Hi,

If you mean that tabs were moved to the inactive section, on Android, you can disable that by going to Firefox Settings > Tabs and turning off "Tabs you haven't viewed for two weeks get moved to the inactive section".

If the above doesn't work for iOS, please ask a separate question on the Firefox for iOS forum.

PS I've moved this question to the Firefox for Android forum.

Hi Julia,

I understand how frustrating that can be—especially when you were keeping tabs open intentionally.

Just to clarify one point: in most cases, Firefox doesn’t actually delete tabs without warning, but it may move or unload them depending on the device and settings.

On Android, as Denys mentioned, there is a feature that moves unused tabs to an “Inactive tabs” section after a certain period (usually 14 days by default). These tabs are still there—you can check by opening the tab switcher and looking for the inactive section. If you prefer, you can disable this in: Settings → Tabs → turn off “Move inactive tabs”.

On iOS and iPadOS, Firefox behaves a bit differently. It doesn’t currently have the exact same “inactive tabs” feature, but tabs can still disappear if:

The app is cleared from memory by the system (especially if many tabs were open) Private browsing mode was used (tabs are not saved after closing) The app was reinstalled or data was cleared

Since you mentioned you were not logged in, syncing wouldn’t restore those tabs across devices, so unfortunately they wouldn’t be recoverable from another instance.

For future use, a couple of options that might help:

Bookmark important tabs (even temporarily in a folder) Use “Collections” (on Android) to group and save tabs Keep inactive tabs enabled but review them periodically before they are removed or unloaded