Hi, I don't believe there is a way to do this on Android by design. I think we only restore your session after a crash.

Hi Verdi, thanks for your reply. I don't mean to be rude, but why would that be by design on mobile, but not on desktop?

Verdi is incorrect. When you re-open Firefox for Android; at the bottom of Firefox Home (about:home), there is a blue link titled 'Open all tabs from last time'; tapping that will re-open all the tabs from your previous session.

I believe this was done to make startup faster. Also, many people use the browser on Android differently than on desktop. For example, if you follow a link from twitter you just want to open the browser and quickly load that page and not all the other pages you may have opened before.

Sure, I understand why it's not default (though most other browsers on the android platform do so), but why is there not an option or even a config property to have Firefox open, but not load, the tabs from your previous session? It seems a bit counter intuitive.

Could you tell me please where would be most appropriate to file a feature request?

Hi AaronMT, thanks for your reply. As I said in my original post "I'm aware of the link on the default home page", that is not the kind of functionality I'm after.

What I was expecting to be able to do is somehow have the same functionality as setting "When Firefox starts up" -> "Show my windows and tabs from last time" and "Tabs"->"Don't load tabs until selected" in the desktop client. That is to say, each time the browser is started it would open all the tabs I had opened in my previous session, but keep them unloaded until I select them.

The problem with the button on the home page is you have to remember to click it or you lose your entire session, and when opening Firefox from a link in another application I'd have to open the homepage from a bookmark and then click the button.

You can file a "bug" in the Firefox for Android product and explain what you would like it to do https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Firefox%20for%20Android

Here you go, Gary. Credit goes to Ideato:

Hello virusa, go form Firefox button > Options > Options > General panel > Startup > When Firefox starts > UNselect Show my windows and tabs from last time

Hi delquattro, thanks for your response, but my inquiry was regarding Firefox for Android, not the desktop version.

Cheers.

For those interested, see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=801412. The relevant session restore preferences will be implemented as part of that bug.

You can also check out https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/SessionRestore for more details about session restore behavior in Firefox for Android.