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I cannot find my Profiles folder

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I had to erase my hard drive and reinstall everything. I want to restore my Firefox bookmarks and everything I have found says I need to restore my Profiles folder but I cannot find that folder anywhere. It is not in the Mozilla folders, all that is there is a folder called Extensions. How do I restore my bookmarks if there is no Profiles folders?

I had to erase my hard drive and reinstall everything. I want to restore my Firefox bookmarks and everything I have found says I need to restore my Profiles folder but I cannot find that folder anywhere. It is not in the Mozilla folders, all that is there is a folder called Extensions. How do I restore my bookmarks if there is no Profiles folders?

All Replies (10)

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I suppose you made regular backups.

Restore the backup and your bookmarks are back in Firefox.

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Do you still have a Time Machine backup ?

If you didn't backup any of your personal data then I'm afraid that your previous personal data is lost. For future prevention:

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I have a Time Machine backup as well as two cloned backups. I restored Firefox from the Time Machine backup but that did not restore the bookmarks. I have looked in all the suggested locations, in the Mozilla folder in Application Support as well as in the Caches folder. There is no profiles folder to be found.

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Hi mark.castleman, your Firefox data is stored in a hidden Application Support folder in your Library. The article linked by the-edmeister describes how to view that in Finder. I'm not sure what trick to use for viewing a hidden folder in your backup, but there may be generic Apple help available for that.

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jscher2000 said

Hi mark.castleman, your Firefox data is stored in a hidden Application Support folder in your Library. The article linked by the-edmeister describes how to view that in Finder. I'm not sure what trick to use for viewing a hidden folder in your backup, but there may be generic Apple help available for that.

I have looked into the Application Support folder and there is no profile folder present. I am at a loss where else it might be.

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Note that you need to look in the Library folder in your home directory

  • ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/
  • /Users/<user>/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/
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Hi mark.castleman, where does the trail end?

~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/individual.folders

I don't have a Mac any more, but I'm attaching a screen capture from around the time of Firefox 57-58 showing my profile folder in Finder, in case it's useful.

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jscher2000 said

Hi mark.castleman, where does the trail end? ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/individual.folders I don't have a Mac any more, but I'm attaching a screen capture from around the time of Firefox 57-58 showing my profile folder in Finder, in case it's useful.

I have looked I both my user library and my system library. In the Application Support folder the only thing there is a folder labeled "Extensions" but no Profiles folder.

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mark.castleman said I have looked I both my user library and my system library. In the Application Support folder the only thing there is a folder labeled "Extensions" but no Profiles folder. </blockquote>

Hmm, that's strange. In my screenshot, the Firefox folder doesn't have an Extensions subfolder at all. It has 3 subfolders -- Crash Reports, Pending Pings, and Profiles -- and the profiles.ini file (in Firefox 67+ you could also expect to find an installs.ini file).

Well, if your Time Machine backup doesn't contain your old profile, I don't know of any other place to find it.