Firefox Community Forum

This is Firefox 142.0.1 on Windows 10. I prefer to have a local copy of the Firefox profile saved to a USB stick as a simple backup and for copying to another PC if necessary. I have been doing this for years, but now I am unable to do so because Windows gives me an "access denied" error for all of the files in the top-level profile directory. I cannot even open them in Administrator mode. If I try to copy the profile directory as described in your help pages, it says that I need permission from the account that I am logged in as in order to access the files! I have been using Windows since version 3.0 and I cannot understand what Firefox has done to make the profile inaccessible to everything but itself. Obviously, Firefox is able to read the files without additional permissions, so why can't I?

I have my personal account on firefox and it syncs everything but I want to be able to do the same for my business account. when I sign out of my personal and try to sign in to my business it says I can't. I try to re-set my password and it says I have to use the "primary" account email. It does not accept my business account.

How do I get firefox account for my business email?

Thank you

The article explaining why one should not downgrade ignores a critical reason why one needs to downgrade and that is when it turns out that the new version breaks an existing website!

I got bitten by this when Firefox "upgraded" me to V143 after which point the ticket system I use to support my customers stopped working. That same ticket system continues to work fine in Safari, Edge, Chrome and Brave, etc.

Worse, when one does try to downgrade, the old profile gets removed which means you lose EVERYTHING you had (tabs, bookmarks and presumably all the settings and saved passwords, etc). You need to be keeping the old profiles around so that they can be accessed again should someone NEED to downgrade. Fortunately I was able to use Time Machine to recover the old profile --- but somebody just didn't think this through.

Much as I have loved Firefox over the years, I'm starting to feel that it's time to give up on it and move to something else.

Turning off automatic updates is not a solution because eventually one will choose to upgrade manually and most people won't remember to make a copy of their existing profile. Should one then encounter a problem, you're back to square one

Very disappointing .

I am using a very old system that is running out of storage space. There is an 8.73 GB folder that I would like to empty to free up space. C:\dtemp\Profiles contains several folders that were created 10.27.21: 2qzfs15q.default, eybandys.default, f81zrqic.default-release, pctnmazu.default-release-1, and yns5cb3s.default-release.

Can I delete any of these folders?

I don't have a Profiles menu under the Account button on the main toolbar. My Firefox was just updated and the update tab info talked about the new profiles feature as if it was available. Is this rolling out in phases or should I be seeing it?

I have version 144.0, updated on 10/14/2025.

Thanks.

Hello, I have two profiles, one for work and one personal. I used two different email addresses for them. How can I merge these together for the new profile management?

Hello,

I received a popup tab about creating separate profiles. I am still not seeing an option to create another profile, in my case keep personal and work browsing separate on my work computer. The articles I have read do not seem to fit my situation. Firefox is up to date. Thank you for your help.

Do I have to be logged into an account to use profiles? I'm on my work computer on which I don't log into my account and "Profiles" option does not show up on my toolbar.

new firefox update today plus windows update - get message "The bookmarks and history system will not be functional because one of Firefox's files is in use by another application. Some security software can cause this problem." Have tried to restore - no luck. Other bookmarks - empty.

Lost all bookmarks

Hi, I do not understand the new profile management feature of Firefox and how it relates to sync. I am logged into my Mozilla account that syncs bookmarks, and I use the default profile that I renamed to "personal". When I switch to a newly created "work" profile, I am no longer signed in.

Will the new profiles "personal" and "work" be synced to my account once I log on to both? I am using Firefox on several PCs and I don't want to recreate profiles such as "personal" and "work" on all the PCs manually?

Thanks for a reply.

I switched to Firefox a few months ago and I've been using the "about:profiles" page to mimic chrome's profile feature. I have 3 profiles, each with their own Mozilla account. How can I migrate these to the new profiles system?

Running Windows 11. Recently there is a small gear symbol on the Firefox icon in the Taskbar. I don't want it there and it's irritating as hell. Apparently it has something to do with profile. I don't care what it has to do with, I want it to go away. I went to about:config and set browser.profiles.enabled to false, but every time I restart Firefox, it apparently gets set to true again.

There is no reason for Firefox to have forced this visual change on users. How do I make the gear go away permanently? The gear goes or Firefox gets uninstalled and I'll go back to Chrome.

I have previously made additional profiles on 'about:profiles', now Firefox has added an integrated profile manager accessible by clicking my profile on the top right. My old profiles are not available on this profile manager, but they are still available on 'about:profiles', so how can I transfer them without having to remake new ones?

i previously set up profiles using about:profiles, but with the new profiles feature i don't see any of them showing up. i haven't found any articles that allow me to convert the files from about:profiles to use the new one.

i am not logged in to firefox on the others either.

is there a way to link the profile files on my computer to save my bookmarks and history? i don't know if there will be continued support for these files and want to make sure my bookmarks are saved for all of them. i would prefer to stay logged out of the other profiles.

Attached images include screenshots of the empty profiles (one from clicking the profiles from dropdown, one from clicking "manage profiles", and one with blacked out personal data from going to about:profiles).

When i open firefox, i can choose what profile to open. I have two screens, so i was wondering if it was possible to be able to open both profiles i use, and have one on each screen. If not possible, would it be considered for an update in the future? It would make it easier, so i can have my personal profile on one screen, and my work profile on the other.

I've used Firefox as my default for years and years. Yesterday I got some popover telling me I had to create a new profile or I'd lose all my Firefox data, history, bookmarks, etc. It would not let me avoid this. So I did. Still lost all my history, started over. Today it's doing the same thing. What's up? I don't want to move to Chrome.