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can't recover my firefox android bookmarks

  • 2 replies
  • 3 have this problem
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  • Last reply by gazzawazza

gazzawazza
gazzawazza
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hi all

I use firefox desktop (win 7) and firefox android. Both are v47.0

I have a firefox sync account.

I don't have paired devices.

I don't use firefox sync on my desktop but am signed into my android installation and previously had been too.

Prior to upgrading to marshmallow, I carefully manually synced firefox mobile. I then did a factory reset followed by the upgrade to marshmallow (official sony release for z3 compact).

I installed firefox mobile and signed into firefox sync.

I pressed sync accounts (in android settings / accounts) and it appeared to take a while (I had a good few bookmarks, etc). I was left with sense that it was downloading what I'd previously synced.

However, when I came to check my firefox android bookmarks, only the default ones were there. I tried to manually sync 2 or 3 times more. I tried signing out and in again. I even tried switching on auto sync in desperation (I don't do this normally because I want to control what/when I sync - having my android accounts on manual sync means that I can control this easily per-app).

I must stress that I did sync firefox android prior to wiping my phone.

I simply cannot seem to recover my mobile bookmarks that I presumed were saved in the cloud using the sync process on android.

What has happened to my bookmarks and how can I recover them?


Thanks,

Gary

hi all I use firefox desktop (win 7) and firefox android. Both are v47.0 I have a firefox sync account. I don't have paired devices. I don't use firefox sync on my desktop but am signed into my android installation and previously had been too. Prior to upgrading to marshmallow, I carefully manually synced firefox mobile. I then did a factory reset followed by the upgrade to marshmallow (official sony release for z3 compact). I installed firefox mobile and signed into firefox sync. I pressed sync accounts (in android settings / accounts) and it appeared to take a while (I had a good few bookmarks, etc). I was left with sense that it was downloading what I'd previously synced. However, when I came to check my firefox android bookmarks, only the default ones were there. I tried to manually sync 2 or 3 times more. I tried signing out and in again. I even tried switching on auto sync in desperation (I don't do this normally because I want to control what/when I sync - having my android accounts on manual sync means that I can control this easily per-app). I must stress that I did sync firefox android prior to wiping my phone. I simply cannot seem to recover my mobile bookmarks that I presumed were saved in the cloud using the sync process on android. What has happened to my bookmarks and how can I recover them? Thanks, Gary

Modified by gazzawazza

Chosen solution

Hi

Thank you for your question about the Firefox Sync service.

It appears from your question, that you are using Firefox Sync as a back up service. This is not what Sync is designed to do. The Firefox Sync service takes a copy of the data you wish to include and transfers it to a second device (typically a mobile device such as a tablet or a telephone) running a copy of Firefox. The storage in between all attached devices is both temporary and fragile and is not stable enough to be (and is not designed as) a reliable backup service.

If you have a copy of your Firefox profile for desktop Firefox, you may be able to recover your bookmarks and other data. Please have a read of this article.

If you have a copy of your data on a mobile version of Firefox, please follow these instructions to connect it to Firefox Sync to copy your data.

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All Replies (2)

Paul
Paul
  • Top 25 Contributor
  • Moderator
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Chosen Solution

Hi

Thank you for your question about the Firefox Sync service.

It appears from your question, that you are using Firefox Sync as a back up service. This is not what Sync is designed to do. The Firefox Sync service takes a copy of the data you wish to include and transfers it to a second device (typically a mobile device such as a tablet or a telephone) running a copy of Firefox. The storage in between all attached devices is both temporary and fragile and is not stable enough to be (and is not designed as) a reliable backup service.

If you have a copy of your Firefox profile for desktop Firefox, you may be able to recover your bookmarks and other data. Please have a read of this article.

If you have a copy of your data on a mobile version of Firefox, please follow these instructions to connect it to Firefox Sync to copy your data.

gazzawazza
gazzawazza Question owner
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Seburo said

Hi Thank you for your question about the Firefox Sync service. It appears from your question, that you are using Firefox Sync as a back up service. This is not what Sync is designed to do. The Firefox Sync service takes a copy of the data you wish to include and transfers it to a second device (typically a mobile device such as a tablet or a telephone) running a copy of Firefox. The storage in between all attached devices is both temporary and fragile and is not stable enough to be (and is not designed as) a reliable backup service. If you have a copy of your Firefox profile for desktop Firefox, you may be able to recover your bookmarks and other data. Please have a read of this article. If you have a copy of your data on a mobile version of Firefox, please follow these instructions to connect it to Firefox Sync to copy your data.

Thanks for the very quick reply @Seburo

Also, thank you for being tactful regarding my misunderstanding of what sync can do. I do understand the concept of syncing. I didn't appreciate it was exclusively between two instances of firefox.

The reason why I didn't want to sync between devices is that I have a huge number of bookmarks on my desktop Firefox and don't need them swamping my mobile device.

Is it possibly to selectively control what is synced? I know you can control items like bookmarks, history, open tabs, etc. Can you control individual bookmark folders though? I ask because I accidentally triggered a sync between devices some time ago. I know this because I've got a folder on my desktop called "mobile bookmarks", which contains items I recognise as old bookmarks from my mobile device.

Observations:

1) Firefox should warn you that sync could not complete, if there's no pairing. That at least would prevent users from thinking they'd successfully dumped profile data into the cloud and that they'd be able to then recover it from there, back to the same device, etc.

2) I think it's awful that Firefox Mobile offers syncing, yet can't/doesn't simply backup bookmarks and say form + usernames, passwords, etc, either to the cloud or even to external storage like an SD card. The mechanism is there to do this with sync. If cloud storage space is an issue, then just allow an export to a memory card or internal storage.



Regards,

Gary