Firefox Community Forum

I keep a lot of tabs open (~60) in any particular session - I find it's faster in this way to get back to a site.

About every six months or so, I lose *all* these tabs because of Firefox's inadequate session backup system. It only saves two or three total backups, some of which are completely out of date. But the worst scenario is when (1) some site pops up a new window; (2) I mistakenly close my main window before the new window; (3) I open this new saved window once or twice by accident, causing my 60-tab session backup to be overwritten.

Using a third-party session manager (I have tried all the well-known ones) can mitigate this problem, but doesn't really solve it because the re-opened sessions aren't quite in the same format as Firefox sessions and so lose information. In particular, I often lose each tab's icon as well as metadata for Tree Style Tab.

Could Mozilla please consider a more robust session backup system for Firefox? All it would take (I think) is to allow the user to choose the total number of backup sessions and the frequency at which a new session is added. Thank you!

Firefox update today 1-14-26 says Restore FF with a backup file" Instructions say go to Settings/Sync/Backup/Manage Backup. My Sync has no Backup option, only shows: Sync Manage account Device Name Syncing: ON You are syncing these items across all your connected devices: Bookmarks Open tabs Add-ons Settings Connect another device . How to proceed?

(I don't recall setting Syncing to "On" before; it also showed me as automatically logged in to my account.) Assistance appreciated! Thanks!

Firefox updated. I know no longer have access to my bookmarks, saved links, and passwords. How do I revert back to previous version of Firefox? How do I retrieve access to my passwords, bookmarks, and saved links/pages? I will need easy step by step instructions.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

I was asked to create a new profile in order to keep using Firefox, despite never having an account. After I clicked okay, it opened the new version of Firefox, but without all the passwords, bookmarks and history of the past few years. This is really inconvenient. I have since then made an account, but the fact that I can't find any of this data anywhere has me worried that every time I update Firefox it will wipe my account.

I have just restarted my computer following installation of updated software. I find that Firefox has lost all my bookmarks. Are they stored somewhere, and if so how can I recover them?

Hello! Recently I experienced some massive issues with my pc and it needed service, it was uncovered that my drives crashed and the data is gone, they tried to restore it but its all corrupted therefore I cant get my bookmarks back in file form.

My account was synched so all my bookmarks surely are in cloud, today I got the pc back from repair, but my account only syncs bookmarks from the spare pc I used during the repair time and those bookmarks are outdated by two years, the pc which went under repair does pop up in the logged in devices list, so all the bookmarks that were there gotta be stored in the cloud, can you help me recover them?

Best regards Sarah

Hello, I recently had 20+ tabs open in Firefox. I moved 1 tab of the 20 to be a separate page and closed the other tabs. Now I am unable to re-open the other tabs through the 'Recently Closed Tab' feature. That feature only shows a few new tabs I opened on the separate page. Is the only option to painstakingly search through history over several months to re-open several tabs I had open for several months? Thank you the feedback, Ken

Desktop Computer. Still on Windows 10.

Not sure of category. This began when I launched the computer today. I opened Firefox and got the message "The bookmarks and history system will not be functional because ....."

When I started to shut down the computer (first mentioned step here) I saw there's a Window update. I selected Update and Restart. That went okay, but still don't have my Firefox bookmarks.

So I clicked on Learn more. I found the Firefox > Profiles folder. There are two folders, one from today - qkuxm6ws.default-release - 15...... 0196 with 94 items, and 7ghfiw 15.default, from Jan 5, 2021, with 3 items. I assume I should use the one with today's date.

BUT .... from this point, the information on this website was full of information - NOT step-by-step information telling me what to do with which files in this folder.

Also, I have McAfee as well as Windows Defender. I opened Windows Defender Firewall. State is On. Notification state: Notify me when Windows Defender Firewall blocks a new app. I've gotten no such messages.

Under allowed apps and features:

 "Firefox ... private not checked; public checked.."  
 "Firefox (C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox" - private is checked, public not checked.  

Can't make changes.

Under Overview window: Not checked is "Inbound connections that do not match a rule are blocked."

• • • • In the "Monitoring\Firewall folder" - Firefox (with path) is listed twice. Both entries have Private, Allow, NO Override -
      • Differences - the first has UDP; the second has TCP. Nothing under "Group."

My last bookmarks backup was Jan 2025. 😕 😟

I don't know where else to look or what to do. Please help. Kami

Dear Mozilla Support,

My name is Sizhe Xiong. Today when I launched Firefox on my Windows computer, the browser suddenly required me to select or create a new profile before continuing. I had no option to skip this step, so I created a new one.

After that, Firefox asked me to log in or register a Mozilla account. I used the same Gmail address that I’ve always used for Firefox Sync, but it seems that a new account was automatically created, and all my previous data — including bookmarks, history, saved passwords, and extensions — disappeared.

When I checked my local Profiles folder under C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles, I found several new folders created around the same time, but none of them contain my old data (all places.sqlite files are around 5120 KB).

These bookmarks and passwords are very important to me. Could you please help check if it’s possible to recover my old Firefox data, or if my previous Sync data can still be linked to my Mozilla account (using the same Gmail address)?

Thank you very much for your help.

Best regards, Sizhe Xiong

Hi, I switched to a new phone recently, and wasn't able to outright sync all of my open tabs from the old device. It was, however letting me access them from the tab menu on my new device, so it wasn't a big deal.

Now I can't see the other phone in the tab menu, just the sync from my PC. I don't have the old phone anymore, because it was a trade in for my current device.

Is there any way to get my old tabs back? The sync must have timed out, because there was no activity for a period of time. I have Firefox synced on all of my devices.

Thank you.

Moving Firefox over to a new computer, I know how to find the profiles via file manager- that is not my problem. I am not sure which to move, Local or Roaming. I am thinking Roaming as that has all my bookmarks and passwords. I have moved individual files from Roaming and do have bookmarks and passwords working on new computer.

But I was thinking it would be best to move the whole thing so I got the tabs that should be used on startup and maybe more I don't know. So I don't know if I should copy both over or just one. I did try both once and Firefox said it couldn't find profile (I renamed the old ones).

Thinking I may need to use about:profiles and select new one. Not sure what will happen, hope it lets me point to new file on my USB drive. Looks like I should use both local and roaming, but don't know? Local might be something that relates to hardware on computer.

Hope this makes sense?

Hi, All of a sudden, I lost absolutely all of my bookmarks. My PC is running Windows 11. My Firefox account was and still is logged in. At first, I thought the data loss was due to a CCleaner cleanup using their latest update. After the data was lost, I tried running another CCleaner cleanup, but this time it didn’t delete the bookmarks. So I honestly have no idea how this could have happened. These were bookmarks I had saved over many years... It’s a disaster.

PLZ Help

Something very bad happened to me today (11/3)....

Firefox 144.0.2 was installed on 10/30/25, and everything has been fine until today. I don't know why or how, but ALL of my OPEN tabs (of which I have many--and have it fixed so they always re-open when Firefox starts), ALL went away.

In reading conventional steps to recover such from sessionstore-backups, those instructions sounded straightforward. However, even though ALL FIREFOX PROCESSES were ended, I could not copy the contents of the sessionstore-backups folder nor could I delete anything--EVEN THOUGH I am the owner.

Even after providing Admin perms.

I could get rid of profiles.ini, which initially proved diasterous, because then Firefox thought I was brand new, so ALL of my passwords saved through Firefox these many years, went "poof".

Fortunately, I was able to get that back, but I still cannot get all of my tabs back, and conventional instructions to do so aren't working.

After recovering from my heart attack for initially losing my passwords, I am breathing a little better right now, but it sure would be nice to get all of my open tabs back again. I don't know why I am not able to manipulate the files within sessionstore-backups. I think if I could eliminate the files in that folder EXCEPT for upgrade.jsonlz4-20251027123126, which possesses a 10/29/25 date, these should be the open tabs just before the 144.0.2 installation, and all should be right with the world, once more.

I have performed/examined many steps offered under this category, but most assume I can copy them elsewhere for safe-keeping and/or removing all but the one I want Firefox to "use". Because something is preventing me from doing this, though, I am being stymied in what ought to be the solution. As a test, I was able to copy files from a much older profile--so I can prove the basic steps SHOULD HAVE worked. Unfortunately, I cannot do the same with THE (more recent) folder in question. I can't get rid of parent.lock, either (and I have ensured no Firefox processes are running via Task Manager).

Repeatedly.

Something else is at work, here. Any help or assistance from community experts would be most helpful.

Thanks very much in advance.

-MG

Firefox tanked everything I had open on my browser including job postings that I was applying to. I can't get them back. I'm so furious beyond belief! Everything I was researching - ALL GONE!!

I accidentally uninstalled firefox and need to recover passwords and bookmarks. Can this be done? I run an old dell latitude with Windows 10 and was trying to cleanup apps running in background at startup since it was running very slowly. At one point I saw 2 firefox icons. Uninstalled one and lost everything. Can you help me. Michael Evans