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

Popular websites from start window disappeared

  • 4 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by Leeway

more options

Installed firefox on new device, logged in and lost ALL my carefully crafted 4 rows of pinned "popular websites" in the start window. Right now it's just random websites from this new device (PC). The funny thing is, I used this new PC for a couple days and my Macbook back to back, and everything was fine! It just happened today, randomly, so Im supeeeer pissed off and sad, that it synced backwards with this new PC, so I've lost all my pinned popular websites from Macbook. (32 structured websites)

HELP ME! Can I restore them from some backup somehow?

Installed firefox on new device, logged in and lost ALL my carefully crafted 4 rows of pinned "popular websites" in the start window. Right now it's just random websites from this new device (PC). The funny thing is, I used this new PC for a couple days and my Macbook back to back, and everything was fine! It just happened today, randomly, so Im supeeeer pissed off and sad, that it synced backwards with this new PC, so I've lost all my pinned popular websites from Macbook. (32 structured websites) HELP ME! Can I restore them from some backup somehow?

All Replies (4)

more options

Changes made manually on the Firefox Home page are stored in prefs that you can find on the about:config page.

  • browser.newtabpage.pinned => websites pinned to a tile
  • browser.newtabpage.blocked => websites removed by clicking the X (Dismiss) button in a tile

If you use the Time Machine or other backup then try to restore the prefs.js file from this backup and copy the browser.newtabpage.pinned line to prefs.js in your current profile folder.

You can use the button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page.

In Mac OS X v10.7 and later, the "~/Library" folder in the Home directory is a hidden folder.

more options

I checked... and there is no browser.newtabpage.pinned. So I guess it's all just lost right? (the pref.js was overwritten by firefox sync and I need to do this all over again.)

more options

The browser.newtabpage.pinned pref is part of prefs that are Synced between devices (services.sync.prefs.sync.browser.newtabpage.pinned = true).

Don't you have a backup of files in the profile folder in the Time Machine that you can possibly use ?

Maybe to prevent future issues keep a backup of browser.newtabpage.pinned.

more options

Hi. I've found in the backup of the PC the whole profile folder, copied it and everything worked for one day. Today I'm again back on both computers with default non pinned start window. Why?