After I restarted my laptop (Mac OS 10.15.7, Firefox 109), Firefox suddenly refused to open, saying, "Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccess… (read more)
After I restarted my laptop (Mac OS 10.15.7, Firefox 109), Firefox suddenly refused to open, saying, "Your Firefox profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible."
I read the "How to run Firefox when your profile is missing or inaccessible" page. It implied that I had moved or deleted profiles--I had not. I hadn't even been aware that Firefox had profiles.
I followed the instructions and found my Firefox profiles folder, and was confused to find 15 separate folders in it. I was unclear whether they were profiles or something else. They have names like "2sb6poj9.default" or "gya9gghh.default-release". Most of them contain something called "times.json" but one of them has a whole bunch of stuff in there, so maybe it's the real profile?
I also followed some other instructions and was able to bring up what another website called the old Firefox Profile Manager. The space where it should be showing profiles was, unsurprisingly, empty. I tried creating a new profile and it let me but then told me it hadn't saved it, and the space remained blank. However, I went back to the actual profiles folder to check out of curiosity, and the new profile was there. So creating new profiles is clearly not the answer, because it will just refuse to recognize them too.
I also tried opening Firefox in troubleshooting mode by holding down option and clicking the icon--it didn't work. However, I just checked the Profiles folder after another attempt and even making this attempt seems to create a new folder! Is that normal?
I have no idea what to do at this point.