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Profiles

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Firefox saves your personal information such as bookmarks, passwords, and user preferences in a set of files called your profile, which is stored in a separate location from the Firefox program files.

Table Of Contents

What is a profile?

Any changes you make while using Firefox are stored in files so that they can be used the next time you run Firefox. These changes can be obvious, like your home page, or changes you've made to the toolbar, but also include things like your history, what sites you've visited, and text you've entered into forms like search fields. They're all stored in the same location, called a profile folder.

These files are kept separately from the program files that Firefox uses to run, which don't change. This means that you can uninstall Firefox without losing your settings, and that if something goes wrong with an update your information will still be there. It also means you don't have to reinstall Firefox in order to clear your information, or troubleshoot a problem.

How to find your profile

Windows:

Each profile is stored on your hard drive in a profile folder. The default location of the Firefox profile is %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\.

  • %APPDATA% is shorthand for the C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\ folder (Windows 7/Vista) or the C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\ folder (Windows XP/2000), which depends on your Windows user account name.
  • xxxxxxxx represents a random string of 8 characters.

Windows Vista and 7

Watch a video of these instructions
  1. Click the Windows Start button and type %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ in the Search box at the bottom of the Start menu, without pressing Enter. A list of profiles will appear at the top of the Start menu.
  2. Click on any of the profiles (e.g. xxxxxxxx.default) to open it with Windows Explorer.

On Windows 2000 and XP

  1. Click the Windows Start button, and select Run....


  2. Type in %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ then click OK.

  3. Windows Explorer opens a folder containing your profiles.
  4. Double-click the profile folder you wish to open (e.g. the xxxxxxxx.default folder).
Mac OS:

Each profile is stored on your hard drive in a profile folder. The default location of the Firefox profile is ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/.

  • xxxxxxxx represents a random string of 8 characters.
  1. Open Finder and go to your home folder. Note: your home folder is usually the name of your Mac user account
  2. From your home folder open /Library/, then /Application Support/, then /Firefox/, then /Profiles/.
  3. Open your profile folder. By default, it is /xxxxxxxx.default/ where xxxxxxxx represents a random string of 8 characters.
Linux:

Each profile is stored on your hard drive in a profile folder. The default location of the Firefox profile is ~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default/.

  • xxxxxxxx represents a random string of 8 characters.
  1. (Ubuntu) Click the Places menu on the top right of the screen and select Home Folder. A File Browser window will appear.
  2. Click the View menu and select Show Hidden Files if it isn't already checked.
  3. Double click the folder marked .mozilla.
  4. Double click the folder marked firefox. Your profile folders are within this folder.

Important files

Bookmarks and browsing history

  • places.sqlite - This file contains all your Firefox bookmarks and a list of websites you have previously visited.

Passwords

Your passwords are stored in two different files, both of which are required:

  • key3.db - This file stores your key database for your passwords. To transfer saved passwords, you must copy this file along with the following file.
3.5/3.6:
  • signons.sqlite - Saved passwords.
3.0:
  • signons3.txt - Saved passwords

For more information see Remembering passwords.

Cookies

  • cookies.sqlite - This file stores your cookies. For more information see the Cookies article.

Moving your profile information

  • Backing up your information explains how to back up your profile, how to restore a profile backup, and how to move your profile information to a different location on your hard drive or to another computer.

Creating and deleting profiles

Managing profiles explains how to do things like create a new profile and delete an old one.


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Page last modified on Friday 13 of November, 2009 11:22:23 PST.
Contributors to this page: Chris_Ilias , underpass , ricmacas , olirl2004 , zzxc , Bo , Lucy , ehsan , np , Vectorspace , skulvis , AliceWyman , admin , mozbrowser and RayKiddy .
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