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New tabs and windows - profile file recovery/transfer. Which file contains information about settings for new tabs?

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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I moved profile to a fresh install. I got all the important files moved (sites, history, passwords...), but I cannot find which file contains info about the new tabs and windows. In other words - when opening a new tab you can specify what will be displayed. I had those set up, but with the new profile, I am not sure which file to transfer to recover the settings.

thanks in advance,

I moved profile to a fresh install. I got all the important files moved (sites, history, passwords...), but I cannot find which file contains info about the new tabs and windows. In other words - when opening a new tab you can specify what will be displayed. I had those set up, but with the new profile, I am not sure which file to transfer to recover the settings. thanks in advance,

Chosen solution

Hi PLP, the selection of which sections are displayed and how many rows, etc., is stored in the prefs.js file. There is a risk in copying over that file of overwriting other customizations you've made already in the new profile, but you can open it up (right-click > Edit, don't double-click) and see an alphabetical list similar to the one that displays in the about:config preferences editor. The most interesting ones probably have newtab in the name.

More info:

Can you find what you're looking for?

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Chosen Solution

Hi PLP, the selection of which sections are displayed and how many rows, etc., is stored in the prefs.js file. There is a risk in copying over that file of overwriting other customizations you've made already in the new profile, but you can open it up (right-click > Edit, don't double-click) and see an alphabetical list similar to the one that displays in the about:config preferences editor. The most interesting ones probably have newtab in the name.

More info:

Can you find what you're looking for?

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Stupid me. I should have thought about this file. It is so obvious :) Thanks for oyur help. I took the risk of copying it to the new profile. No, there was no modification in the new profile at all. Yet, for safety I initially renamed the new profile "prefs", copied the old one - all works, so the other one can be deleted.

Thanks again.

Oh, I'd say this could be included in the Recovering important data from an old profile. I was looking there for help and other sites related, but no mention of the prefs.js

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PLP said</p>

Oh, I'd say this could be included in the Recovering important data from an old profile. I was looking there for help and other sites related, but no mention of the prefs.js

Hmm, now that I check the current article, it says it doesn't cover Preferences because the file often is a source of problems -- the non-default behaviors people are trying to cure. So I guess for now, I won't suggest any modifications to the article.

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OK, I get it. I do not want to dwell on it too much, but was it discussed elsewhere? What I am getting to is - I could not find answer for my question anywhere. Sure, I might have not been looking in the right places, but I was wondering if someone else was searching for same problem, would they be able to find solution? Maybe change title of my question, or anything...

In my case it worked flawlessly. No issues whatsoever.

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There is lot of profile specific data in prefs.js, that is a reason not to copy this file to another profile. Best is to identify the lines you need and copy these to prefs.js or easier is to copy theses user_pref() lines to a user,js file and use this file once to make Firefox copy them to prefs.js. Once this is done, you can rename/remove user.js (userSAV.js) and possibly keep this file for future profile initialization.

The user.js file is read each time Firefox is started and initializes preferences to the value specified in this file, so preferences set via user.js can only be changed temporarily for the current session.