Firefox 'restore previous session' is opening older pages from tab's history

[clarkma5]

This behavior did not used to happen but has happened for a few months now, it seems to have started with an update.

When I open my Firefox browser, it restarts all my old tabs, but it consistently opens the tab that I have for YouTube on the previous video that I was watching instead of the main playlist page I always leave it on when I exit. This happens even if I give the browser plenty of time to recognize that the page has changed, the video is not playing anymore, etc. It's a minor irritation each time I start Firefox because I have to reset that tab to the page I want it to be on (even though I already left it on that page before I closed it...) instead of some video that I had already finished watching and left prior to closing the browser before.

[Jerze]

Been battling the same issue for what feels like months. Tried increasing AND decreasing cache size but the browser stops opening the last visited sites after an hour or two. I thought it might have been caused by having over 100 tabs in sleep mode in Firefox but even with Firefox Nightly with 10 tabs it's happening, so tab count most likely is not the issue. Also whenever I restart Firefox it takes longer and longer before anything shows up, which could indicate a caching issue, but I'm not an expert on how browsers work, just doing some surface level guessing.

[clarkma5]

I appreciate your thoughts, I hadn't considered that angle. I don't think tab count would be at the root of my issues as I usually have less than ten. In terms of session length I may have my firefox open for up to 8-10 hours but not days and days, I might keep an eye peeled for this behavior happening after short or long instances of the browser being open moving forward.

[clarkma5]

Behavior still exists, even if I give the browser several minutes with the tab left on the youtube "Watch Later" playlist it will reopen the previous video I was watching instead. If I leave the browser open for a full fifteen minutes before I close it, it seems to finally get the hint and open the "Water Later" playlist instead of the last video I was watching. It really shouldn't take Firefox 15 minutes to realize the tabs I have open. Why doesn't it literally just remember the state I left it in when I close it, no matter what? Why is there a time delay?

[jscher2000]

Hi clarkma5, for the YouTube issue, maybe the way YouTube modifies the URL when replacing the current video doesn't properly update history? You could try reloading the page before closing Firefox to make sure Firefox gets the message that there was a page load.

Hi Jerze, for the problem of Firefox no longer updating session history at all/for any site at some point in your session, could you check for the "out of memory" problem discussed in the following thread:

https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1403535

[clarkma5]

Thanks for your thoughts, but it did not work. I refreshed the tab once I had it on my desired page and before I closed my browser and shut off my computer last night. Came back this morning, turned on my PC and opened Firefox and it immediately opened an old version of that tab instead of the URL I wanted.

[jscher2000]

Can you give an example of how you get from the second-to-last video to the last one? Is it through a link on the video player page, or through YouTube auto-play, or some other method? I'll see whether I can replicate the same issue.

[clarkma5]

The pertinent URL that I keep wanting to Firefox to start with is the overall youtube watch later playlist (www.youtube.com/playlist?list=WL) which is never arrived at by an autoplay feature; however, the videos I'm watching that I don't want to start with the browser (but do anyway) are basically always indexed to that YT WL playlist and do progress automatically (though I have YT autoplay outside of playlists turned off FWIW), where the "playlist?" portion of the above URL is replaced with "watch?v=(ID)&" and "&index=(#)" is appended after "list=WL". I haven't explicitly experimented with what happens if the last video I watch isn't indexed to the WL playlist, it may or may not be related.

When I'm closing my browser and setting it up for the way I want to use it next time I start it, I have two approaches: either I open a new tab, click my WL playlist pinned tile on my Firefox start page, close the tab with the video in it, then close the browser. Or I will click the link in the tab where I'm watching the video to go back to my root WL playlist (see attached image for the red-circled link I'm clicking, and yes I'm watching CinemaSins and chose an unfortunate screengrab because I didn't put the giant arrow in there, ignore that) and then close the browser. In either case I'm not racing to close the browser stupidly fast or anything weird, and in both cases I don't get the tab state I left in the browser when I close it unless I leave it open for ~15+ minutes to actually remember the tab state I wanted. But it does seem to be YouTube-specific as it has never misremembered the tab state of any other tab besides YouTube that I have experienced.

[JohnnyCat]

I'm experiencing this, and for all tabs. Not just Youtube.