Firefox Community Forum

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 have a folder/subfolder, Old Firefox Data/ukn05f6l.default-release, on my desktop created 11/30/2024.

Any ideas what it is? It is huge...940mb.

Can I delete it?

Thanks

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

Hi! Firefox now has two profile managers. The old one can be used so that I can open two Firefox instances with different desktop files on Linux with the "-P and --no-remote" command line flags. Is this also possible with the new profile manager in Firefox that came with version 138, which is similar to Chrome's? With Chrome this can be done with the "--profile-directory" command line flag. Can't find information about this. /Regards

How can I transfer my bookmarks to the new version of Firefox. The bookmarks are still available from the drop-down top bar "bookmarks" but they don't show on the Firefox page. I don't know how to get to the "about:profiles" page to change back to the profile that shows my bookmarks toolbar.

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?

Hello everyone,

I’ve been using Firefox for 5 years now and I absolutely love it. I recently bought a new laptop, but I’ve run into an issue. On my old laptop, I was able to use multiple Firefox profiles at the same time—similar to how Chrome handles profiles.

On the old setup, when I clicked the three-line (menu) button, I could see my second profile there and switch between profiles with just one click. After installing Firefox on my new laptop, I can’t find that option anymore.

I know some of you might suggest using about:profiles to switch profiles. Yes, I’m aware of that method, but I find it inconvenient because I’d have to type about:profiles every time, which is a bit of a time waste for me. I really want the same quick-switch option I had before.

How can I get that functionality back? Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

I’m already using the latest version (142.0.1, 64-bit).

Thanks

I have 3 different profiles on my Desktop Firefox, and I'm able to change between them and even set some commands on CLI to switch between them easily, opening one or another.

Now, my question is: How can I do such a thing on mobile? I only linked my main account, and as far as I understood, I cannot link to multiple and switch on demand. Is there any way? Am I missing something?

I checked the tutorial on how to setup profiles and the profile manager doesn't seem to exist on mobile.

Thank you for your attention!

With the new profiles feature, is there a way to set a default profile when opening links? I have set up "work" and "personal" profiles but when I click on a link from another app (i.e. Slack) Firefox opens the link in (what seems like) the last profile I was using when I have a window open for each profile. Since I'm doing this on my work computer, I want all links to open in the "work" profile by default. Is this possible?

After reinstalling the browser, the folder "Old Firefox Data" appeared, which requires administrator permission. It does not allow you to grant yourself permission and change the owner. How can I delete it? Has anyone encountered the same problem? Please help

Could someone help me start over again and get it right, instead of a mess? Is it possible to somehow start from scratch or fix what I am doing wrong? Is there some way to open a new account and dump the mess I'm facing now?

On my Macbook I have four accounts. I loaded Firefox via one of them. I do not want Firefox running or its 'background processes' in the other accounts as I do not use it there. If I switch account from the one in which I use Firefox to another does Firefox keep running processes?

I just update firefox but all my none of my bookmarks loaded. I share my computer with my husband. He has a different account on this same computer and his bookmarks are showing up on my side, but mine are nowhere to be found. Previously we have had separate bookmark lists and all was fine. I don't know where my bookmarks went.

How do I get them back and put on "my side" and still have my husband's on his side?

Starting with Firefox 141, I noticed the profile folder is locked down by Mozilla by way of folder permissions, to the extent that I (as administrator) cannot even take ownership of the folder. Even after I completely uninstalled Firefox and restarted my computer I can't take ownership of the folder, nor can I delete it - access is simply denied. I have to literally boot up with a Linux Live distro to be able to delete it. This is invasive and NOT OK!!

I work with multiple profiles that require backups and be copied. I also have a 'master profile' which is set up to co contain all my settings and addons - when I require a new profile I simply copy it over and voila. Not even this is possible anymore, as Mozilla has locked down the entire folder tree, I can no longer copy a new profile into C:\Users\*USER*\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles.

I also cannot copy existing profiles (and therefore also not able to backup) out of C:\Users\*USER*\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles - access denied. This is uncalled for by Mozilla. I have complete removed Firefox from my computer, including registry entries, and even after that I'm still denied access and cannot even delete C:\Users\*USER*\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla.

The only solution to to any of the above issues is to either reboot into Windows Safe Mode or bootable media of another OS. But this is totally impractical - Mozilla cannot expect of me to stop all my work and restart my PC every time I need to perform any of the above mentioned issues.

This is highly invasive by Mozzilla - to not even be able to delete a profile folder without any trace of Mozilla on my computer???? Come on, FIX THIS !!!

Will Mozilla please provide the solution?

I recently reinstalled Debian 13 on my workstation. This included installing Firefox-esr from the Debian repositories so the version before and after the reinstall is the same. Despite this, Firefox refused to start until I created a new profile - insisting that my profile was from an older version.

To add insult to injury, it offers a method to import data from Chromium (which I use rarely) but not from a previous Firefox profile.

Firefox Sync works so far as it goes, but not everyone wants to use it. Importing from a local profile should be easier to implement than remotely syncing - especially given that Firefox clients may not be the same on different devices.

And, of course, the initial point is that Firefox should accept a user profile when it was created by the same version. After all, when I upgrade Firefox on Debian, I'm not required to create a new profile. Why should I be forced to do it when I reinstall the same version?

Firefox created a new Profile for me during a recent update and ignored the Profile I had been using for many years.

That probably occurred because Firefox couldn't find the original Profile. I had moved it to C:\0-FFox\ to shorten the length of file names. I had been getting File-Name-Length errors, which ended after moving the Profile closer to C:\.

Now I can't access or use the original Profile. I've researched the ins and outs of Profiles but can't find a solution to this problem. I want to add my old Profile to the new Profile created by Firefox and maybe switch between the two, or maybe revert to using only the old Profile. But I can't figure out how to do that. Adding a Profile seems to imply adding a new Profile and not an old one.

I sincerely hope you can help me solve this problem!

Many thanks! Wayne

I used Firefox for many years, and I mainly used it on Linux. Since I am testing different distros from time to time, so I will reinstall FF often. Since I've an user a/c on FF, so that I can simply logon to restore my settings and that worked fine except few things.

1. I can not keep my theme settings and menu settings, such as using a dark theme and always show menu and bookmarks, I need to set the above every time I reinstall FF even with an a/c.

2. I got the error "Failed to read the configuration file. Please contact your system administrator" when I run FF on Raspberry Pi with Armbian desktop, despite of the error FF started normally. When I check the ".mozilla" folder, I found multiple profiles beside the default one I used, when I delete the extra ones and edit the "profile.ini" to remove them, I still found those profiles on the folder. Since I've some extensions installed as well as some screen settings, so I don't want to restart as new to re-do everything, is that any way to clean up my profiles while keeping my settings ?

3. I set couple websites to auto load when FF starts, I pin them to the tab to save some screen space, but I got double entries every time, the pinned ones and the one I set auto load on start, it seems no way to only auto start as pinned.

Thanks !