I-Firefox Community Forum

bold text Firefox has been my browser forever. When I tried to open it this morning I was invited to create a profile, so no profile, no Firefox..... I've never had to do this before and am reluctant because of the apparent threat of losing all my passwords and bookmarks. I'm 85 years of age so don't need this complication. Any help would be appreciated, complicated high tech answer will probably be beyond me. Brian.

I opened up Firefox just now to find that my two profiles currently in use are completely inaccessible. I was faced with a "Create Profile" dialogue that launched me into a brand new profile with none of my settings, keybinds, cookies, extensions, anything. Despite this, I know for a fact that my old profiles are *still* there. As you can see my profile folders are right there, with all their data intact as far as I can tell from inspecting their contents, yet they are not accessible from the about:profiles.

Please help me. What is happening with the profile manager? How do I access those old profiles?

I have Firefox installed on both my desktop and my laptop. On my laptop, I am able to create and manage profiles; however, on my desktop, there is no option available in the menu (the hamburger menu) to do so.

I have verified that both devices are running the latest version of Firefox, which includes the profile management feature, but I am still unable to access it on my desktop.

I have a folder/subfolder, Old Firefox Data/ukn05f6l.default-release, on my desktop created 11/30/2024.

Any ideas what it is? It is huge...940mb.

Can I delete it?

Thanks

Just this week I found it was impossible to get to firefox browsing until I chose an upsetting blob as my profile. Is there anyway to skip this step or at least to change that blob to something that makes a more pleasant experience?

With the profile system, which I just used to try and fix another problem. Deleting them doesn't work I've tried manually deleting the profiles as well but they still show up in the UI and it just recreates the folder again if you try to delete it or open it. If you use the UI to try and delete it the instance and page it opens is simply blank. And now the profile I'm trying to delete isn't open. I'm trying to delete it from "original profile" and when I do it opens the a new instance of firefox with the profile I'm trying to delete with in the address bar: about:deleteprofile but the screen is empty.

I'm a bit puzzled here. Initially, I tried to use the new built-in VPN for only a single domain. That doesn't work at all. Until it does, I tried to get it through other ways. Containers don't work, private windows neither, they both just inherit the global VPN setting.

So I moved on to profiles. The web found me a Mozilla support topic that suggested to open about:profiles and create a new one. Did that, opened a window for it, but couldn't get it to reopen on any easy path, just through opening about:profiles and clicking one of the many buttons again.

Then I found another description that used the "Profiles" menu. Never seen that before (probably because the menu bar isn't visible by default). Created a new profile there, too, and opened it. After restarting Firefox, all was gone! My original profile with everything was totally inaccessible, like a full data loss. Google search AI in a Chrome browser helped me out and explained what I need to do (in about:profiles, select the old one as default, then restart) to get my environment back. After that I deleted all newly created profiles and then their directories again.

Started over with a new "new" profile and continued there. Now I wanted to activate the VPN in there. It asked me to log in again, which was a good sign because finally I got a Firefox window that didn't know about the other window. But then the next failure: I couldn't log in with my credentials because that profile was already used in the other window/profile. Again, they're not completely separated from each other and there's some hidden link between them.

So, do I need a new Firefox/Mozilla account only for a separate Firefox profile? I can happily use my one account on different devices but not on the same device? Can I unlink the main profile from my account again? I don't see a logout button anywhere, I'm just logged in invisibly.

I want to restore a previous profile which I can see on File Explorer, but no previous profiles appear on the About Profiles page. How can I access this previous profile?

The Issue: I want to copy all bookmarks/Logins/PW from original into two additional already created but not used Profiles. Hence, I have created 3 desired profiles.

I want to copy into each profile the "Original" Bookmarks/Logins/PW nothing else matters to me, i can go to each profile and modify its settings after that and I have read the device Sync considerations.

At this stage, do I abandon the already created 2 additional Profiles and follow the Copy to New Profile procedures outlined in FAQs?

The benefit to my current state is I could copy in "Original" Bookmarks/Logins/PWs to the newly create profiles that are vacant I could then go into each profile to delete the non-relevant data.'

I have read the FAQ differences for Containers vs Profiles and still feel Profiles is best for me. I have also read Sync and the associated threads in FAQ. I have also read Copy from "Original" profile but it seems to apply when creating a Profile.

In the Original profil, I have three Bookmark sub-folders and over 200 bookmarks, plus over 480 Login/PWs. I wanted something like Profiles feature, to put my personal (PW, Bookmarks & Logins) into its own areas' Profile. The use case is Original I use for learning, Personal for banking and medical, the 3rd I have setup one Not For Profit Organization Profile. Each has relevant bookmarks/Logins.PW.

So I created my Profiles. Then realized the PW/Bookmarks/Logins are truly separated.

My version of Firefox wont save History, Bookmarks or Downloads. I've made sure the privacy settings are correct and have tried reinstalling Firefox several times. It also wont let me drag a link from the address bar to the bookmark bar anymore like it used to. Any help with this would be much appreciated... Thanks!

Before the new profiles update in Firefox I was using the old version of creating profiles and I want to move that profile into the new profile method. Is that possible?

Just this week firefox has been demanding that I choose a profile before I gain access. Can I skip this step? And how can I change the unpleasant blob that I must choose. I have got one answer which requests a screen shot but I can't find my question to attach it. (I can't find the old search questions--but I'm most elderly.) and need links or reminders. Anyway, I'll put the screen shot here.

Hi, I'm running FF 149.0 (64-bit) on Windows 11. I've used profiles for a while now and on several occassions I've "lost profiles". Currently I have three profiles which I set up and edited the icon and colour associated with each. When I launch FF I see the Profile Manager and can select any of the three and I can create a new profile which shows here. However, once in any one of the FF profiles I don't see the others - by which I mean that when I go via the hamburger lines top right and click on the current profile, the 'other profiles' section is blank. I also cannot edit the profile from using the edit pencil top right (after clicking the hamburger lines and clicking on the current profile), it takes me to about:editprofile but the page is completely blank. Confusingly, if I go to about:profiles I see two profiles, neither of which shows up in the Profile Manager! I'm going round in circles trying to understand where to edit my exisitng profiles and make sense of the five profiles that don't all show up in the same place!

I am trying to set up a profile however when I click the account icon the profiles menu item does not show up like it says on the manage firefox profiles guide. I am updated to latest firefox version.

I want to keep the original profile but the process is confusing to me. Can you tell me a simple way to keep the original profile or else set the original for me.

Thanks

Boyd Proctor

I am not a native English speaker, so I used translation. Please excuse any awkward phrasing. I previously updated my Firefox to version 150, but my tabs kept crashing roughly every 5 minutes. To solve this, I tried installing the Firefox ESR version. However, my profile had already been upgraded to the new version format, so ESR could not read my data. I then reinstalled version 150, but now I'm having profile issues again. I can access and launch my old profile through about:profiles, but I can't seem to save it directly as the default profile. I don't want to have to repeat this process every time I restart the browser. Is there a way to transfer all my data (bookmarks, saved passwords, add-ons, settings, etc.) to a new profile that works with the current version? Or, can I downgrade my profile so that ESR can read it? I have tried copying the files from %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles, but it didn't work after many attempts. Please help me. I really don't want to set everything up from scratch again. Thank you!