre-load” Bookmarks in Profile B by the usual method of Backing up Profile A Bookmarks and then Restoring them to Profile B. At this point Profile A and Profile B Bookmarks would be exactly the same and Synching the two devices should make no changes to either’s Bookmarks. Logins and other information would still have to be purged, but this could at least be a head start.

Presumably this idea could be extended to more than 2 devices (but with only one being the “Primary”).

Note that I am (myself) only concerned about Bookmarks and Logins, and am thus glossing-over how other information that might be important to others (Browsing History, Tabs, etc.) might be Synched.

Could someone from Mozilla/Firefox with a knowledge of the inner workings of these features please comment as to the efficacy of this “work-around”?

Thanks.

Note: I always export all bookmarks to backup file and copy that to several safe locations for needed synchronization across different browsers and also restoring them if needed. Problem: I have repeatedly selected all items in Firefox bookmarks sub-folders and then followed by importing html bookmarks thinking that I was updating my bookmarks, so all my browsers had same. Instead, what I find is duplicated sets of bookmarks building up about 10-fold so that now any search for a site yields far too many duplicate listings and it is a mess. How do I prevent this from happening and how do I actually and truly delete all boomkarks in Firefox?

Aside topic: For all the folks who have accidentally lost bookmarks, my experience with losses has lead to always having backup files of bookmarks and backup listings in word or Excel of all my settings and extensions, etc. Automation has advantages, but it introduces new headaches. I can never allow myself to believe that everything will one day be just rosy. Also, multiple different browsers can be very helpful.

I am trying to get rid of old bookmarks.

I logged out of all my devices except my main PC, deleted many folders of unwanted bookmarks.

changed my password

on my other devices that were not connected to sync, I deleted all bookmarks completely.

I only wanted what was on my main PC that I worked so hard on.

now tonight on my PC all the old bookmarks are back again.

this page doesn't make any sense, there is no option to "Delete data from this device" when I sign out.

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/delete-sync-data-firefox-signing-out...]

Hello, After the last MacBook Pro M4 update my tabs keep disappearing. This is quite ANNOYING as I use ALL my tabs. Plus when I go to HISTORY there is NO Restore Previous session...so I am losing EVERYTHING. Do I just need to go out to another browser and make them my default? I can find NO help when I go out to your support for my problem. Thank you, Patty

/edit: moved thread from Firefox for iOS (for iPhone/iPad) to Firefox section as you have macOS.

I updated my password on a 2nd device,

when i re-signed into my main computer ALL my extensions were deleted, this includes multiple crypto extensions which i will now have to attempt to recover.

This is a MAJOR issue.

Today I installed a clean WIN10 version on my PC, expecting to just log into firefox afterwards and have all the data back within minutes, but I forgot my Firefox password... As I'm currently in another country I also couldn't just log in on any of my other devices to recover the password, so I decided to reset it via the E-Mail... well aparantly changing your password deletes the sync data?? I'm guessing there is no way to recover the data? So I got a relative of mine to start my backup notebook which has not been synched for a few months but some data should've still been there, at least I had thought so... password database there was empty... and instead of synching the firefox landing page from my notebook where all my pinned pages were, it copied the page from the new device and wiped that as well... Any way to revert the sync changes on the notebook?

I am on MacOS Monterey running Firefox 130.0. Tonight, I restarted my Mac. Upon startup, Firefox offered to restore my session, as always, but it did not restore everything. In fact, I had one window open that had many tabs (some important) and that is gone.

I'm a bit puzzled and I wonder if I've found a bug?

I have a new computer that I want to sync my bookmarks to. I don't remember my password or recovery key (if I have one). I don't want to lose my bookmarks. How can I save them if my account gets reset and they are deleted?

Hi, I've had a Firefox account for a long time. I recently formatted my computer and reinstalled Windows. I signed in to my Firefox account, but it won’t let me import my bookmarks. Can you please help me? Thanks, Sam

I have been a firefox user for 5 years now and i gave my laptop to repair and it was fixed with an ssd (HP NVMe SSD) to better performance and more speed and efficiency but in the process he rebooted and restarted the pc and now all my data is not there , i have some very important webpages and bookmarks in my firefox browser, i had signed in synced and done everything so that i get the data if something like this happens , however and only 3 or 4 bookmarks were imported and all the search history is gone and new even though i signed in with all my accounts and synced and tried to get the data , i remember that i did everything properly to sync and store the account data,search history,bookmarks and password s and now i am not able to get it and i tried doing it with all accounts i had logged in firefox.how do i get my search history,bookmarks,saved passwords back please tell?

Dear Firefox community ,

I am encountering an issue when attempting to save a PKCS#12 file in Firefox. The following error message is displayed:

• "Failed to save the PKCS#12 file for an unknown reason."*

I have tried saving the file multiple times, but the error persists. Could you please provide guidance or potential solutions to resolve this issue?

Thank you for your assistance.

Dear Firefox community ,

I am encountering an issue when attempting to save a PKCS#12 file in Firefox. The following error message is displayed:

• "Failed to save the PKCS#12 file for an unknown reason."*

I have tried saving the file multiple times, but the error persists. Could you please provide guidance or potential solutions to resolve this issue?

Thank you for your assistance.

Hihi

I had to factory reset my computer and when i re-downloaded Firefox and logged in my bookmarks where no where to be found. I've look through some the the fixes and they don't seem to work is there anyway to recover my bookmarks?

Hi... Support? Question? I don't know how to solve this prob.

[feuven ]

I'm trying reach the active Apsense.com site! for Sanseveria

                             So, After going around resetting this and that 4 security
                             & then un-securing links    .... i ended up with this:!

see: https://x.com/Sanaeveria

Secure Connection Failed An error occurred during a connection to inquirygrid.com. PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR Error code: PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR

   The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
   Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.

Learn more…

[feuven ]

Thanks,

When Firefox (130.0) presents the message: "Still not able to restore your session? Sometimes a tab is causing the issue." when Firefox starts, Firefox should help the user by identifying the tab(s) that caused the Restore Session to fail.