my addons are gone after syncing
1. i have firefox on my pc, now i installed it on my laptop 2. synced to my account on laptop 3. the internet went out halfway through the syncing process (only 3 addons or so installed and then it got stuck) so i closed my laptop and forgot about it 4. i opened firefox on my PC and the account synced 5. the addon bar flashed and all the addons except for 3 are now deleted (they are NOT disabled, they are completely gone from the addons page)
I don't remember the name of every addon i had installed but I need them back.
Chosen solution
Sorry to hear about that; Sync is far from perfect.
I don't know how to get your old list of add-ons back. I think your best shot would be to look for backup copies of the extensions.json file, from which you can extract a list.
Windows often makes backup copies of Firefox profile data when you do system updates, so you can use a tool like one of the following programs:
- ShadowExplorer: http://www.shadowexplorer.com/
- Shadow Copy View: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shadow_copy_view.html
Note that you should set Windows to show hidden files and folders before diving in:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/show-hidden-files-0320fe58-0117-fd59-6851-9b7f9840fdb2
Then within the most recent restore point shown in the program, you can explore along this path to see whether you can find a shadow copy of your profile:
\Users\your-user-name\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\your.profile
If you find a recent extensions.json file, you can export it to your currently live desktop.
You can open that file in a tab in Firefox to see its contents (that won't install the extensions, but would be helpful for reference).
Alernately, I have a tool to extract its contents and list them out on my website here: https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/extensionsjson.html -- that should give you links to their pages on the Mozilla Add-ons site.
Any luck?
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Chosen Solution
Sorry to hear about that; Sync is far from perfect.
I don't know how to get your old list of add-ons back. I think your best shot would be to look for backup copies of the extensions.json file, from which you can extract a list.
Windows often makes backup copies of Firefox profile data when you do system updates, so you can use a tool like one of the following programs:
- ShadowExplorer: http://www.shadowexplorer.com/
- Shadow Copy View: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shadow_copy_view.html
Note that you should set Windows to show hidden files and folders before diving in:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/show-hidden-files-0320fe58-0117-fd59-6851-9b7f9840fdb2
Then within the most recent restore point shown in the program, you can explore along this path to see whether you can find a shadow copy of your profile:
\Users\your-user-name\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\your.profile
If you find a recent extensions.json file, you can export it to your currently live desktop.
You can open that file in a tab in Firefox to see its contents (that won't install the extensions, but would be helpful for reference).
Alernately, I have a tool to extract its contents and list them out on my website here: https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/extensionsjson.html -- that should give you links to their pages on the Mozilla Add-ons site.
Any luck?
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer said
Any luck?
Hi, Thank you for your reply! I found almost all of the extensions manually, but I used your website to find links for all the addons I have installed so I can bookmark them for easier finding if this happens again!
I think I missed a few when trying to find extensions manually, but I hope I can just find them again when I need them!
Solved!