Yonke imikhiqizo Community Forum

Hi

I've just booted my machine and opened Firefox, only to be presented with a completely fresh install.

All my settings, bookmarks and history gone. It was fine yesterday when I closed it and powered down.

I'm running Kubuntu, I've checked the .mozilla folder and nothing...it's like my profile has just been overwritten.

Not happy at all, I'm starting to dislike Firefox.

Can anyone offer any help or advice please?

Thanks in advance.

An hour ago I had all of my Firefox bookmarks. Ten years of meticulously filed and regularly culled references that I use multiple times daily. I rarely log out of Firefox sync, so that I can keep them up to date.

I now have no bookmarks and no tags.

For some context, two things just happened simultaneously. So, I'm not entirely sure which is the culprit.

1) Firefox just updated and I rebooted my computer.

2) Norton 360 updated sometime in the past two days. I attempted to familiarise myself with the new interface. Foolishly, given the track record of Norton-360-for-breaking-your-games, I ran the disc cleanup, which recommended I remove approximately 400 Mb of data. Norton stated this data was temporary files. If they were indeed my bookmark history, nowhere did Norton indicate they were bookmarks. Also, never have I encountered a disc cleanup that wholesale wipes bookmarks. I do hope Norton is not the culprit and this is just a glitch, because if this were due to Norton having no safety net for deleting an entire library of bookmarks - and they can't help me restore them - then that will be the final nail in the coffin for me doing business with Norton.

The suggestion to go to Import and Backup in Firefox, then click Restore, offers only the option of Choose file... - and then launches nothing.

Currently, I'm seeking any means of restoring my bookmarks. Any help would be appreciated.

I had presumed that I was taking reasonable measures through my Firefox Sync settings to protect my bookmarks and ensure they could be restored in the event of accidents. If these bookmarks are permanently lost, the amount of work I've just lost is quite the blow.

Edit No. 01: After writing this, my Bookmarks Toolbar is also now empty. Perhaps it had wiped earlier, but was merely waiting for a refresh to take effect.

Edit No. 02: Also, it seems I am unable to create any new bookmarks. I shall read the help suggestions relating to that now, to see if it's a relevant issue.

I had a lot of tabs open in Firefox, and they always stayed there even after restarting my PC. But suddenly, all of my tabs disappeared, and I can’t recover them using “Recently Closed Tabs.” Can I get them back?

Today I opened Mozilla at my laptop. It malfunctioned (videos froze, pages did not fully download), so I closed the window and after a couple of seconds I reopened it. My previous session was gone. I read your articles regarding this issue, did what was described there, but nothing has changes. I lost everything! Job videos, hobby pages - everything! A couple of pages can be restored via history, but that's it! I didn't do anything special before closing the window!

Hello,

I'm writing because I’ve encountered an issue with the tab groups feature in Firefox.

Some time ago, after a browser update, I noticed a new feature that allowed me to group tabs thematically — I could name each group (e.g., "Study", "Work"), choose a color for it, and save and close groups to reopen them later. I found it very useful and used it a lot.

Last night, I decided to declutter my browser and closed several tab groups using the built-in menu. A bit later, I shut down my computer, but perhaps too quickly. This morning, when I turned my computer back on, Firefox was very slow to start. After a restart, everything seemed to work fine again, and the open tabs were restored.

However, all my previously saved (but temporarily closed) tab groups disappeared. In the tab group menu, I can now only see the ones currently open. I’ve searched through all the settings and history but cannot find any way to restore the missing groups.

Is there any way to recover the tab groups that I had previously saved and closed?

Thank you very much in advance!

items dragged to overflow menu pop back out, will not stay there - dunno how to fix this.

Hate the "puzzle piece." Involuntarily upgraded to 115.25.0esr and it lost all my bookmarks, addons, history. How do I know which profile was the most recent, before the update added a new profile? How do I find my addons from the previous version? history?

I have enabled the option to open the previous windows and tabs. I had one window that I always closed last as it had a lot of groups that are important for my work, so it used to open every time I started Firefox. Sometimes, even if I closed the window by mistake without closing other windows, I was able to get it back by pressing ctrl+shift+n.

But yesterday, I might have closed it by mistake and when I pressed ctrl+shift+n , it didn't come back. I wasn't able to access my window and now it's all gone. I don't see anything in recently closed windows in history.

I need those tabs back as they are very important for my work. they were a lot of tabs. I had many groups but now all are gone. I tried by using the previous.jsonlz4 in the sessionstore-backup by renaming it in the default-release profile as sesstionstore.jsonlz4 but still wasn't able to access my window.

I didn't clear my history as the tabs opened in the window still show up in the history.

Kindly help as soon as possible

Last night I had an operating system update. Before the OS update, I closed all open apps, including Firefox. In the past, the session I closed the previous evening was restored. But this morning, all my pinned tabs and other open tabs are gone, and Restore Previous Session does not appear as an option on the dropdown menu. Recently Closed Tabs is pretty random, not really helpful. Recently Closed Windows only shows one tab that I opened this morning (probably a mistake on my part). Is there any way for me to retrieve the session from yesterday?

Hi, my session with a lot of open tabs has been lost due to a crash. In the profile folder, the recovery and previous files in the sessionstore-backups have been deleted. I tried to recover them using shadow explorer, but these files are corrupted, so I've had no success reading them. Is there a way to fix the corrupted files? Alternatively, because I've had sync enabled for open tabs, is there a log for past open tab synchronizations? If this was stored on the cloud, it may be possible to retrieve that table and restore the list of open tabs that way?

Hello, FF 139.0.4 on MAC Sequoia15.5. Lost ALL references to bookmarks, i.e. Bookmarks Toolbar totally gone. How can/do I restore from .jsonlz4 file in bookmarkbackups. Also, will I be able to salvage my previous profile, presumably containing my older "Tabs on Bottom" work-around? Alternatively, is there a process to restore JUST Firefox from Time Machine? Appreciate any advice.

The launch of Firefox Profiles seems to have obliterated everything in my account: bookmarks, history, open tabs, and extensions are all gone completely. I have an option to import files from another browser, but not from my own past firefox. I logged into my Mozilla account, but I didn't have any other devices so I think it was still unable to recover the data? Is there anything I can do about this, or is all of my data truly gone?

After the latest auto update all of my history, tabs/windows, and bookmarks were deleted and I can't recover them. I have tried importing bookmarks and it does not allow me to upload an old data file and I can't restore my previous session. I tried checking both profiles but neither had my information saved and now when I open the about:profiles says "Another copy of Firefox has made changes to profiles. You must restart Firefox before making more changes."

I'm scared to try anything else because I don't want to mess anything up further but I really need my tabs and history back.

I restarted my computer and then reopened firefox and it had updated and I noticed my bookmarks were gone but my windows/tabs were open, so I tried to choose a file on the bookmark backup and nothing was happening so I restarted and after that all my history and tabs were gone and I couldn't restore them.

Hello, I'm experiencing an issue with tab groups in Firefox.

• I use multiple tab groups in my browser.
• Normally, if I close the browser (without manually saving the groups), Firefox restores everything exactly as it was when I reopen it including all my tab groups and their current tabs.
• However, if Firefox crashes while the groups are open, I run into a problem:

 * When I restart Firefox after the crash and try to open my tab groups, all the recent tabs are missing.
 * Instead of restoring the most recent state of the tab groups, Firefox loads an old, manually saved version from the past.
 * Any recent changes to the tab groups are completely lost.

This has happened multiple times now.

• • System Info:**

• Firefox version: 141.0 (64-bit)
• OS: Windows 11

I'd appreciate any help or suggestions to prevent this data loss after crashes. Is there a way to make Firefox auto save tab group states more frequently, or restore the most recent session even after a crash?

Several times now I've closed firefox while having the open previous windows and tabs on startup on only for all my tabs to have been closed (with this time in particular being annoying due to losing tabs that I needed to have the specific link for). Is there any way to restore tabs lost in this way?

Desktop Computer. Still on Windows 10.

Not sure of category. This began when I launched the computer today. I opened Firefox and got the message "The bookmarks and history system will not be functional because ....."

When I started to shut down the computer (first mentioned step here) I saw there's a Window update. I selected Update and Restart. That went okay, but still don't have my Firefox bookmarks.

So I clicked on Learn more. I found the Firefox > Profiles folder. There are two folders, one from today - qkuxm6ws.default-release - 15...... 0196 with 94 items, and 7ghfiw 15.default, from Jan 5, 2021, with 3 items. I assume I should use the one with today's date.

BUT .... from this point, the information on this website was full of information - NOT step-by-step information telling me what to do with which files in this folder.

Also, I have McAfee as well as Windows Defender. I opened Windows Defender Firewall. State is On. Notification state: Notify me when Windows Defender Firewall blocks a new app. I've gotten no such messages.

Under allowed apps and features:

 "Firefox ... private not checked; public checked.."  
 "Firefox (C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox" - private is checked, public not checked.  

Can't make changes.

Under Overview window: Not checked is "Inbound connections that do not match a rule are blocked."

• • • • In the "Monitoring\Firewall folder" - Firefox (with path) is listed twice. Both entries have Private, Allow, NO Override -
      • Differences - the first has UDP; the second has TCP. Nothing under "Group."

My last bookmarks backup was Jan 2025. 😕 😟

I don't know where else to look or what to do. Please help. Kami

cleaning up my computer, I accidentally deleted firefox. I had a list of favourite links, and I lost them. Is there any way of recovering my list of favourites?

thank you, Glen A Goodale, [email removed]@gmail.com