Inactive tab groups after updating to 57...where are they?
I had been using the Tab Groups add on. With the update to 57, did the tabs that were not in the active window (in other groups) just disappear, or is there somewhere I can look to recover them? I had not been syncing tabs with this device because it would clog up my other devices with the number of tabs I had in the background, so I doubt that will be an option to restore that information.
Chosen solution
First, I don't know what happened to the tabs in non-active groups. When the Tab Groups feature was discontinued -- before the add-on -- Firefox moved the hidden tabs to groups of bookmarks. But I don't know about this time because it was managed by the add-on.
Second, please back up your session history files in case they contain at least a partial set of your data. Here's how:
You can open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either
- "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
- (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
- type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter
In the first table on the page, click the "Open Folder" (or "Show in Finder") button.
In your profile folder, double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder. Save all files here to a safe location such as Documents.
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.bak: a backup copy of recovery.js
- 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
(There may also be files with a .js extension from before Firefox 56.)
To extract the contents of a file, you can drag and drop it onto this page, then click Scrounge URLs: https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/scrounger.html. Note: it does not distinguish visible and hidden tabs or different groups, it just lists out all the addresses it finds.
That tool is on my site, so please let me know if it doesn't work for you.
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Chosen Solution
First, I don't know what happened to the tabs in non-active groups. When the Tab Groups feature was discontinued -- before the add-on -- Firefox moved the hidden tabs to groups of bookmarks. But I don't know about this time because it was managed by the add-on.
Second, please back up your session history files in case they contain at least a partial set of your data. Here's how:
You can open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either
- "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
- (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
- type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter
In the first table on the page, click the "Open Folder" (or "Show in Finder") button.
In your profile folder, double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder. Save all files here to a safe location such as Documents.
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.bak: a backup copy of recovery.js
- 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
(There may also be files with a .js extension from before Firefox 56.)
To extract the contents of a file, you can drag and drop it onto this page, then click Scrounge URLs: https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/scrounger.html. Note: it does not distinguish visible and hidden tabs or different groups, it just lists out all the addresses it finds.
That tool is on my site, so please let me know if it doesn't work for you.
That appears to have done the trick, thank you! At least I know I will have some way to recover that information now!
(I specifically checked what I figured was the most recent upgrade.jsonlz4-build file first, and that seemed to have the urls I was looking for)
A user on Reddit said the Tree Style Tab extension could recover the hidden tab groups, but I don't know if the rest of the extension's features are useful to you.