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History not coming back after force quit

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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Hello, I just had to force quite and reboot my computer but the Restore History tab is greyed out and not allowing me to restore the many tabs that were open prior to shut down. I need to get these tabs back as I have no other record of them...some were there for a few weeks so can't just look at that part of the site...I need the Restore History function to be working. Can you tell me how to resolve this problem? Also can you tell me why the Restore History tab did not work? Thank you, Liz

Hello, I just had to force quite and reboot my computer but the Restore History tab is greyed out and not allowing me to restore the many tabs that were open prior to shut down. I need to get these tabs back as I have no other record of them...some were there for a few weeks so can't just look at that part of the site...I need the Restore History function to be working. Can you tell me how to resolve this problem? Also can you tell me why the Restore History tab did not work? Thank you, Liz
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If you force a Firefox close then Firefox won't be able to write sessionstore.jsonlz4 in the profile folder.

Maybe you have a upgrade.jsonlz4-<build_id> file in the sessionstore-backups folder in the Firefox profile folder that you can use instead. Backup the session files in the sessionstore-backups folder in the Firefox profile folder to make sure not to lose possible important session data. Do NOT close Firefox when Firefox is already running.

You can use the button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page.

You will normally find these files in the sessionstore-backups folder:

  • previous.jsonlz4 (cleanBackup: copy of sessionstore.jsonlz4 from previous session that was loaded successfully)
  • recovery.jsonlz4 (latest version of sessionstore.jsonlz4 written during runtime)
  • recovery.baklz4 (previous version of sessionstore.jsonlz4 written during runtime)
  • upgrade.jsonlz4-<build_id> (backup created during an upgrade of Firefox)

You can copy a file from the sessionstore-backups folder to the main profile and rename the file to sessionstore.jsonlz4 to replace the current file with Firefox closed (make sure to backup the current sessionstore.jsonlz4).

You can look at this tool to inspect a compressed sessionstore file.


If you use the Time Machine or other backup then try to restore sessionstore.jsonlz4 from this backup.

Location used for the main profile that keeps your personal data (Root Directory on about:profiles).

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