restore firefox tabs after browser crash

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Level 1

13 points

restore firefox tabs after browser crash

My Mac went through a flash power outage this morning. Of course my Firefox browser was open with more than a few tabs. When I came back online, the "Restore previous session" option was grayed out. This is normal after a crash. Is there any way to recover the state of Firefox when the power went off by restoring from a Time Machine backup? The app is running fine. It's the lost tabs that I'm after. I'm running OS 10.14.6 and Firefox 77.0.1--and I've never restored anything from Time Machine. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Jun 9, 2020 2:16 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

steve626

Level 6

11,225 points

Jun 10, 2020 8:49 PM in response to susanathome

Quit Firefox. On your Mac, go to this folder:

your Library folder (in your account, not the one at the Macintosh HD level)

Application Support folder

Firefox folder

You will see a folder called Profiles

Rename this to Profiles-Old. If something goes wrong, you can rename it back to go back to what you have now.

Now, open Time Machine. Restore that Profiles folder from your Time Machine backup, from the last backup that was made BEFORE your computer crashed. To be safe, you can pick one that is an hour or two or three earlier.

There should now be a Profiles and a Profiles-Old folder there.

Start Firefox. Did your tabs get restored? If so, delete Profiles-Old and proceed.

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Answer 2

susanathome Author

Level 1

13 points

Jun 10, 2020 10:46 PM in response to steve626

IT WORKED!! Your instructions were great. The hardest part was finding the Library folder. It doesn’t show up in my folder list nor does it come up on a search. I stumbled on a backdoor way of getting to it But I don’t think it should be that hard. In any case, thank you!

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