Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

firefox reopens with tabs in the wrong order

  • 20 replies
  • 9 have this problem
  • 7 views
  • Last reply by enbalmed

more options

Hi all, when i close Firefox and reopen it all of the tabs open in a different order. I have them set in a specific order and it annoys me that i have rearrange them each time I open Firefox. This has only been happening for the past week or so.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Maxy

Hi all, when i close Firefox and reopen it all of the tabs open in a different order. I have them set in a specific order and it annoys me that i have rearrange them each time I open Firefox. This has only been happening for the past week or so. Any help is greatly appreciated. Cheers, Maxy

All Replies (20)

more options

Hi Maxy,

I would love to help you out because I know how annoying it can be to loose your place. Could you tell us a little bit more about your work flow, for example, do you have the tabs automatically open when you launch Firefox?

Here is what I did to create a workspace 1. Open all the items in order I want them to show up in Firefox 2. Right click on each tab and select 'Pin Tab' 3. Quit Firefox 4. Relaunch

When I relaunched Firefox all of the pinned tabs loaded in order. This created a workspace in the order I wanted them to. Please let me know if this does not work I would be happy to further investigate.

more options

Hi rmcguigan, I don't pin the tabs I just have the ones I use regularly open. I close firefox using the top right "X" When i reopen firefox they are there that are just in a different order. I'll upload the pics in a sec

more options

I don't know whether this is relevant to you:

Some users have reported that their Firefox windows (not the tabs within each window) load in a different order if they closed Firefox by right-clicking the task bar button and choosing Close All Windows.

You can avoid a lot of issues with restoring your earlier session if you exit Firefox from the menu, using either:

  • orange Firefox button > Exit
  • File menu > Exit
more options

You can check for problems with the sessionstore.js and sessionstore.bak files in the Firefox profile folder that store session data.

Delete the sessionstore.js file and possible sessionstore-##.js files with a number and sessionstore.bak in the Firefox profile folder.

Deleting sessionstore.js will cause App Tabs and Tab Groups and open and closed (undo) tabs to get lost and you will have to recreate them (make a note or bookmark them if possible).

more options

Here are the pics

Jscher it's the tabs not the windows

more options

hi Cor-el I deleted session js and bak files and it's still doing the samething

more options

Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance).

  • Do NOT click the Reset button on the Safe Mode start window.

Does this also happen if you restart Firefox via the command line in the Developer Toolbar (Firefox/Tools > Web Developer; Shift+F2)?

more options

Hi Maxy,

Did opening the browser in SafeMode as cor-el suggested help isolate the issue?

If so, please try to disable each of the extensions to isolate what might be causing the issue.

If there are any other questions, we are all happy to help.

more options

Hi Thanks so much for taking the time to help me I really appreciate it. No opening in safe mode didn't help.

Cheers,

Maxy Rachel, Uploaded "before.jpg" re uploaded

more options

Did using File > Exit instead of the "X" button make any difference?

This may or may not be relevant...

In another thread, there is a new problem in Firefox 25 with recording a changed scroll position on a page that was restored from an earlier session. When exiting and restoring the session, Firefox scrolls to the earlier position that it restored before, not the latest one. If in your case Firefox is consistently restoring tabs in the order of an earlier session even after you changed the order in your latest session, it might be a related problem. (There's no solution yet, but could help point toward the cause.)

more options

Hi Jscher, I just tried it and no unfortunately it didn't work.

more options

It's possible the sessionstore file has somehow become corrupted. Usually there's no choice when that happens but to delete it and start from scratch, but I had another thought, which was to drag the tabs to a new window to see whether that will cause them to save in the correct order.

To move the first tab to a new window, right-click it and choose Move to New Window. Then position the windows so you can drag the next tab you want to move and drop it on the tab bar of the new window in the desired location. Ultimately, you should end up with just one window.

No idea whether that will help, but I've got my fingers crossed.

more options

Just tried that closed the first window then closed the new one. Still no good.

If I were to reinstall firefox and somehow keep my addons etc would that work. I can delete all windows then add them again later, that's no drama, it's just annoying at the moment. I'm not sure i mentioned that I'm running Firefox 25

Cheers,

Maxy

more options

I closed every tab, closed firefox Deleted session data used CCleaner to delete session, cache, login info history etc restarted PC opened Firefox opened a few tabs closed Firefox reopened it tabs incorrect order again

How strange!!

Maxy

more options

Reinstalling Firefox is helpful when a program file is corrupted. I can't tell whether that would be useful in this case, but you could try the "clean reinstall" procedure. The steps are in this post: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/975056#answer-492743

more options

I missed your last post while chasing down that link...

When you say "Firefox reopened it tabs incorrect order again", I'm not sure whether you mean "incorrect" or "in correct", which would make all the difference...

more options

haha sorry in the wrong order again. I'll try the clean install you recommended

more options

I'm having the same problem: When the previous session is restored on startup, the tabs are re-created in reverse order (except for the first (top-left) tab). If I close and reopen Firefox, the tabs will once again be in the correct order - i.e. since the tab order is being reversed on every launch, every other launch produces the correct order.

I tried the suggestions above and none of the following worked - deleting the sessionstore files, using web developer restart, exiting via File menu - except for launching Firefox in Safe Mode (but that of course isn't a solution.) Seeing as I first noticed the problem a number of weeks ago and have just been living with it, I can't recall what addons are most recent. Is there some way to determine the chronological order of install? (That won't matter if the issue is due to an addon update but I don't have much else to go with at this point.)

Or: any other ideas?

Thanks.

more options

Hi enbalmed, it sounds as though one of your extensions, probably something either tab related or session related is modifying the sessionstore file. Do any of your extensions seem like potential suspects? For example, the original poster's extension list included Tab Mix Plus.

more options

I do have two tab/session-related addons - Tab Mix Plus and Session Manager - and initially didn't suspect them because they were both installed long before the problem started. But of course that doesn't account for background updates, which I'd forgotten about. Upon further testing, it appears that the problem is indeed with TMP (or TMP's interaction with some other addon), so I will be posting to the TMP support forum next.