Where does Firefox put your bookmarks?

Answer 1

FireFox Bookmarks

• The Mozilla Firefox browser stores the bookmarks in the Bookmarks tab, which is available on the menu bar on the top of the page.
• The answer posted above goes for only inside the browser. The question might have been asked with an intention of saving (backing up) and restoring the bookmarks during uninstallation/upgrade of your browser.

  No matter what it has to save the information into the file system, but the filetype may vary from application to application. As such, Firefox deals everything with bookmarks.HTML file! and inside "bookmarkbackups" folder.

  This link explains everything very neatly. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Lost_bookmarks.

Recovering Your Firefox Bookmarks

• This is documented elsewhere, but perhaps comes across as too nerdy for some. If you're using Windows XP, recovering from a crash or whatever, and find that your Firefox bookmarks (and bookmarklets and bookmark toolbar) have disappeared, here's what to do:

  - Find your profile in c:\Documents and Settings\[your XP user name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

  - There should be a subfolder there called bookmarkbackups. Find the most recent bookmarks HTML file in there (usually with a date after the 'bookmarks' bit.

  - Copy it to somewhere safe and rename the existing one bookmarks.HTML.

  - Copy it to the default profiles folder (up one level from the bookmarkbackups folder, deleting the existing bookmarks.HTML file.

  - Close Firefox if it's running and relaunch it. Your old bookmarks should be restored.

• An easier way is to find file as above in ....\profiles (bookmarks-2009-04-27.json) from old disk and copy back to same location on new disk, go to browser bookmarks then organise bookmarks (ctrl shift b) import and backup then restore your file will be there, restore this and confirm (this will overwrite existing ones) original bookmarks returned

Answer 2

Default for XP..... C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxx.default where xxxx is some random-appearing string. The "Application Data" is a hidden folder, so if you don't have the option selected to SHOW hidden folders, you will either have to enable it, (tool>folder options>view> (x) SHOW HIDDEN FILES AND FOLDERS) or, if you would rather not do that, simply add " /application data" to the end of the address in the address bar at the top once you are in your "user" folder. You SHOULD be able to edit your cookies from notepad, but since they are all in one text file, it is easier to delete your cookies from firefox itself.Tools->Options. Then, select the Privacy tab. You'll see a button called "Show Cookies...". That's your ticket. On the Cookies dialog that comes up, you can remove the cookies one by one. It doesn't allow multiple selections, unfortunately. That would speed the process up.

Answer 3

I can give you some instructions for locating your Firefox bookmarks, but it would have been easier if you had provided a little more information in your question. So, before you use my instructions, I need to add the following..., um, "disclaimer(s)":

First of all, if you are running an operating system other than Windows, then these instructions are most likely not applicable.

Second, the Profiles directory (which contains the bookmarks file) could be located in various places on your hard drive, depending on what version of Windows you are running and what version of Firefox you have installed.

These instructions should work for versions of Windows newer than XP/2003 (Vista, 7) and Firefox versions from about 3.4 and up (3.6.xxx is the newest available version as of the date of this answer).

If your system doesn't meet this criteria, then you should probably stop reading this and go to Mozilla's Firefox Support site, select your operating system and browser versions, and search the Knowledge Base.

And finally...

Going directly to the file that contains your bookmarks is NOT the best practice for accessing--and especially NOT for modifying (edit, move, delete, import, etc.,.) your bookmarks. In fact, the file may not even open on your system unless you know something about opening SQLite-formatted files.

The best method for bookmark-related tasks should be done via the Organize Bookmarks function. If one of these tasks is what you need to accomplish, I really, really suggest you do so with the Organize Bookmarks function--if it doesn't currently have the capability to do what you want it to do, then look for an Add-On that can perform the task--there are hundreds of add-ons for the Bookmark function, I'm sure that you would be able to find something to assist you.

If you mess around with the files in the Profiles directory and you aren't exactly sure what you are doing, you may lose not just your bookmarks, but also your saved passwords, user preferences, add-ons, and so forth---not to mention you may (very) possibly foul up Firefox to the point that it doesn't work at all and you will have to start from scratch.

After all of that, if you still want to take a look at the file, here are the steps to locating it:

Firefox (for Windows Operating Systems) stores your bookmarks in a file named "places.sqlite" which is located in a sub-folder buried in a few other sub-folders, in a directory named 'Profiles'. To get to the folder containing the 'places' file:

1. Open the Firefox browser.

2. On the Firefox Menu bar, Select Help --> Troubleshooting Information.

A new tabbed page named "Troubleshooting Information" will open.

The "Troubleshooting Information" page is divided into sections, each with tables containing a lot of technical info about your Firefox Addons, Preferences, and such.

3. Look at the very top (first) section "Application Basics", and the table just below the text.

4. Locate the third row of the table, where the left column contains the text "Profile Directory".

5. In the column to the right, there is a button that is named "Open Containing Folder". Click on it.

Your Firefox User Profile Directory and all of the sub-folders inside of it down to the one with the '.default" suffix will open in a Windows Explorer (or whatever your default file management utility is) window.

6. ..and the "places.sqlite" file will be in the displayed sub-folder.

NOTE: If you can't see the place.sqlite file in the ".default" folder after following these instructions, check the Tools--> Folder Options --> View tab in Windows Explorer and make sure that the Hidden/System files are set to "Show"

(default setting is "Hide").

Or...now that you know the name of the file, you could just do a search on your hard drive for it---but if you have multiple user accounts, multiple Firefox profiles, or anything else along those lines, you may run into some other issues.

Good Luck.

Answer 4

On a Mac OS, Bookmarks are stored here:

~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/xxxxxxx.default/bookmarks.html

xxxxxxxx represents a random string of 8 characters.

Answer 5

Tools -> Options -> Security tab -> Saved Passwords.. button