Weird Firefox issue

Cromulent · 28 Jun 2023 at 12:50

I'm running Firefox 114.0.2 on macOS 13.4.1 and have a strange issue. I deleted all of my history and ticked every checkbox in the dialogue except for cookies, as I wanted to keep them.

Now when I use Firefox, it does not save history, so it won't remember I've been to facebook.com and it does not autocomplete URLs. I'm not sure why it isn't saving that data.

Any ideas?

Throrik · 28 Jun 2023 at 13:25

You've not accidentally changed 'Remember History' have you?

Cromulent · 28 Jun 2023 at 13:29

Throrik said:
You've not accidentally changed 'Remember History' have you?

Nope. Says "Remember History" as well.

Rainmaker · 28 Jun 2023 at 21:47

Do you have private browsing mode permanently enabled by accident? An extension causing it? Check in about:config and select to show only changed preferences, and see if anything catches your eye about history, cookies, private mode etc. Do you have a user.js? Sometimes, it's not worth the hassle, and faster to just sync the instance to your account (assuming you use Firefox sync), make a new profile, and then sign in to your account and have it put your data back before finally deleting the old borked profile. Firefox can be janky sometimes...

Throrik · 28 Jun 2023 at 23:38

Rainmaker said:
Do you have private browsing mode permanently enabled by accident? An extension causing it? Check in about:config and select to show only changed preferences, and see if anything catches your eye about history, cookies, private mode etc. Do you have a user.js? Sometimes, it's not worth the hassle, and faster to just sync the instance to your account (assuming you use Firefox sync), make a new profile, and then sign in to your account and have it put your data back before finally deleting the old borked profile. Firefox can be janky sometimes...

Alternatively just reset it via about:support and refresh, I had to do this the other day myself on my Firefox instance as my user.js had made such a mess of things that it was unusable

Cromulent · 29 Jun 2023 at 12:18

For some reason, it started to work. Thank you all for the help. I have no idea what happened.

Rainmaker · 2 Jul 2023 at 22:47

Throrik said:
Alternatively just reset it via about:support and refresh, I had to do this the other day myself on my Firefox instance as my user.js had made such a mess of things that it was unusable

For future reference, you can keep your profile (and bookmarks, etc) by just deleting both user.js and prefs.js. That'll take you back to defaults without actually hosing the profile itself.

@Cromulent glad you got it sorted!

Throrik · 3 Jul 2023 at 00:26

Rainmaker said:
For future reference, you can keep your profile (and bookmarks, etc) by just deleting both user.js and prefs.js. That'll take you back to defaults without actually hosing the profile itself.

@Cromulent glad you got it sorted!

I always assume (wrongly so) that people use Firefox Sync for this, but they quite possibly don't.

Rainmaker · 3 Jul 2023 at 00:28

Throrik said:
I always assume (wrongly so) that people use Firefox Sync for this, but they quite possibly don't.

Exactly. I actually do use it, but many don't. Not just that, but like all hackers I'm lazy... It's quicker to rm prefs.js user.js than it is to go through the troubleshooting or profile pages and click a bunch of stuff.

Cromulent · 3 Jul 2023 at 10:47

Rainmaker said:
For future reference, you can keep your profile (and bookmarks, etc) by just deleting both user.js and prefs.js. That'll take you back to defaults without actually hosing the profile itself.

Thank you! That is useful to know.