Firefox closes and loses all my open tabs with version update

[apostate]

I have opted to keep tabs open / reopen tabs that were open at window close, and this normally works ok. However, (at least most times) when there's a version update that comes with a "Firefox is updated" page opening at startup, Firefox only opens that tab/window and I lose all my precious tabs that were open in the window that was closed the last time I used FF. This has only happened after "Firefox view" was introduced. When this happens, I can never find those tabs in "recently closed windows" - they just disappear without a trace! I can sometimes find them in history, but only for tabs that have been active lately, and still it is a lot of unnecessary work as I can't always remember all the tabs that were open. This is quite frustrating! 

[linmacwin]

It happens with me  three times the last months when firefox is updating in a W11Pro with arm-proc-setting: all my tabs gone. In the past never. I consider after using Firefox for almost 35 years to transfer to another browser, this way it's impossible to organize my things.

[catpancake]

Are you able to find them in History -> Restore Previous Session? That always seems to work for me.

[jscher2000 · Accepted solution]

There is a specific problem with Firefox 127.0 if you have a Primary Password set and you cancel the dialog at startup on the first run of Firefox 127. If that happened to you, please see this Mozilla Support thread:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1449541?page=2#answer-1657106

[danhoch6569]

This not leaving my tabs alone is BS.  I've written many times with no reply and not fixed.  My son tells me to switch to another browser, which I'm concidering  I've fought this battle too many time restoring this situation.  The programmers really don't give a crap; they are there for their own amusement.  I sometimes think about them sitting in a room asking each other "how can we screw our our consumers now"  It's a joke to them.  They have too many releases where as they should only be fixing problems.

[rdorrill]

It has been happening to me for months! It's especially frustrating when the computer shuts down for its own update, or due to another problem, and then you're belatedly facing a new firefox window. I think once another application or click of a link opens a tab in firefox, the chance to 'reopen previous session' is discarded, and for some reason not saved in the background. You can go to your full history and reload that, but of course that's a horrible solution - as it will reopen everything you viewed the previous day, and will likely lose some old tabs. I know one can dig around in the session restore backups deep in the firefox folders, but it's frustrating that the browser doesn't know how to find and load those files itself. I've stared using the "Tab Session Manager" extension as a result, but it's not a perfect solution.

Really hoping the Firefox dev team can fix this frustrating bug soon!

[Frusti]

I am sooo tired of using Firefox! Every 3 to 6 days completely unnecessary updates that delete or deactivate cookies and web access after installation! I will now eliminate this **bleep**ty program forever and get used to another one that is less annoying to my frustration!

[DavNrdqst]

With version 132.0.1 I found that all my tabs disappeared (failed to load, really. The debt of open tabs database fell down I imagine, I only have 16 GiB on this laptop, it starts to open windows and flashes a bit lik background things are happening but it all winds down fast, and it's somehow not a soft error to blame. Replacing session w. a backup -afaict unaffected but idk- doesn't avail. Non-prestige twist: might'a installed Riot games stuff trying to play Arcane. Arcane's the French anime based on the LoL MOBA. not a game. Oops? Game never worked despite 3-recursion 'install' plus Anti-Cheat rootkit. Gamecon did nothin. Bleah.)

Looking to restore a handy Session Backup which is done at version changes universally, I found the pseudo-java-filename (silly directory stackin' madness, let's call it) of my uh instance, and it's session (tab, etc.) situation. There were like 6 fles and as I watched it became 3.

WTAF. I can understand the browser being incensed at the impending OOM and ready to CLEAN, but deleting data's non-canon? [eta: Been loved like nothing matters, it's not great despite the recent fire song to that effect?]

I mean, I still have these 66.6 MB session files remaining to me, but they don't seem to have tabs anymore. I can copy that file (into the parent dir, rename session.jsonlz4 to session.jsonlz4.old and put that name to the {$dateOrWhatevs}_jsonlz.session thing, and the console (in mainthread mode) isn't really tracking anything when it loads, throws up the 3 windows I had open, and just doesn't load any tabs in 'em like I'd been doing. No settings reverted, so great, but how do I mine for me dear ol' debt (open tabs that don't) ? It's been a while since I could open a pasteboard in Dev Tools and ...I mean how do I get the replacement implementation open to load a lz4'd json session file even?

[jscher2000]

Hi DavNrdqst, do you have backups of the various jsonlz4 files? I have a tool to extract a list of their tabs so you can see what is still in there. https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/scrounger.html

[DavNrdqst]

Thanks! That page gets me 'Session contents could not be read?' as a result, and my own misadventures get me ['Unexpected character in line 1 column 1 of json file.'] which makes me think the lz4ing got an EOF or such boundary metacharacter right in the first line someplace (e.g. byte 1st.) HexEd.it makes it look pretty normal with just inclusions of Base64 (or lw4'd tab images and notes, whatever a session throws in with the URLs.)

Time to attach the session over to a machine with 100s of GB DDR5 to examine what's wrong with the JSON and looking at the source code, closed-source free tools optional https://www.foxtonforensics.com/blog/post/analysing-firefox-session-restore-data-mozlz4-jsonlz4 ...etc?  Huh, this magic is off, a windows says Wxxxom to Firefox (where xxx is 12 00 F4 )...

Looks like I can attempt to decode it with the help of a Rust compiler and https://blog.dend.ro/decoding-firefox-session-store-data/

mozLz40�WQ8ò!{"version":["sessionrestore",1],"windows":[{"tab �bentrie�òurl":"about:welcome","title":"W�ôm to Firefox","cacheKey":0,"ID":73012141,"docshellUUID":"{39b40c33-d9ef-4178-8f80-1cdb8ce492bc}","resultPrincipalURI":null,"p�óToInherit_base64":"{\"0\":�¥\"moz-null4�õ*:{4fc31619-2128-404f-b1d0-45db7a910edd}\"}}","partitionedŠ�v�Oñ�hasUserInteractÌ
õ
true,"triggering� ü�Q3\":{º�òdocIdentifier":24,"persistL�/},é
:2r�é
ÿuñstructuredCloneState":" ...64MB more  🙂

What'cha think? Riot NoCheat installer going a little off-piste?

[jscher2000]

---

@DavNrdqst wrote:

Thanks! That page gets me 'Session contents could not be read?' as a result, and my own misadventures get me ['Unexpected character in line 1 column 1 of json file.'] which makes me think the lz4ing got an EOF or such boundary metacharacter right in the first line someplace (e.g. byte 1st.)

---

Something is off, but I use a third party decompression library, so I don't have any insight on why it's not working. When I view the file in Notepad++ there are a number of characters that can't be represented directly so I used angle brackets:

RAW: mozLz40<NUL>ë³D<SOH>
ò!{"version":["sessionrestore",1],"windows":[{"tab <NUL>bentrie<FF><NUL>ó"url":

DECOMPRESSED: {"version":["sessionrestore",1],"windows":[{"tabs":[{"entries":[{"url":

Alternately, you could test whether this editor can decompress the file:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/mozlz4-edit/

[jitterbug777]

i`m having this problem too now first time with latest version 133 december 10th update. so frustrating as this is the only browser that hosts the addOn that I like to use for file managment. I tried the solution posted here https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1449541?page=2#answer-1657106.
but when i look in that folder, I only see these 2 files, nothing else.

recovery.jsonlz4
recovery.baklz4

no previous.jsonlz4 or upgrade file.

I did this with firefox open and multiple tabs open. what to do....