topic Re: Firefox Sync Causing 3 Years of History Loss in Discussions

Firefox Sync Causing 3 Years of History Loss

Airofoil — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 15:54:42 GMT

Very sadly I just lost three years' worth of browse history in Firefox. This loss is quite significant for me because I relied on it as a record of important sites, where I've been, and information I’ve accumulated over time. Ironically or criminally, Firefox also asked me to restart it to finalise an update, which I then did.

Is there any way to recover the places.sqlite file from somewhere?

I think what could have happened (I'm guessing) was I unknowingly or unintentionally had 'Clear history when Firefox closes' enabled on my mobile app, which synced the setting when I signed into Firefox Sync on my desktop.

My favicon cache has also been deleted which is also an accompanying annoyance.

I want to suggest some things to prevent this from happening to others:

Warning Notification: A warning when enabling the 'Clear history when Firefox closes' option, and/or a notification upon closing the browser would remind users that this action will permanently delete their history
Automatic Backups: An automatic backup feature of Firefox Profile data, or at the very least, a 'bin' directory for overwritten data files
Restore Options: A way to restore deleted history from local cache or temporary files, or temporary lockfiles of files like places.sqlite, favicons.sqlite and session-store backups
Better Firefox Sync Features: Improving Sync to better make users aware of settings that could impact their local data or even offer compressed encrypted storage options on the cloud

Re: Firefox Sync Causing 3 Years of History Loss

carlaprice — Sat, 09 Nov 2024 20:19:52 GMT

Hi Airofoil, sorry to hear about your history loss. You can check your Firefox settings on desktop to see if "Clear history on close" is enabled there too. Disabling it now might prevent future issues. For future reference, you can also explore browser extensions that offer history backup features.

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Re: Firefox Sync Causing 3 Years of History Loss

PM3 — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 18:08:24 GMT

I had exactly the same experience - after enabling the 'sync' feature, all history gets DELETED on exit, without any warning. WHAT A CRAP!!!!!
You Mozilla guys are incapable.

Re: Firefox Sync Causing 3 Years of History Loss

PM3 — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 18:14:40 GMT

How does this painfully silly and destructive behavior combine with "Open previous windows and tabs", eh?