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Why does my new Mac Firefox make me log into Firefox account every time I open it?

  • 9 replies
  • 3 have this problem
  • 8 views
  • Last reply by rfkelly

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Every time I start Firefox on my new Macbook, I have to login to my "Firefox Account" to get my bookmarks, passwords, and preferences. On my old Macbook Firefox is logged in whenever I open it. How do I fix this?

Every time I start Firefox on my new Macbook, I have to login to my "Firefox Account" to get my bookmarks, passwords, and preferences. On my old Macbook Firefox is logged in whenever I open it. How do I fix this?

Chosen solution

Hi Sue, sorry to hear that Firefox is not working correctly for you.

Just to check that I understand what's happening here, is this an accurate description of what you're seeing?

  • When you launch Firefox, it is not signed in to your Firefox Account, and it does not have any of your saved bookmarks, passwords or preferences.
  • You sign in with your Firefox Account and the bookmarks, passwords etc appear after syncing from the Account.
  • When you exit Firefox and launch it again, you find that it has forgotten the above and you have to sign in once again.

One possible cause of this, is if you are running Firefox directly from the downloaded disk image rather than copying it locally to your computer. You can check this by opening a new tab in Firefox and entering "about:support" in the URL. This should bring up a page with some diagnostic information about your local Firefox install, one of which is labelled "Application Binary". Does the value for "Application Binary" change every time you exit and re-launch Firefox, or does it stay the same?

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Chosen Solution

Hi Sue, sorry to hear that Firefox is not working correctly for you.

Just to check that I understand what's happening here, is this an accurate description of what you're seeing?

  • When you launch Firefox, it is not signed in to your Firefox Account, and it does not have any of your saved bookmarks, passwords or preferences.
  • You sign in with your Firefox Account and the bookmarks, passwords etc appear after syncing from the Account.
  • When you exit Firefox and launch it again, you find that it has forgotten the above and you have to sign in once again.

One possible cause of this, is if you are running Firefox directly from the downloaded disk image rather than copying it locally to your computer. You can check this by opening a new tab in Firefox and entering "about:support" in the URL. This should bring up a page with some diagnostic information about your local Firefox install, one of which is labelled "Application Binary". Does the value for "Application Binary" change every time you exit and re-launch Firefox, or does it stay the same?

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Another thing to check is whether Firefox Sync is producing any error logs. If you open a new tab and enter "about:sync-log" in the URL bar, does it show any files named starting with "error"?

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If you need to login to the Firefox Account on each start then this would indicate that the Firefox Password Manager isn't working properly because that is where these credentials are stored. Unfortunately with Lockwise you can't easily check this because Lockwise appears to hide the chrome://FirefoxAccounts entry in the Password Manager.

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I haven't enabled Lockwise.

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cor-el said

If you need to login to the Firefox Account on each start then this would indicate that the Firefox Password Manager isn't working properly.

Firefox Sync will use the Lockwise password manager for storing its credentials even if you haven't enabled Lockwise yourself, so this could still be the reason for the errors. (But it could also be the other things I mentioned above, especially if Firefox is also missing your bookmarks etc every time is starts up, not just missing your account info).

If credential storage is indeed the cause of the problem, I would expect "about:sync-log" to contain some error files that can help us confirm it.

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Doesn't builtin Lockwise (70+) work without a Sync account ?

I assumed that it uses the same logins.json and key4.db files as the legacy Password Manager and wouldn't need or use a Firefox Account like the Lockwise extension for 67-69. To use Lockwise with a Firefox Account would require to include Logins for Sync and I assume that not everybody would accept online storage of their passwords.

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Yes, all of that is true. What I'm saying is, Sue's issue *might* be caused by a problem with the Password Manager, but that's not the only possible cause.


Sue, please let us know if you try the debugging steps I suggested above with "about:support" and "about:sync-log", I think it will help narrow down the possible causes of the problem.

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Hi, I am having the same issue as Sue, I just tried both suggestions about:support, Application binary did not change, and about:sync-log had no Error messages. What next? This is very frustrating. You mentioned that Firefox could be running from the Firefox disc, if I eject that disc will it cause problems to my Firefox account? I did not download Firefox, when I got my new Mac someone was helping me and this is the first time I've had the disc image on my desktop so I wondered about it. Can I copy Firefox to my computer and eject the disc and hopefully this will help?

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> Can I copy Firefox to my computer and eject the disc and hopefully this will help?

This is worth a try; it might or might not help, but at the very least I don't think it can hurt.