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File where unpinned top sites are saved?

  • 5 cavab
  • 1 has this problem
  • 6 views
  • Last reply by moot

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I would like to clear/delete ALL UNPINNED top sites thumbnails at once. Similar question was posted over three years ago... no solution was ever given. Having to go through them one at at time, clicking Delete from History, confirming, over and over and over, is a real pain. If the info is stored in a sql database table or even a json, it would at least be a quicker way! AND some of the thumbnails require multiple click to finally get rid of! Can you help?

I would like to clear/delete ALL UNPINNED top sites thumbnails at once. Similar question was posted over three years ago... no solution was ever given. Having to go through them one at at time, clicking Delete from History, confirming, over and over and over, is a real pain. If the info is stored in a sql database table or even a json, it would at least be a quicker way! AND some of the thumbnails require multiple click to finally get rid of! Can you help?

Modified by moot

All Replies (5)

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The thumbnails are stored in the thumbnails folder that is located in the secondary profile location (Local Directory) also used for the disk cache. You can find a button to go to this location on the about:profiles page.

Firefox uses two locations for the Firefox profile folder.

Firefox uses two locations for the Firefox profile folder, so make sure to look in the correct location. Location used for the main profile that keeps your personal data (Root Directory on about:profiles).

  • ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/<profile>

Location used for the disk cache and other temporary files (Local Directory on about:profiles).

  • ~/Library/Caches/Firefox/Profiles/<profile>


(paths changed to Mac OS versions)

Modified by cor-el

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I had missed that you are on a Mac and I've corrected my above reply for Mac. You can still use the button on the about:profiles page.

  • you can open "about:" pages via the location/address bar
    "about:" is a protocol to access special pages
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Thanks for the reply... I know where the Folder is... I am looking for the File that the reference, to the unpinned thumbnail, is located in, i.e., inside a Table in the places.sqlite file? inside a .json file? Am I correct that there is no solution 'fix' (to the Firefox Top Sites interface) to allow the user to select multiple thumbnails and delete them... in mass! For now I will settle for doing a work around by manually editing the appropriate container File... If someone can tell me where (what File(s)/Tables) the pointer is stored...

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I don't think that there is a table to map a thumbnail to a URL. The top sites list is generated from the history and that is it. The thumbnail names look like hashes to me and that probably means that Firefox calculates a hash from a URL and then looks in the thumbnails cache for a matching entry. You will have to cleanup the thumbnails folder yourself if you want to start with fresh images. I don't know if Firefox does some cleanup regularly or if there is a limit to the number of thumbnails or if there is an expire date.

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cor-el said: ... The top sites list is generated from the history and that is it...

                   ... the thumbnails cache...

Does that file have a name? Where is it located?