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how to Sync open tabs on to another device... I fell for the loopholes.

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 8 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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Hi,

I synced my tabs from my old laptop to my android device. All the tabs were there in the "synced tabs" folder. I did not open the tabs in my phone thinking they are all safe there (I didn't know about the 7 day sync period, although I restored well within that period).

When the laptop got repaired, I tried to sync back the tabs from the android device. But as soon as sync was done, within few minutes, the synced tabs were gone from both the phone as well as the newly repaired laptop..!! Apparently the sync was again done and overwrite/erased the saved tabs in my android phone. This happened since I did not open any of the tabs in my android device. All of the saved tabs were gone.

I feel, this feature of saving open tabs is a myth. There should be some feature to restore the synced tabs from an older date. Just like a restore point in windows work.

Due to this 'myth', i lost a lot of work that was done over many months.

Before rolling out a feature, thorough testing should have been done. Loopholes like these should have been taken into consideration and patched.

Thanks Aj

Hi, I synced my tabs from my old laptop to my android device. All the tabs were there in the "synced tabs" folder. I did not open the tabs in my phone thinking they are all safe there (I didn't know about the 7 day sync period, although I restored well within that period). When the laptop got repaired, I tried to sync back the tabs from the android device. But as soon as sync was done, within few minutes, the synced tabs were gone from both the phone as well as the newly repaired laptop..!! Apparently the sync was again done and overwrite/erased the saved tabs in my android phone. This happened since I did not open any of the tabs in my android device. All of the saved tabs were gone. I feel, this feature of saving open tabs is a myth. There should be some feature to restore the synced tabs from an older date. Just like a restore point in windows work. Due to this 'myth', i lost a lot of work that was done over many months. Before rolling out a feature, thorough testing should have been done. Loopholes like these should have been taken into consideration and patched. Thanks Aj

All Replies (2)

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I don't have a solution for you, but I have some sympathy. There is a logical problem with syncing. Seems that syncing in most systems does not use the concept of a master that everything syncs from. Without that, how can the system know which device has the version of tabs or bookmarks you want to keep? I know that one of these days I will sync a phone to my computer and the sync will result in deleting all my bookmarks from my computer and replacing them with the braindead default bookmarks on a phone with a new installation of FireFox. When that happens, I will not be happy.

Modified by Carla Rogers

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The 7 day period for keeping synced tabs has been extended to 366 days some time ago with Firefox 76, so that shouldn't be the problem. Synced tabs are marked as coming from a specific device and if you connect the same device to the Sync account then you will replace the synced tabs with the current tabs. To keep tabs and prevent losing them you would have to bookmark those pages.

Note that Sync isn't designed to be used as a backup, so no guarantee that you can use it to restore data.