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

Private Tabs disappearing automatically with no more setting to change it

  • 7 replies
  • 33 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by cor-el

more options

I'm on Firefox 127.0 (42448) ios and all my private tabs were closed on update and now whenever I make a private tab it disappears after the app is closed or refreshes. It's kind of behaving like the setting where private tabs are closed automatically but when I looked in the privacy settings of firefox ios it's not there anymore. Does anyone else have this issue? I know theres an existing problem with tabs for firefox but I don't think this is exactly the same because my normal tabs are totally fine.

I'm on Firefox 127.0 (42448) ios and all my private tabs were closed on update and now whenever I make a private tab it disappears after the app is closed or refreshes. It's kind of behaving like the setting where private tabs are closed automatically but when I looked in the privacy settings of firefox ios it's not there anymore. Does anyone else have this issue? I know theres an existing problem with tabs for firefox but I don't think this is exactly the same because my normal tabs are totally fine.

All Replies (7)

more options

Hi Zhong An, that is how other versions of Firefox work -- when you quit, the private tabs are gone. I don't know why iOS was different before, but it sounds like it changed. Maybe I can find some discussion about why...

(I couldn't find an explanation)

Modified by jscher2000 - Support Volunteer

Helpful?

more options

Yea I understand that, but in the private browsing page for firefox ios it is explicitly mentioned that private tabs stay open until you close them. Mine are just kind of arbitrarily disappearing. I THINK they close whenever the app does a background refresh and they definitely close when I close the app and open it again. I looked through changelogs and couldn't find anything about it...

Thanks for checking as well though!

Helpful?

more options

Helpful?

more options

Thank you for the links, glad that I'm not the only one struggling with this. I hope this is fixed or rolled back eventually.

Helpful?

more options

Is there any way to recover the tabs?

Helpful?

more options

Even if they did this to make the iOS version behave like the other platforms, and even if they did it to better assure privacy, it was a big change to make without a heads up and without guidance for migrating or recovering the tabs. I just wanted to do my normal stuff today rather than spend that time figuring out what happened to everything and now apparently having to recreate all my private tabs as normal tabs.

Helpful?

more options

Helpful?

Ask a question

You must log in to your account to reply to posts. Please start a new question, if you do not have an account yet.