8000 tabs opened, hungs\unresponsiviness of tabs, troubleshoot mode every time
8000 tabs opened. worked until now. currently opens in safe mode (troubleshoot mode) every time, I can't save tabs to bookmarks (crash or un-responsive when click select all tabs > save to bookmarks), I can't save tabs using extension (not work in troubleshoot mode), and can't unload tabs using extenstion, and hangs when click to some tabs (some opens but slowly, some not opens and show main screen area like previous tab is still opened i.e. not responds).. many years I uses OneTab extenstion until 1 year ago FF can't use it due to many tabs opened, then I decided to disable OneTab extenstion and use opened tabs only, but still not sort all of this information and it accumulated and accumulated.. now I need to restore all these tabs in any way, help needed! I'm IT specialist and can done any diagnostics and can migrate tabs if you say what to do.. may be tell what session file format ff uses?
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That is a lot of tabs. If I understand the current status, Firefox will open, only in Troubleshoot Mode, and the tabs are still there and usable, you are concerned that the open tabs will be lost due to instability.
Let's start with session history files and make sure you've backed those up:
(1) To open your profile folder...
You can open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either
- "3-bar" menu button > Help > More Troubleshooting Information
- (menu bar) Help > More Troubleshooting Information
- type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter
In the first table on the page, find the Profile Folder row. On that row, click the "Open Folder" button. This should launch Windows' File Explorer listing the contents of your current profile folder.
(2) Copy out session history files
In your profile folder, double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder. Save all files here to a safe location such as your Documents folder.
(3) What files did you find?
The kinds of files you may find among your sessionstore files are:
- recovery.jsonlz4: the windows and tabs in your currently live Firefox session (or, if Firefox crashed at the last shutdown and is still closed, your last session)
- recovery.baklz4: a backup copy of recovery.jsonlz4
- previous.jsonlz4: the windows and tabs in your last Firefox session
- upgrade.jsonlz4-build_id: the windows and tabs in the Firefox session that was live at the time of your last update
.jsonlz4 files need to be decompressed before you can mine them for URLs...
File Decompression / Preview
These compressed files are a pain to view, so I created a tool on my website to list out their contents. I have never tested with that big a file, and it may not work (see further down for a possible workaround). If you want to try that, you can drag and drop it onto the large box on the following page, then click the "Scrounge URLs" button:
https://www.jeffersonscher.com/ffu/scrounger.html
If you don't get a list within 15 seconds, that probably means the script is caught in a loop. You may need to close the tab to avoid a tab crash and then try again in a new tab.
If you get a useful list, use the "Save List" button to archive it as a web page of clickable links for future reference, in case no other approach is successful.
Alternative for decompression, see: https://gist.github.com/jscher2000/4403507e33df0918289619edb83f8193
Fresh Session Export"
This is a script for the Browser Console. You do need to toggle a preference in about:config in order to run scripts in the console.
https://gist.github.com/jscher2000/b7094b3e74b95e5ba9c26f1f685bda6e
What might be more useful is to export just the current URLs and not the full session history (back forward history of every open tab and several closed tabs and windows). I don't have a script for that.