How to Recover Firefox Bookmarks from Crashed Computer, or Disappeared?

Firefox bookmarks let us jump back easily to our frequently-visited or favorite websites, and help us stay organized while browsing. But when bookmarks suddenly go missing, due to a system crash, browser update, or accidental deletion, it can be super frustrating to track the urls again.

In this guide, we’ll show you where Firefox bookmarks are stored and walk you through several practical ways to recover Firefox bookmarks from a crashed computer, or restore disappeared bookmarks in Firefox with ease.

 Cisdem Data Recovery for Windows and Mac

Restore Bookmarks, Downloads, etc in Firefox

• Restore deleted or disappeared Firefox bookmarks
• Restore Firefox bookmarks lost under different cases: uninstall, update, Windows refresh, crash, etc.
• Recover Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Safari bookmarks as well
• Restore 1000+ files: video, audio, document, photo, email, archive, etc.
• Retrieve files from both internal and external storage disks
• Repair damaged videos, photos and documents
• Recover unsaved files
• Preview files before recovery
• Support NAS recovery, RAID recovery, Linux recovery, SD Card recovery, etc.
• Recover files from specific folder or location

Free Download Windows 11/10/8/7 Free Download macOS 10.15 or later

Where Are Firefox Bookmarks?

Where to find Firefox bookmarks?

Firefox can keep the bookmarks in different places of this browser, the bookmarks toolbar, bookmarks menu, also from the sidebar. Generally, it will be showed on the Bookmarks toolbar, unless you’ve customized the toolbar and remove the bookmarks items from the bookmarks toolbar.

Where's Firefox bookmarks location?

Firefox bookmarks are located in the Firefox Profile folder, you can click on the 3-vertical-line icon in Firefox > Help > More troubleshooting information > Application Basics > Profile Folder > Show in Finder, or directly go the location as follows:

For Windows: %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile_name>\places.sqlite

For macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/<profile_name>/places.sqlite

Recover Firefox Bookmarks after Crash

Right after a computer crash, you may notice the Firefox bookmarks disappeared. It is troublesome, but in reality, Firefox stores bookmark data in several places, which makes a good chance to be recovered.

In this section, we’ll go through 8 ways to get your bookmarks back. And before the steps, we’d like offer some quick and small tips to get your Firefox bookmarks back when the situation is not that complicated.

Quick Tips to Recover Firefox Bookmarks from Crashed Computer

• Restart Firefox

Restarting Mozilla Firefox can sometimes restore disappeared bookmarks after a computer crash, but only if the issue was temporary, like a system glitch or improper shutdown. Just Quit the app and restart.

• Restart Computer

Restarting your computer might also help if the crash prevented Firefox from loading your data properly the first time, because a fresh boot can allow Mozilla Firefox to access its bookmark files normally again. Just power off your computer, then turn ON again and open Firefox to check if the issue persists.

• Update Firefox or Operating System

App or operating system update can fix bugs or stability issues, and might solve the issue that caused the disappeared Firefox bookmarks, so you can have a software or OS update.

If above tips did not bring the bookmarks back, then we can check following instructions to restore.

#1 Recover Firefox Bookmarks with Cisdem

Your time spent recovering lost or deleted Firefox bookmarks can be shortened tremendously if you use a professional file recovery program that scans fast and recovers accurately, as of now, the best tool is Cisdem Data Recovery.

It is designed to recover more than 1000 file types, including bookmarks in Google Chrome/Safari/Microsoft Edge/Firefox, downloads from different browsers, and videos, audio, photos, document, archives, from web browsers, internal disk and external storage devices. It applies to virtually all data loss situation, from deletion to system crash, and won’t do harm to your existing files or system settings. Also, you can preview the files before the recovery process, making sure you recover the wanted files only.

Cisdem Data Recovery can restore Firefox bookmarks in both JSON and HTML format, we will walk you through the process of restoring and importing the Firefox bookmarks back to your Firefox app.

1. Download and install Cisdem Data Recovery on your PC or Mac.
   Free Download Windows 11/10/8/7 Free Download macOS 10.15 or later
2. Go to Data Recovery > Hardware Disk, select the location where you stores the Firefox bookmarks and click Search for Lost Data.
3. Go to Type > Bookmarks > firefox. Also you can enter keywords or use the filer tool to quickly find Firefox bookmarks.
4. Select the recoverable Firefox bookmarks and click Recover.
5. Go to Firefox bookmarks' location in the Profile folder, then put the recovered bookmarks into the location.
6. Restart Firefox to check if the bookmarks are back.

#2 Restore Bookmarks in Firefox with Backup

Firefox will automatically create dated backups, you can access these backups in bookmarks library and restore a bookmark directly within the browser. Also you can visit the auto-save backup location in Firefox’s profile folder to recover, because Firefox use profile folder to save bookmarks, passwords, add-ons and other personal information.

Option 1. Restore from Backup in the Browser

1. Open Firefox, go to Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks.
2. Click the Import & Export button, choose Restore.
3. Select a backup according to the date.
4. Click OK to confirm and restore.

Option 2. Restore from Backup Location

Where are Firefox bookmark backups stored? 

On Windows: C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\bookmarkbackups

On Mac: /Users/<user name>/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/<profile>bookmarkbackups

Steps to recover bookmarks in Firefox from backup location

1. Open Firefox.
2. Go to Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks.
3. Click Import & Export button, choose Restore.
4. Choose File, select and import the backup file and restore.

#3 Recover Firefox Bookmarks from Old Profile

If you have an old profile that stores the bookmarks and want to migrate it to the new profile, this is also a useful workaround of restoring bookmarks in Firefox.

This works when you’ve upgraded or downgraded your Windows system and lost the bookmarks in Firefox. You can check and restore from the old Windows user account as well, the location for the Firefox bookmarks under the old account is: C:\Windows.old\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\bookmarkbackups

1. Open Firefox, go to Help > More Troubleshooting Information.
2. Find the new profile folder from “Profile Folder”.
3. Open the old profile folder C:\Windows.old\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\bookmarkbackups, copy the bookmarks file places.sqlite from this old profile.
4. Paste to the new profile folder in Step 2.
5. Restart Firefox to check the bookmarks are back.

#4 Recover Firefox Bookmarks via Sync

Firefox has the Sync feature to synchronize bookmarks, history, passwords, add-ons and other across all your devices. If you have a Firefox account, you can sign in and restore the bookmarks by syncing from another device that using the same Firefox account.

1. Open Firefox and click on the account icon.
2. Go to Sync, and sign in to sync.
3. Connect the device to sync and restore bookmarks in Firefox.

#5 Recover Firefox Bookmarks by Import from Other Browser

In the case that you have another browser and bookmarks your favorite websites in this browser, no matter your Firefox bookmarks are lost or deleted, you can restore by importing from anther browser, like Google Chrome, Safari.

1. Open Firefox.
2. Go to Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks.
3. Click the Import & Export button, choose Import Data from Another Browser.
4. Select the browser data and click Import.
5. Click Done and check the restored bookmarks in Firefox.

#6 Recover Firefox Bookmarks on Windows with File History

For Windows users, File History is the utility used to backup and restore files with ease. It is similar to Time Machine on Mac and take the similar process to recover Firefox bookmarks. Also, it allows Windows users recover a wanted version from the historical versions.

1. Connect the File History backup drive to your Windows PC.
2. Open File History from Control Panel and select Restore personal files.
3. Find the Firefox bookmarks in HTML format, preview all the versions and select a wanted version.
4. Click the Recover button.

#7 Recover Firefox Bookmarks on Mac with Time Machine

Time Machine is the Mac utility to back up and restore files from an external storage drive. It helps users automatically backup files on a regular hourly/daily/weekly basis. Once enter Time Machine, users will be able to find and preview all the backup files, and restore any selected one from all the versions.

1. Connect the Time Machine backup drive to your Mac.
2. Click Time Machine icon and choose Enter Time Machine.
3. Find the deleted or lost Firefox bookmarks in HTML format, select a version from the timeline. 
4. Click Restore. 

Firefox Bookmarks Disappeared from Toolbar? Recover Now!

There is no bookmarks showing on the bookmarks toolbar? Or your favorites websites just disappear from the toolbar after reinstallation, PC crash or Windows refresh? This may be for the reason that a setting change has been made to Firefox, you can check the toolbar and recover with following steps.

1. Open Firefox browser.
2. Go to View > Toolbars > Customize Toolbar.
3. Find and select the Bookmark toolbar items.
4. Then drag it to the toolbar. And click Done.
5. Go to View > Toolbars > Bookmarks Toolbar, make sure it always shows or show on new tab.

Conclusion

Recovering bookmarks in Firefox after a crash or when they got disappeared, isn’t always straightforward. But we still have multiple ways to get them back. Restarting Firefox or computer might be a quick solution. Methods like checking backups, old profiles, system backups, or using a tool like Cisdem when no backup is also useful. The key for a successful file recovery key is always to act quickly, and choose the method that fits how your Bookmarks were stored or backed up.