Firefox Community Forum

Basically, I reinstalled Windows, and I had all my passwords and stuff on my Firefox beforehand. Now, I don't remember my accounts password, and not the security key either.

I have recently purchased a new Windows 11 computer, and want to install Firefox there and transfer all my bookmarks, passwords, etc. There are obviously quite a few Support articles on this topic, and seemingly quite a few methods to use: copy and paste profile folder, sync, the backup/restore function within Settings, etc. I'm a bit reluctant to use sync, as some users report it can be an incomplete transfer. My current profile also may contain some "corruption", so I'm reluctant to copy the entire profile folder to the new computer.

Comments by esteemed and superb contributor cor-el in this Support article: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/que.../1454070] therefore may be my best option. He wrote:

Note that best is to avoid restoring a full profile folder and only restore important files that are safe to restore/transfer.

   bookmarks and history: places.sqlite
   favicons: favicons.sqlite
   bookmark backups: compressed .jsonlz4 JSON backups in the bookmarkbackups folder
   cookies.sqlite for the Cookies
   formhistory.sqlite for saved autocomplete Form Data
   logins.json (encrypted logins) and key4.db (encryption key/primary password) for logins saved in the Password Manager
   cert9.db for certificates stored in the Certificate Manager
   persdict.dat for words added to the spell checker dictionary
   permissions.sqlite for Permissions and possibly content-prefs.sqlite for other website specific data (Site Preferences)
   sessionstore.jsonlz4 for open tabs and pinned tabs (see also the sessionstore-backups folder) 

My questions are: 1. Why is it "best is to avoid restoring a full profile folder"? 2. Is this the complete list of "important files that are safe to restore/transfer"? 2. In my profile folder, there are several files that start with the same file name, but then have different file extensions. For example: cookies.sqlite, cookies.sqlite.bak, cookies.sqlite-shm, cookies.sqlite-wal. Should I restore ALL these files, or just "cookies.sqlite"? 3. Is the correct procedure to copy the selected files from the "old" profile, and then paste them to the "new" profile, which presumably would overwrite files of the same name in the "new" profile? Thanks!

(Apologies for any formatting, bold text, and italicized test oddities. I selected these options for parts of this text, but am not sure I did that correctly. It would be very helpful if a question/message could be previewed prior to sending!)

FireFox browser closed and when I opened it all my bookmarks are gone, all of my history is gone everything is gone as though I never ever used firefox in my life.

Since Firefox automatically updated (14.0.1) on my MacBook Air (2025 model) several weeks ago, the Bookmarks and History functions haven't worked. Can anyone suggest how I can fix this?

So far hate new Firefox that I have been forced to switch to - very annoying and such a waste of my time trying to sort out my bookmarks. May make me switch to Edge or something.

Followed the instructions - C:\Users\name\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ - found a backup but no information as to how to get the bookmarks into the new Firefox?????

Many of us are older users and perhaps not so savvy as to how to do this.

And so it would have been nice if Firefox could have been more "nice and be specific" with this forced change over.

Thank you

Hi, ok, so my computer just randomly updated my Firefox Browser and now all of my bookmarks, saved passwords, extensions, themes, and history is gone. I used the links on the support website, but they were not helpful at all. I am logged in with the same account I was originally logged in with prior to update 149.0 (logged in with gmail). When I sync data in settings, it automatically imports my Safari and Chrome information (which is not what I want). I try to import my bookmark and password history from the saved HTML and CSV files under Mozilla Firefox, but I don't have the ability to do so, as the files are essentially 'greyed' out. I have tried every step to troubleshoot and every link that is related to my issue listed on Mozilla's support with no success. I have even searched my issue on Google and Reddit. Please help!!

I have enabled the option to open the previous windows and tabs. I had one window that I always closed last as it had a lot of groups that are important for my work, so it used to open every time I started Firefox. Sometimes, even if I closed the window by mistake without closing other windows, I was able to get it back by pressing ctrl+shift+n.

But yesterday, I might have closed it by mistake and when I pressed ctrl+shift+n , it didn't come back. I wasn't able to access my window and now it's all gone. I don't see anything in recently closed windows in history.

I need those tabs back as they are very important for my work. they were a lot of tabs. I had many groups but now all are gone. I tried by using the previous.jsonlz4 in the sessionstore-backup by renaming it in the default-release profile as sesstionstore.jsonlz4 but still wasn't able to access my window.

I didn't clear my history as the tabs opened in the window still show up in the history.

Kindly help as soon as possible

I updated Firefox to 145.0 this morning, and after Firefox had restarted, it had lost all bookmarks and the bookmarks toolbar. I have spent all day following links to correct the problem and got nowhere. I have restarted Windows and Firefox countless times - no change. I've even tried reinstalling Firefox over the existing version. If I go to bookmarks > manage bookmarks > restore and backup, sometimes that will load, others not. When it does load, it fails to find a file to restore from. 10 years of bookmarks, links & research vanished.

Can someone please provide a solution (preferably in Layman's terms) to this??

Hi. I have all the automatic opening of the last session turned on. So for the last two months, when I fired up my PC, all the tabs came back on. That is, until today!

Because I mistakenly clicked "X" when I had private browsing on in other window.

This created error that resulted in blank screen coming in... All my tabs are gone, and they are not in the recent history. How can I bring them back on"? they were just there not 10 minutes ago.

Hi, I'm Albert.

I had like 10,000 open tabs (not exaggerating) and these tabs are gone after a blue screen error and a few Windows updates. I want to restore those tabs, but I can not because the "Restore the previous session" option is grayed out.

Are there ways to restore these open tabs?

If there isn't one, then I want to restore all the websites I have visited over the past few years and manually filter them.

How do I do it?

The Firefox library contains history but the oldest history it contains is 2024 December one. I guess the dedicated folder removed my old browsing history as it was filled up?

What I read is that places.sqlite file contains all the browsing history. Is this right? My places.sqlite file size is 80.0 MB (83,886,080 bytes). Is there a size limit on this file? I wonder if this file contains all my browsing history.

I have my places.sqlite file and DB Browser installed on my computer. But I don't know what to do next after opening places.sqlite file.

If there are better suited applications for my purpose than DB Browser, please recommend me one with a little instruction.

Long story short, how do I restore my open tabs or browsing history?

Please help me.

I am trying to recover a FireFox session from a backup of my C:\ drive from a few months ago, but I am blocked by "access denied". No matter what I have tried, access is always denied. I an using FireFox version 149.0 on Windows 10, and am trying to manually make the substitution in the folder C:\Users\...profiles\318tzbcg.default-release\sessionstore-backups.

I have tried the substitution with FireFox totally shut down (checked in Process Explorer) and even after a reboot. I am blocked from copying any of the current files to another folder or to rename them (as a precursor to (hopefully) replacing them), much less over-copying them with files from my drive backup.

I have tried from an this with CMD (run as administer) in my normal user account (which has admin privileges anyway) and with an actual Administrator account. In my User account I have verified for the properties of the Profile and sessionstore-backups folders that all of the accesses are ticked as allowed for write and read (except Special Access is not ticked). The section with the tick boxes is greyed-out (with those boxes checked), and I cannot untick any of them or put a tick on Special Access.

(I am writing this from a different machine, so have not clicked the Share Data button (troubleshooting information) on this submission form, but can provide that later from that machine,)

What can I do to get the needed access (permissions) to substitute a recovered sessionstore.jsonlz4, recovery.json4lz or previous.json4lz file?

Mozilla usually doesn’t restore all the windows I’m working in; when I open it, it only restores a few of them. I usually use the ‘History’ > ‘Recently Closed’ > ‘Reopen All Windows’ option, but this time not all the windows I need are being restored. My most important window, containing 1,000 essential tabs for various articles, hasn’t been restored, and it seems as though I have absolutely no chance of finding it at all; I don’t even have a ‘Restore previous sessions’ button. I don’t know how to get that window back, because restoring the tabs one by one would take an age and I’d probably lose a lot of them (it’s very important that these were tabs, not bookmarks). What should I do?

All my bookmarks disappeared and the bookmark button does not work. I have refreshed Firefox - no change. I have uninstalled and reinstalled Firefox but still no restoration of Bookmark button functionality. OS Win10

Hello and good afternoon. I have a problem with my last session as it doesn't appear, even when I try to do it manually in Settings-History-Import and backup-Restore, it shows me some options of different dates with all my last browser history, but none of them works, it simply doesn't open any of the web pages. I don't have any other profile, and I already tried the troubleshooting too I Hope you can help me. Thanks in advance