We use Firefox as the main browser around our house. This article is about how to check your Firefox settings and make sure you can restore your previous Firefox session. I’m tech support for our house, so there have been times when I’ve run CCleaner and removed all browsing history (among other things), to clean up and make the computer run faster. And yes, I’ve done this when my husband had quite a few tabs up he wasn’t through with!
Doug’s Computer
Check Your Firefox History Settings
To see if you can get all of your last session’s browser tabs back, there are a few things to check. First Go to History and see if the ‘Restore Previous Session’ is grayed out or not. It was grayed out on both of our computers. This is the fastest and easiest way to get back what you were looking at before someone thoughtlessly shuts down your session (as I did).
See the image below where my computer’s Restore Previous Session is available and working for me. It wasn’t when I first checked. I did some research and found a lot of this and that on the interwebs – none of which seemed like it would work.
Another setting to check, also under History, is the Show All History selection. Click on that to view today’s yesterday’s or the last 7 days of your browsing history. On this pop-up, you can also check out all the downloads you had and any bookmarks. That can be helpful for finding what you want. If you are monitoring children, this is a good place to check out. You can also check to see if your special someone has been looking at gifts for you – could be a spoiler!
The Fix – Refresh Your Firefox
I mentioned Binging and Googling a way to get the Restore Previous Session back, but none of them looked correct. Then I stumbled upon the Mozilla Firefox home screen where they suggested a Refresh Firefox solution. Refreshing means it’s bringing your browser back to their default settings. So if you’ve selected a theme or added on extensions, they will be gone. I’d compare it to doing a computer reinstall of your operating system. It puts things back to its original state. So I got a screenshot of all my add-ons so I could put them back (I don’t use a whole lot) and clicked the Refresh button.
It took perhaps 5 minutes and I got a couple of notifications that it was being worked on then the notification went away and I clicked on the Firefox icon and it started up with the Firefox Home Page. I noticed that Restore Previous Session is right at the bottom of the page!
Another Solution-Show Windows and Tabs From Last Time
There is another setting some of you may want to choose and that is to set Firefox to bring up the tabs you had up the last time. Perhaps you go to the same sites every day – this could be very helpful.
To get here, look at the upper right of your screen and you’ll see what’s called a ‘hamburger menu’ icon. 
Click on it and then click on Options. Select the General tab and click the drop-down and select Show my windows and tabs from last time. Now you’ll save time not having to bring up the same tabs every day!
Instructions on Creating A New Firefox Profile
If these tips didn’t work for you, it’s suggested that creating a new profile can give you an out-of-the-box new experience as well or more so as the refresh. This may be for more advanced users. I’ve got links here if you want to check it out or you can come back here later to refer to any of these steps.
Create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problem.
See “Creating a profile”:
- https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic_-_Firefox#Profile_issues
If the new profile works then you can transfer files from a previously used profile to the new profile, but be cautious not to copy corrupted files to avoid carrying over problems.
Firefox Fixed
I hope this has been helpful – knowing about the Refresh Firefox could come in handy. If you have some Firefox tips or problems, post them in the comments!