Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

How can I return Firefox to a previous setting on a Mac?

more options

Fire fox was very sluggish and not properly downloading, so I reset Fire Fox today. I lost a lot of presets and connections I had on screen. How can I reset to an earlier date to recover these missing items?

Fire fox was very sluggish and not properly downloading, so I reset Fire Fox today. I lost a lot of presets and connections I had on screen. How can I reset to an earlier date to recover these missing items?

All Replies (2)

more options

I'm not sure what you mean by "presets and connections." If those were buttons on your Bookmarks Toolbar, you can redisplay that bar using any of these methods to show the toolbar list:

To turn on the Bookmarks Toolbar, or other bars, click it on the list.


If that's not what you mean, could you describe what you're looking for in more detail?


Unfortunately, there is no built-in feature to "undo" a Refresh. Assuming you still have the Old Firefox Data folder on your desktop created by the Refresh, you can use the files inside to either:

  • Replace some of the less useful files in your new profile with files from your old profile
  • Do a complete restoration of your old profile in parallel to the new one
  • Both, and then compare which works better

Your current settings are in a hidden folder. The following articles describes how to open your current profile folder so that you might copy in files from your Old Firefox Data folder, and what files probably are the most interesting:

If you wanted to do a full roll back, I'll post the multi-step process in another reply.

more options

This unofficial "roll back" process takes a while, but it might be the fastest way to undo the Refresh. The good news is, everything will look familiar. The bad news is, the problem that led you to use Refresh in the first place will probably be back.

Overview

These are the steps described in more detail below:

  1. Create a new Firefox profile
  2. Remove everything from that new profile folder
  3. Copy in everything from the old profile folder

Create a new Profile

Inside Firefox, type or paste about:profiles in the address bar and press Enter/Return to load it.

Click the Create a New Profile button, then click Next. Assign a name like OldSettings, ignore the option to relocate the profile folder, and click the Finish button.

After creating the profile, scroll down to it and click the Set as default profile button below that profile, then scroll back up and click the Restart normally button. (There are some other buttons, but I think those are still "under construction" so please ignore them.)

Firefox should exit and then start up using the new profile, which will just look brand new.

Open the New Profile folder in Finder

In the new profile, open the Troubleshooting Information page using any of these methods:

  • "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
  • Help menu > Troubleshooting Information
  • type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

In the first table, click the "Show in Finder" button. Firefox will launch your brand new profile folder in a Finder window.

Leaving that folder open, switch back to Firefox, and Quit using either:

  • "3-bar" menu button > "power" button
  • (menu bar) Firefox > Quit

When Firefox closes, the Finder window showing the new profile folder should be front and center, or you can activate it.

Copy Old Data in Place of New

In that new profile folder, select all the contents and delete so the folder is now empty.

Leaving that window open, open or switch over to your Old Firefox Data folder. Drill down into your old profile folder. At this level you should see a folder named bookmarkbackups among other things. (You should see that folder, but don't go into that folder...)

Select everything and Copy. This might involve using Command+a and Command+c.

Switch to the empty new profile folder in other window and Paste. This may take a minute since some of the files are large.

Start Firefox

Firefox should start up in that "new" profile with the resurrected old profile data. Success?