This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Whenever I open up Firefox, it restores my previous session without being prompted.

  • 2 cavab
  • 2 have this problem
  • 12 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

more options

I have the settings set so that when I start Firefox it should go to my homepage, which is just the Mozilla Firefox start page. Despite that option being set, it still restores my previous session every time I open Firefox.

I have the settings set so that when I start Firefox it should go to my homepage, which is just the Mozilla Firefox start page. Despite that option being set, it still restores my previous session every time I open Firefox.

Chosen solution

One possible reason for this is an instruction in a user.js file. Firefox checks for a user.js file at startup, and it will override your own preferences. This article describes how to check for this possible problem: How to fix preferences that won't save.

Another possible reason is if Firefox is not shutting down cleanly, and is always recovering from a perceived crash. To see whether this is the issue, you can change what Firefox does after a crash so that instead of automatically showing previous session tabs, it shows you a list of tabs. Here's how:

(A) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(B) In the search box above the list, type or paste sess and pause while the list is filtered

(C) Double-click the browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes preference and enter 0 (that's a zero) and click OK.

The next time Firefox starts if you get the screen saying "this is embarrassing" and showing a list of your last session tabs, then the problem is that Firefox is crashing during shutdown.

Does any of that help with your startups?

Read this answer in context 👍 1

All Replies (2)

more options

Seçilmiş Həll

One possible reason for this is an instruction in a user.js file. Firefox checks for a user.js file at startup, and it will override your own preferences. This article describes how to check for this possible problem: How to fix preferences that won't save.

Another possible reason is if Firefox is not shutting down cleanly, and is always recovering from a perceived crash. To see whether this is the issue, you can change what Firefox does after a crash so that instead of automatically showing previous session tabs, it shows you a list of tabs. Here's how:

(A) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(B) In the search box above the list, type or paste sess and pause while the list is filtered

(C) Double-click the browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes preference and enter 0 (that's a zero) and click OK.

The next time Firefox starts if you get the screen saying "this is embarrassing" and showing a list of your last session tabs, then the problem is that Firefox is crashing during shutdown.

Does any of that help with your startups?

more options

You can check if you have an user.js file in the Firefox profile folder that sets the browser.sessionstore.resume_session_once pref to true.

You can use this button to go to the Firefox profile folder:

  • Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Show Folder (Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder)