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My last session ended with hundreds of windows open, and every time I attempt to launch Firefox, it just hangs. Is there a keyboard shortcut I can use at launch to bypass 'restore previous session'?

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My last Firefox session ended with hundreds of open windows, launched by browser extension whose functionality I apparently did not fully understand. I had to kill the Firefox process to end that session, and now, any time I launch Firefox it tries to restore all of those windows, inevitably resulting in the process hanging.

I tried launching the application while holding shift, but that did not stop the restore session process. How can I temporarily start Firefox without restoring my previous session? Keep in mind I have no way to access about:config, since that requires me to launch Firefox.

Thanks!

macOS 12.3 M1 Max MacBook Pro I believe the latest build of Firefox.

My last Firefox session ended with hundreds of open windows, launched by browser extension whose functionality I apparently did not fully understand. I had to kill the Firefox process to end that session, and now, any time I launch Firefox it tries to restore all of those windows, inevitably resulting in the process hanging. I tried launching the application while holding shift, but that did not stop the restore session process. How can I temporarily start Firefox ''without'' restoring my previous session? Keep in mind I have no way to access about:config, since that requires me to launch Firefox. Thanks! macOS 12.3 M1 Max MacBook Pro I believe the latest build of Firefox.

All Replies (2)

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First, navigate to your Firefox profile: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data#firefox:mac:fx98

Next search for any files or folders beginning with `sessionstore`. It will normally be a single `sessionstore` compressed file and a `sessionstore-backups` folder. Delete both this file and folder (or just rename them to be safe) and firefox should start in a blank session.

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ajtbecool said

First, navigate to your Firefox profile: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data#firefox:mac:fx98 Next search for any files or folders beginning with `sessionstore`. It will normally be a single `sessionstore` compressed file and a `sessionstore-backups` folder. Delete both this file and folder (or just rename them to be safe) and firefox should start in a blank session.

Thank you. Is there a way to accomplish this that would allow me to recover some of the windows from that session? (Is the sessionstore file editable?)