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Unable to restore Firefox Profile from Time Machine

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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I had been experiencing tab crashes and was unable to fix it after tying everything for several days. As a last attempt I uninstalled the application and re installed. All my bookmarks are gone. I am trying to restore my bookmarks with timemachine but I am unable to locate the file in the Timemachine folder. Please help!

I had been experiencing tab crashes and was unable to fix it after tying everything for several days. As a last attempt I uninstalled the application and re installed. All my bookmarks are gone. I am trying to restore my bookmarks with timemachine but I am unable to locate the file in the Timemachine folder. Please help!

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I can still see my bookmarks and passwords in Firefox on my Ipad.

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Firefox uses two locations in a hidden location for the Firefox profile folder.

Primary location used for the main profile that keeps your personal data (Root Directory on about:profiles).

  • ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/<profile>

You can copy certain files with Firefox closed to the current profile folder to recover personal data. Note that best is to avoid restoring a full profile folder and only restore important files that are safe to restore/transfer.


  • bookmarks and history: places.sqlite
  • favicons: favicons.sqlite
  • bookmark backups: compressed .jsonlz4 JSON backups in the bookmarkbackups folder
  • cookies.sqlite for the Cookies
  • formhistory.sqlite for saved autocomplete Form Data
  • logins.json (encrypted logins) and key4.db (encryption key/primary password) for logins saved in the Password Manager
  • cert9.db for certificates stored in the Certificate Manager
  • persdict.dat for words added to the spell checker dictionary
  • permissions.sqlite for Permissions and possibly content-prefs.sqlite for other website specific data (Site Preferences)
  • sessionstore.jsonlz4 for open tabs and pinned tabs (see also the sessionstore-backups folder)