Having Firefox integrate with the Windows 10 feature to re-launch your session is optional. See: Firefox starts automatically when I restart Windows.

Do you have Firefox set to "Restore previous session" on the Options page?

If "Yes" then you should get the same result -- tabs restored -- whether you use the Firefox program icon or use an external link to launch Firefox. I don't know about Windows starting Firefox up automatically because I always exit Firefox myself to avoid file corruption, but it also should restore your session automatically.

If "No" then you do risk the "accidentally updated session" problem (that's why I started using automatic session restore).

Make sure you close Firefox properly via Exit/Quit and do not rely on letting Windows close Firefox when you close down the computer.

Restore Previous Session is on, yes. I would not be having any session restores if I had it disabled. And for the about:config line, it's set to true.

I have attempted to restart after turning it to false Session wiped 5/5 times after opening a new instance of firefox opened after the first, and just going back to my session after the restart, it wiped 1/5 times(could have been my fault there).

How am I testing it? When I open the browser after it fully loads open another, close the new one first and the ongoing session second, I would open firefox again. This doesn't occur for pop-up windows.

I never thought of doing that, cor-el, but now that I tried several times, I would think I can keep several sessions ongoing like this, I could mark this as the solution to the problem, but I don't know if this would close the thread/question, so I will keep it active for at least another 24 hours in case anyone has anything to add.

Thank you so much for this though, I know almost everything offers you an exit option, but it's become a habit after so many years, just clicking the big red button, hardly ever having any consequences.

I have attempted to restart after turning it to false Session wiped 5/5 times after opening a new instance of firefox opened after the first, and just going back to my session after the restart, it wiped 1/5 times(could have been my fault there).

Yes, with Restore previous session not checked on the Options page, you need to do a manual restore -- either:

• "3-bar" menu button > Restore Previous Session
• (menu bar) History > Restore Previous Session

If they are missing or grayed, check either:

• "3-bar" menu button > Library > History > Recently Closed Windows
• "Library" toolbar button > History > Recently Closed Windows
• (menu bar) History > Recently Closed Windows

(After forgetting the manual restore too many times, I switched to automatic.)

I do that as an attempt to restore my previous session when I lose it every time too, but it would end up showing about 3 or 4 New Tab options instead of a website name or custom icon or anything. I would previously use the Firefox Scrounger for restoring windows from previous sessions instead, but for some reason most of my recent .baklz4 and .jsonlz4 files all would come back to something like this(attatched image), so I started using session storing add-ons. I got way too many things linked to my firefox to move to a different browser, except Opera if it helps transfer as well as it claims to, I think :/ I do a lot of googling, and have been dealing with this for years, I dunno what else to add to this.

Seems the Scrounger didn't find the other old windows/tabs for some reason. I don't know whether it's because they are not in the box showing the JSON data or whether the file has something different about it that my scripts don't recognize (so they skip it). If you save the JSON and open it in a text editor or Firefox tab, you could search for URLs and see whether there are more in there.

I love this feature! Basically ever OS (BSD Linux Win32) i have tested in for over 2 years has this awesome thing it always confuses OS-Wide (Auto) login context... With the Application state!! Looks like some one tried to take Chrome, and make a prison system out of Linux and Coreboot! I was able to confirm two workarounds. One is a write filter. The other is using Palemoon.

My question to mozilla would be, what exactly according to you is a "Session" ? As in the lifecycle of a PID? I already know about your about:studies, toolkit telemetry, and others.

Sorry for the rant, just confirming it's a mind f* to have the very first option you see under global preferences not doing anything at all.

My question to mozilla would be, what exactly according to you is a "Session" ?

A Firefox session begins when you start the program and ends when you quit the program. If you do not quit but instead let the OS trigger application exit or kill the Firefox process, then the results vary per OS. On Linux, if the system signals Firefox to close itself due to system shutdown, Firefox sets a flag to restore your previous session on the next run.

If your session isn't being restored, make sure you don't clear browsing history at shutdown. Session history is treated as part of browsing history.

Ah is it good practice to check / ask for the restoring of this "Session" even when the very first option you see after entering global preferences is set to OFF? Perhaps bit logic is too difficult to translate to a UI ? And a quantum gyro is more to your liking?

Ah is it good practice to check / ask for the restoring of this "Session" even when the very first option you see after entering global preferences is set to OFF? Perhaps bit logic is too difficult to translate to a UI ? And a quantum gyro is more to your liking?

Here's what I think you are saying:

"Restore Previous Session is not checked on the Settings page, but Firefox asks me at startup whether I want to restore my session."

We already discussed that Firefox's integration with Linux is an independent reason Firefox may restore your previous session, completely unrelated to your settings.

The other issue would be an incomplete shutdown, which Firefox treats as a crash. Normally, Firefox will try to do an automatic session restore after a crash and if that fails, then it will show a screen telling you it wasn't able to restore your session and offering the option to choose specific windows and tabs to restore, or to start a new session.

Do you think that is what is happening on your Firefox?

Here are some suggestions:

(A) Quit Firefox manually using the menu to bypass the system integration, and allow time for shutdown (10-60 seconds depending on who knows what) to minimize crashes

(B) Set Firefox to NEVER automatically restore your previous session after a crash. Here's how:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

(2) In the search box in the page, type or paste browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the preference to switch the value from true to false

More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox.

Any difference so far?

Thanks for the help. Just for my sanity, the very first option under 'general' needs a 'about:config' hack otherwise it's non-functional?

Thanks for the help. Just for my sanity, the very first option under 'general' needs a 'about:config' hack otherwise it's non-functional?

Do you mean the checkbox for "Restore Previous Session"? I'm not sure what you mean by non-functional.

This checkbox is one of two controls that modifies the browser.startup.page preference, which you can modify directly in about:config if you prefer. The other control is the Homepage and new windows setting on the Home panel. The preference can have these values:

• 1 => Show your home page (default) [selector on Home panel]
• 0 => Show a blank page [selector on Home panel]
• 3 => Restore your previous session [checkbox on General panel, overrides the above if checked]
• 2 => Restore the last visited page only [hidden option]