This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Tabs used to display old versions of the site upon opening the browser until you refreshed them manually. Is this a setting that can be re-enabled?

more options

Hi there,

When I used to open Firefox up all my tab would show the version of the website that was available when I closed Firefox - I then had to refresh the page to get the new version. I found this very preferable to see how things had changed on a site. As of Quantum this seems to have been taken away and it now just loads the latest version of the site straight away. This has also started happening on the ERS version after a recent update.

I am hoping that maybe this can be reverted with a setting?

Thank you,

William

Hi there, When I used to open Firefox up all my tab would show the version of the website that was available when I closed Firefox - I then had to refresh the page to get the new version. I found this very preferable to see how things had changed on a site. As of Quantum this seems to have been taken away and it now just loads the latest version of the site straight away. This has also started happening on the ERS version after a recent update. I am hoping that maybe this can be reverted with a setting? Thank you, William

All Replies (2)

more options

The old page was stored in the cache.

Type about:preferences#privacy<enter> in the address bar.

The button next to History, select Use Custom Settings.

Turn on Remember My Browsing And Download History At the bottom of the page, turn on Clear History When Firefox Closes. At the far right, press the Settings button. Turn on ONLY Cache and Form And Search History leaving the others off.

more options

When you restore a previous session, Firefox usually displayed a cached version of the page. If you are getting a fresh page retrieval, it's possible that the cache was cleared.

I don't know if it's still true, but in the old days, the cache was always cleared if Firefox crashed. Also, Firefox can be set to clear cache when it closes (optional, not the normal setting), and third party "cleaning" programs may clear cache between sessions.

So it's not possible to guarantee that you'll see the earlier version of the page when you restore your previous session.