How to restore diappeared after restart tabs
This morning I woke up my PC and saw that Firefox isn't running. I started it and it opened as a window with pinned tab I had but all other tabs are disappeared. It's the latest FF Quantum. I don't know what happened, maybe Windows10 restarted on its own as that beast likes to do, I don't know. I didn't realized that time that I lost all my tabs, also FF showed separate windows in taskbar for every tab while before I had switched this mode off (I have "show only one window" mode). So I closed a window thinking that it's a tab then restarted again. Then I realized that something terrible happened. I copied 'sessionstore-backups' folder. I checked History menu, all "restore previous windows" items were greyed. I have no any traces of previous session. Inside sessionstore-backups I have only the following files: previous.js previous.jsonlz4 recovery.baklz4 recovery.jsonlz4 upgrade.js-20170628075643 upgrade.js-20170814072924 upgrade.js-20170824053622 upgrade.jsonlz4-20171024165158 upgrade.jsonlz4-20171112125346 upgrade.jsonlz4-20171128222554
In main profile's folder: sessionstore.js sessionstore.jsonlz4 (no *.bak)
Is there any way to restore my tabs?
Modified by EvilShrike
Chosen solution
Good thinking making a backup. Can you check the files using this tool to see which has the latest data before you lost your tabs:
https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/scrounger.html
That page also can save a clickable list of links in case the tabs can't be fully restored.
As you probably notice, the .js files are older, and the .jsonlz4 files are newer. Firefox 56 started using lz4 compression on the session history files.
In order to have Firefox use the file of your choice at startup, you will need to wait for it to exit fully, then:
(1) rename sessionstore.jsonlz4 to sessionstoreOLD.jsonlz4 (2) copy the file you want to restore into your profile folder (3) rename the copied-in file to sessionstore.jsonlz4
At startup, Firefox should read that file. If you have Firefox set to restore previous session windows and tabs automatically, that should happen, but you may need to use "Recently Closed Windows" on the History menu.
If you can't find any file with the right tabs, there might be other options.
Read this answer in context 👍 4All Replies (4)
Well I renamed upgrade.jsonlz4-20171128222554 to sessionstore.jsonlz4 and I have a session from a week ago. At least it's something.
But damn it's not quite obvious! Why FF can't have a decent session history?
Seçilmiş Həll
Good thinking making a backup. Can you check the files using this tool to see which has the latest data before you lost your tabs:
https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/scrounger.html
That page also can save a clickable list of links in case the tabs can't be fully restored.
As you probably notice, the .js files are older, and the .jsonlz4 files are newer. Firefox 56 started using lz4 compression on the session history files.
In order to have Firefox use the file of your choice at startup, you will need to wait for it to exit fully, then:
(1) rename sessionstore.jsonlz4 to sessionstoreOLD.jsonlz4 (2) copy the file you want to restore into your profile folder (3) rename the copied-in file to sessionstore.jsonlz4
At startup, Firefox should read that file. If you have Firefox set to restore previous session windows and tabs automatically, that should happen, but you may need to use "Recently Closed Windows" on the History menu.
If you can't find any file with the right tabs, there might be other options.
Whoops, our posts crossed.
Why FF can't have a decent session history?
It usually works. Here's the article on how the current system was designed to work:
https://www.ghacks.net/2014/06/27/mozilla-launches-improved-session-restore-firefox-33/
But if you want random access to snapshots from different dates and times, that's definitely not a built-in option. Also, there's currently not an extension that everyone can agree works for that. Two I've seen so far:
@jscher2000 yeah, but thanks anyway.
> But if you want random access to snapshots from different dates and times
well, actually I just needed to restore a previous session not random. And it wasn't possible to do via UI. But may be technically it became to be not previous already, yeah.