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How do I get my open tabs that I lost due to unwanted change of my home page???

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Hi friendly people

I just installed "YTD video downloader" and then without my permission it changed FireFox's starting action from "Show your windows and tabs from last time" to Yahoo search page!!! Now all of my previous open tabs are lost and I am not happy. How do I get my previous open tabs back?

Thanks in advance.

Hi friendly people I just installed "YTD video downloader" and then without my permission it changed FireFox's starting action from "Show your windows and tabs from last time" to Yahoo search page!!! Now all of my previous open tabs are lost and I am not happy. How do I get my previous open tabs back? Thanks in advance.

Chosen solution

Click on the 3 line menu >> Restore Previous Session (it is the 4th menu item in the list).

Read this answer in context 👍 2

All Replies (5)

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Chosen Solution

Click on the 3 line menu >> Restore Previous Session (it is the 4th menu item in the list).

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Hopefully it's not too late for the above suggestion to work.


Firefox creates numerous session history files, but because session history is only for the immediately previous session, it is unfortunately too easy to lose it. Could you make a backup of your remaining session history files? Here's how:

Do not exit Firefox, or if you closed it, don't re-open it.

(1) To open your profile folder...

If Firefox is still running:

You can open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either

  • "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
  • (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
  • type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter/Return

In the first table on the page, click the "Open Folder" (or "Show in Finder") button.

If Firefox is closed:

Type or paste the following into the Windows Run dialog or the system search box and press Enter to launch Windows Explorer:

%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

In that folder, do you see a semi-randomly-named folder? If so, click into it. If you find multiple such folders, find the one that was most recently updated.

(2) Copy out session history files

In your profile folder, scroll down and look for sessionstore.jsonlz4 -- this only exists if Firefox is closed and was shut down normally. Copy that file to a safe location such as your Documents folder. Then double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder. Save all files here to the same safe location.

(3) What files did you find?

The kinds of files you may find among your sessionstore files are:

  • recovery.jsonlz4: the windows and tabs in your currently live Firefox session (or, if Firefox crashed at the last shutdown and is still closed, your last session)
  • recovery.baklz4: a backup copy of recovery.jsonlz4
  • previous.jsonlz4: the windows and tabs in your last Firefox session
  • upgrade.jsonlz4-build_id: the windows and tabs in the Firefox session that was live at the time of your last update
  • various .js files from Firefox 55 or earlier

Could you take a look at what you have and the date/time of the various files to see whether you think any of them would have the missing tabs?

To preview the contents of a file, you can drag and drop it onto this page, then click Scrounge URLs: https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/scrounger.html

That tool is on my site, so please let me know if it doesn't work for you.

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Thank you both. :) Fortunately it was not too late for "Restore Previous Session" line of "History" menu.

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Hello,

I am glad to hear that your problem has been resolved. If you haven't already, please select the answer that solves the problem. This will help other users with similar problems find the solution more easily.

Thank you for contacting Mozilla Support.

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Mkll said

Hello, I am glad to hear that your problem has been resolved. If you haven't already, please select the answer that solves the problem. This will help other users with similar problems find the solution more easily. Thank you for contacting Mozilla Support.

Done. :)