My saved logins are gone after Firefox "wrong way" synced my profile to a device without my logins
I used Firefox's saved logins feature for years and had over 100 logins saved on my laptop. I also use Firefox on my IOS phone.
After an update (I don't know which one, updates are frequent), the app on my phone stopped showing my passwords for most of my accounts. For example, in the passwords section of my Firefox IOS app, it would show the names of the over 100 websites I had saved logins for, but would say there was nothing saved as an email/username or password, just empty boxes. There were 8 logins for accounts I had created on my phone, and those ones did display.
I eventually got tired this and tried to sync my account so I would have all of the passwords I saved on my laptop and on my phone, but Firefox, instead of combining the over 100 logins on my laptop with the 8 logins on my phone, removed all of the over 100 logins I had saved on my laptop and replaced them with the 8 logins that were saved on my phone. My phone also still has the 8 logins.
Now I am missing most of my logins, including the email accounts I used and passwords. This is a big issue for me because I've used multiple emails across my accounts. Resetting all of my passwords will be impossible, and I need to access the over 100 saved logins that are no longer on any of my devices.
I followed the instructions in the "Recover user data missing after Firefox update" support page. The only other profile that showed up for me has no logins saved at all, so that's a dead end. I read other pages about "wrong way syncing", but its too late for me to try to tell Firefox my laptop was the master account because the damage is already done.
I need to know if there's a way to recover my profile with all my accounts. Please, share any information that could be helpful. I need it badly.
Edit: grammar mistakes
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All Replies (5)
Can you check logins.json in the Firefox profile folder to see if those logins still are in this file, but possibly marked as deleted or otherwise skipped ?
You can use the button on the "Help -> More Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page (Root directory).
- Help -> More Troubleshooting Information -> Profile Folder/Directory:
Windows: Open Folder; Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data
cor-el said
Can you check logins.json in the Firefox profile folder to see if those logins still are in this file, but possibly marked as deleted or otherwise skipped ? You can use the button on the "Help -> More Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page (Root directory).
- Help -> More Troubleshooting Information -> Profile Folder/Directory:
Windows: Open Folder; Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data
Yes I can see them. There are 206 in total, 199 have the "deleted: true" mark. I included one below with the guid omitted.
191: id: 194 guid: "{}" timePasswordChanged: 1692586226746 syncCounter: 0 everSynced: true deleted: true
Are there no hostname and username/password field in those 'deleted' logins ?
You can install the About Sync extension to check what data is stored on the Sync server via the about:sync page provided by this extension.
Close and restart Firefox to access the about:sync page added by this extension (see the about:about page for possible about pages).
cor-el said
Are there no hostname and username/password field in those 'deleted' logins ? You can install the About Sync extension to check what data is stored on the Sync server via the about:sync page provided by this extension. Close and restart Firefox to access the about:sync page added by this extension (see the about:about page for possible about pages).
There are no usernames or passwords associated with the deleted logins. I can only see the information that you're referring to in the remaining logins that are saved.
About Sync has the exact same information as logins.json file. Can I view older syncs with this addon?
Edit: Looking through About Sync, I can see there were 30 sync errors, one per hour, in a row before a successful one. I am not familiar with the technical side of syncing at all, but if this seems like it could have led to the issue, I'd be happy to provide one of the messages.
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Our developers have finished their investigation and an update for Firefox for iOS has been published. This is version number 121.1 and we strongly recommend that you update to this as soon as possible.
If you experienced data loss with the previous update we apologise for the inconvenience this may have caused.
You may be able to recover your logins through one of two ways:
- Use an existing backup of your Firefox profile that you may have taken (see this support article) or,
- Take a backup of your Firefox profile (this article will help). Keeping Firefox closed, find the file named logins-backup.json. Take a copy of it, rename it to logins.json replacing the existing file with the same name.
We apologise that this has happened. Work is being done internally to reduce the chances of this happening again but we appreciate that this does not make up for the disruption this has caused you.
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