Firefox Community Forum

Had to restore entire backup image of C: (boot) SSD that was saved on an external USB drive. I had been using FF 156, but the image restored FF 155. My FF profile is always stored on D: (internal HDD).

I launched FF and got a message that my profile was created with a newer version of FF and might not be compatible. The only option was to create a new profile or exit. I created a new profile but when FF opened I had no direct access to my existing profile on D: HDD. It wasn't listed when I clicked the Profiles button on the toolbar.

Came across a site that said to run Start>Run>firefox.exe - P. A box opened that listed both the newly created profile and my existing one on D: HDD. I selected the profile on D: and FF launched without any problems - everything fully restored. So if the existing profile is compatible, why was it so difficult to select it?

How 'bout this..? When FF detects that an existing profile was made with a newer FF version than currently running, why not give the user the option to install the latest FF update on that same message screen, in addition to the option to create a new profile? Then just relaunching FF after the update should allow an existing profile to be selected/used. Obviously existing profiles are compatible with FF updates since everything still works after routine updating.

Exact same thing happened with Thunderbird after reimaging C: because an older version was restored. I tried running thunderbird,exe -P without knowing if that would even work, and it easily allowed me to restore all 5 of my mailbox profiles with thousands of emails that are stored on D: in seconds.

Please make things easier...!

Firstly I have lost my default,. I had it set up as google . next I lost all my bookmarks, I have also lost the bar I had which included bookmarks history etc. this all happened in the middle of using a program and now I cannot get it back. PLEASE TELL ME WHAT IS HAPPENING

I have tried restoring my bookmarks using these steps but it doesn't work. Specifically, when I try to select "Choose File" in Step 3 nothing happens. The option will highlight, but when I click on it no window to choose a file pops up. Is there any other way to restore bookmarks using a json backup?

I had a ten year well organized system of book marks. With latest upgrade they appear to be missing. All i see is gobly gook over how great the new update is, but no bookmarks.

I´m really sorry it had to come to this. I used Firefox for decades. And I think it´s important to have another engine next to google.

But. Firefox consistently loose my opened tabs. I´m not on my desktop just like once per week, and each time I open firefox, it is updated, and clean, and today I can´t open any history. I can probably reopen closed things, but not OPENED while closed last time. This has been really last drop, I´m tired of opening everything again, finding what was there. It was there for a purpose. So. bye bye, and I´ll go download something working ... like brav or duckduckgo. Not happy about this, but I don´t see another choice.

The Windows Firefox desktop program disappeared from my work computer, and now there is no recoverable profile that has all of my work bookmarks. Our IT company checked local backups and there's no data from before the random uninstall. They also did a system restore point with no luck. None of the help articles from Firefox or online are solving the issue. Help!

I usually have a lot of tabs open (which probably isn't a good habit), but many of them are important to a project I'm doing currently. Usually if my imac Ventura 13.7.2 shuts down on it's own, or I have to shut it down because it's frozen, either I will have the option to restore the session, or if not I will have the option to go to "history"/recently closed tabs". But this time Session Restore showed up blank, "recently closed tabs" was greyed out or wasn't there, and "recently closed windows" is greyed out. In the meantime I've been using a new Firefox window and have a few new tabs, and that's all "recently closed tabs" will show. Not the "many tabs" from the session before.

It may be that this problem occurred after our most recent update a few days ago. (We're now at 156.0 (64 bit). Or I might have closed the Firefox window myself by mistake, instead of a shut down. Is that what caused it? Ugh.

I am not a savvy user at all, so the articles were way too confusing.

I am grateful to anyone who can explain a straight forward solution.

Thank you, Ellen

Please give me a simple step by step breakdown of how to solve this. I am AuDhD, and am trying to use digital technology to assist with my problems with executive function. Internet security requirements seem determined to stop this, by not consistently saving the data I expect them to, and then asking for it when it is too late for me to have realised I needed a 3rd party solution. I don't think I should need several products to achieve this very simple goal, but neither Google, Mozilla, Microsoft not Opera seem to agree This is now causing distress and taking a huge amount of time to try and resolve with companies that profit hugely from their customers, but refuse to talk to them directly.

hi there,

so i use tab groups extensively, for example I'm a freelancer working for many clients on many projects per client, so I open a group per project and have windows with stacks of groups and then just dip into the stack as needed for whatever I'm working on that moment.

Usually I'm good about closing firefox down so it remembers my tab groups the next time I boot (my mac OS Tahoe). However I was trouble shooting a piece of hardware that required me restarting the mac many times in a row and once it was all done about 6 restarts later, my windows with stacks of tabs were gone. Firefox had remebered some groups, but lost 70% of my tab groups, which is just a huge waste of time, I'm never going to go back and re-open tabs from months ago i.e. I can't remeber what i was browsing for which is why I save tab groups duh, so I just need this to be more robust.

Please write a big fat file of every group somewhere and make it recall the damn list on next boot, or 20 boots later. The only way it should delete a group is if I manually decide I don't need it any more and purge it from my library.

Just having the history is super useless, I'm not gonna waste more than 10 seconds looking at the thousands of tabs in my history trying to recreate my groups, just no way, I have to move fast I'm always on deadline.

Please and thanks!

Hello, I am writing to report a critical flaw in the new Firefox Local Backup mechanism (HTML-based container). After formatting my PC and installing a fresh copy of Windows 10/11, I attempted to restore my 10 years of browser history using a valid backup file (.html, ~102 MB) created by Firefox 153.0.4.

Although the password was correct (the UI immediately rejected incorrect ones), the restore process completely failed and entered a destructive loop. Instead of extracting the data, Firefox started infinitely creating hundreds of empty profile folders in %AppData%\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles without throwing a visible error to the user, completely messing up the profiles.ini file.

What had to be done to recover the data: Since standard unarchivers (7-Zip) and tools like Windows certutil couldn’t parse the hybrid HTML/Base64 container, we had to reverse-engineer the recovery process using the internal Firefox source modules (PreferencesBackupResource.sys.mjs and SessionStoreBackupResource.sys.mjs from omni.ja).

We had to write a custom Node.js script to:

1. 1 Parse the specific block-by-block Base64 encoding used by Mozilla inside the HTML wrapper.
2. 2 Manually decrypt the raw binary data using the backup password.
3. 3 Extract places.sqlite, logins.json, key4.db, and sessionstore.jsonlz4 manually.
4. 4 Manually inject these files into a freshly registered profile.

The Bug Core: The built-in extractor in Firefox fails on fresh OS/browser installations due to path/profile synchronization errors, causing a crash loop that generates endless ghost profiles.

Please review the block-by-block extraction logic and add strict exception handling to the Local Backup UI so it doesn't break the profile directory when a routine error occurs.

Thank you.

I don't know how you can help. I would like to know how many other people are experiencing what I am, which is a repeated loss of all of my saved passwords. This has now occurred at least six or seven times over a several week span, on one computer (Business). Another computer (Home) I use is set to not auto update and that has not been effected. I believed I set the computer on which I am having difficulty to also not update, however the loss of passwords (all at once and entirely) keeps happening without effort or notice. This is driving me to contemplate changing the Browser I consistently use and have been satisfied with but if I can neither get help or otherwise find a solution there will be no alternative. The rebuilding of my saved password base is exhausting and frustrating and a complete waste of time and effort. I have written previously and asked for assistance and did get some lame try that went absolutely nowhere. I am admittedly not particularly computer savvy yet neither am I a novice. The communication via Mozzilla is not helpful as there are terms and phrases used that have no meaning for me so are near impossible to follow as result.

Hello,

I had an active Pocket account linked via my Mozilla Account prior to Pocket's service shutdown. Unfortunately, I was unable to export my saved links and reading list during the automated export window.

Since the original export tool at getpocket.com/export is no longer active, could someone from the support team or staff advise:

Is there still an internal procedure, backup archive, or privacy compliance form available to retrieve an export (CSV/HTML) of saved items?

What is the correct official support or contact channel for account data retrieval inquiries now that direct email addresses are unreachable?

I can provide my registered email and account details privately upon request by an official moderator or support staff member.

Thank you for your guidance.

latest update "erased" my bookmarks. Ive followed all instructions, no backup file shows when doing Restore directions. Supposed to automatically save last 15 updates but no bookmarks? Where else may it be saved to try manual restore or am I going to have to reenter all I had.

i have setup mozilla blue star and saved into other bookmarks the ffox tab docs that ai worked on with gemini ai. now when i try and open the docs from the other book marks they will not open. what has gone wrong and can i get a copy and save these docs? i can see the tags and google links but cannot open etc. i am desperate as it has taken a few weeks to get this information together. Thankyou!

My mac froze, force quit did not work, unplugged it, turned it back on, all bookmarks were gone and not able to add new ones. Would like to restore old bookmarks and add new ones.