Where is the file which records all the open tabs from previous sessions
Hi. Yesterday something weird and unexpected happened to my Firefox and amongst other things it lost all my open tabs, of which there was about 70 or so. Another strange thing which happened is a website I use turned into Japanese language all on its own and in the end I was forced to delete cookies for that website to revert it to English, even though it was never changed in the first place. My homepage shortcut tiles were also all rearranged and some deleted. I have no idea what caused all this, but the biggest issue for me is that I lost all my open tabs. I refreshed Firefox to try to cleanse whatever it was that caused this, but even before this I lost my tabs.
My question here is; I am sure that the history of those open tabs is still listed somewhere on a file and I can get back my previous session which had all the tabs on it, but I have no idea where it is or where to look. How do I do this and where do I find the older file with the open tabs.
Thanks.
All Replies (8)
You can use the button in "Help -> More Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page (Root directory).
- Help -> More Troubleshooting Information -> Profile Folder/Directory:
Windows: Open Folder; Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data
You will normally find these files in the sessionstore-backups folder:
- previous.jsonlz4 (cleanBackup: copy of sessionstore.jsonlz4 from previous session that was loaded successfully)
- recovery.jsonlz4 (latest version of sessionstore.jsonlz4 written during runtime)
- recovery.baklz4 (previous version of sessionstore.jsonlz4 written during runtime)
- upgrade.jsonlz4-<build_id> (backups created during a Firefox update)
You can copy a file with Firefox closed from the sessionstore-backups folder to the main profile folder and rename the file to sessionstore.jsonlz4 to replace the current file.
- make sure to backup the current sessionstore.jsonlz4
You can look at this tool to inspect a compressed jsonlz4 sessionstore file. This tool works locally, no uploading is done.
Thankyou Cor-el, where in that window would I find the file you refer to here: "make sure to backup the current sessionstore.jsonlz4" I've found the sessionstore-backups folder and the files referred to in that, but can't see anything called current sessionstore.jsonlz4
...also, I dropped some files into the scrounger and just saw a mass of text which means nothing to me.
Yea, I have looked right through the entire folder and I can see no file called "sessionstore.jsonlz4" Is it supposed to be showing in that folder or is it inside another folder? I can find the folder sessionstore-backups but not this other file I'm supposed to backup and then replace.
sessionstore.jsonlz4 is only present when Firefox is closed and is created from recovery.jsonlz4.
Ih OK, so I will only see it when I close FF. OK, so FF did this really weird thing when it happened, it first wouldn't load, then it did an update (it acted like it updated normally) but when I looked at the update history the last one was days and days ago and nothing listed on this date, so should I use the upgrade.jsonlz4-<build_id> file?
Also, sorry, one more question, are the site tiles I had pinned to my homepage in a particular arrangement saved anywhere? Would be nice to get those back as well if possible.
Pinned tabs are stored in a pref that you can find in about:config. Firefox stores this data in prefs.js in the Firefox profile folder.
Changes made on the Firefox Home page are stored in prefs you can find in about:config.
- browser.newtabpage.blocked => websites removed by clicking Dismiss in a tile
- browser.newtabpage.pinned => websites pinned to a tile
The browser.newtabpage.pinned pref is part of prefs that are synced as set via its Sync control pref.
- services.sync.prefs.sync.browser.newtabpage.pinned
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-config-editor-firefox
You can backup the pinned pref to be able to restore tiles you pinned.
That is complete gobbedlygook to me, sorry, I have literally no idea what you just said.
Forget that, just can I please find out what I asked, which is am I able to use the upgrade.jsonlz4-<build_id> file
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