I-Firefox Community Forum

I've been using what I gather is an "older" profiles system via about:profiles.

Now if I:

1. go to about:profiles and open my second profile in another window, 2. close second window and about:profiles page, 3. open about:profiles again in first window,

I get "Another copy of Firefox has made changes to profiles. You must restart Firefox before making more changes."

This happens every single time, even though I've made zero changes to profiles, and is extremely annoying.

Can/should I migrate my profiles to the new profile manager? How to do this?

I have used Firefox for years, both out of conviction and to help protect my privacy, even though I often put up with images and forms not displaying on web pages.

Then, three times in two months, after restarting Firefox, I found all my tabs, bookmarks and browser history had disappeared. The only thing I did between restarts was to run Wise Care 365 to clear some space on my laptop, something I had done hundreds of times before.

The first time the loss occurred I found I had a new profile, a feature I neither wanted nor was consulted about. At least I was able to get back to my original profile. The next two times this proved impossible.

Firefox "support" was of no use. Multiple searches produced nothing which helped. After agonising hours, I was able to retrieve my bookmarks and my Firefox browser history through Microsoft Edge. But as a writer and (award-winning) journalist I cannot afford to risk losing my research and links.

So although I disapprove of some Microsoft business practices. I am moving to Edge. If I have missed something that makes sense of this, I would be pleased to hear it. In the meantime, Mozilla needs to improve its product and customer service.

Wishing its customers well,

Francis Shennan

HI there,

Glad you folks have included an update to the 'profiles'. However, I'm having trouble with it. I previously created two profiles using 'about:profiles' function. However, only of them has mapped on to the new profiles feature. When I try to add a profile in the new way to do it, I can only create a new one, I can't transfer a pre-existing.

See attachments. One shows the new profile manager with the 'work' profile. The second shows the 'about:profiles' with both 'work' and 'life'. How to I add 'life' to the new profile manager?

Hi, I do not understand the new profile management feature of Firefox and how it relates to sync. I am logged into my Mozilla account that syncs bookmarks, and I use the default profile that I renamed to "personal". When I switch to a newly created "work" profile, I am no longer signed in.

Will the new profiles "personal" and "work" be synced to my account once I log on to both? I am using Firefox on several PCs and I don't want to recreate profiles such as "personal" and "work" on all the PCs manually?

Thanks for a reply.

I switched to Firefox a few months ago and I've been using the "about:profiles" page to mimic chrome's profile feature. I have 3 profiles, each with their own Mozilla account. How can I migrate these to the new profiles system?

Hi folks -

I've just seen the update that firefox now allows "profiles" for different purposes (e.g. work, fun, etc.) which seems really handy. But I'm trying to wrap my head around how to approach restructuring my current setup. In particular, do these profiles *all* sync with my mozilla account? Or do I need a separate mozilla account for each profile? (if so, that sort of defeats some of the utlity here unless you're sharing the PC).

I can't tell from the support article, doesn't seem to address this, but you do need to login again if you set up a new profile.

Thanks, Patrick

I have previously made additional profiles on 'about:profiles', now Firefox has added an integrated profile manager accessible by clicking my profile on the top right. My old profiles are not available on this profile manager, but they are still available on 'about:profiles', so how can I transfer them without having to remake new ones?

i previously set up profiles using about:profiles, but with the new profiles feature i don't see any of them showing up. i haven't found any articles that allow me to convert the files from about:profiles to use the new one.

i am not logged in to firefox on the others either.

is there a way to link the profile files on my computer to save my bookmarks and history? i don't know if there will be continued support for these files and want to make sure my bookmarks are saved for all of them. i would prefer to stay logged out of the other profiles.

Attached images include screenshots of the empty profiles (one from clicking the profiles from dropdown, one from clicking "manage profiles", and one with blacked out personal data from going to about:profiles).

When i open firefox, i can choose what profile to open. I have two screens, so i was wondering if it was possible to be able to open both profiles i use, and have one on each screen. If not possible, would it be considered for an update in the future? It would make it easier, so i can have my personal profile on one screen, and my work profile on the other.

I've used Firefox as my default for years and years. Yesterday I got some popover telling me I had to create a new profile or I'd lose all my Firefox data, history, bookmarks, etc. It would not let me avoid this. So I did. Still lost all my history, started over. Today it's doing the same thing. What's up? I don't want to move to Chrome.

Running Windows 11. Recently there is a small gear symbol on the Firefox icon in the Taskbar. I don't want it there and it's irritating as hell. Apparently it has something to do with profile. I don't care what it has to do with, I want it to go away. I went to about:config and set browser.profiles.enabled to false, but every time I restart Firefox, it apparently gets set to true again.

There is no reason for Firefox to have forced this visual change on users. How do I make the gear go away permanently? The gear goes or Firefox gets uninstalled and I'll go back to Chrome.

Before i got the Profiles update that rolled out relatively recently, i created another firefox profile from the "about:profiles" page. I do not see this second profile in the new Profiles tab in the menu in my default profile. Is there a way to transfer the profile, maybe mess with the files and the folder of firefox, so i will be able to switch profiles from the Profiles tab, and not go through "about:profiles" every time? or just create a new profile and tell me how to transfer the data, where to find the existing one thanks.

Just lately, Firefox has been going on about Profiles, I don't know why. I have no need for such things, yet in my Windows menu, everything says "– Original profile" at the end. All this does is make things difficult to see. How can I get rid of it, please?

At startup, Firefox starts with an account setup screen. I have been using current setup for 3 years. Tried troubleshoot mode to no avail. Had same problem 3 years ago.

Firefox created a new Profile for me during a recent update and ignored the Profile I had been using for many years.

That probably occurred because Firefox couldn't find the original Profile. I had moved it to C:\0-FFox\ to shorten the length of file names. I had been getting File-Name-Length errors, which ended after moving the Profile closer to C:\.

Now I can't access or use the original Profile. I've researched the ins and outs of Profiles but can't find a solution to this problem. I want to add my old Profile to the new Profile created by Firefox and maybe switch between the two, or maybe revert to using only the old Profile. But I can't figure out how to do that. Adding a Profile seems to imply adding a new Profile and not an old one.

I sincerely hope you can help me solve this problem!

Many thanks! Wayne

Could someone help me start over again and get it right, instead of a mess? Is it possible to somehow start from scratch or fix what I am doing wrong? Is there some way to open a new account and dump the mess I'm facing now?