Firefox Bookmarked All My Tabs Thousands of Times
So uh. This is bizarre. This has been going on for a couple weeks now - since the unremovable Other Bookmarks button appeared, though I *have* since removed that - but basically, I've had a lot of tabs open for a while now. Well over 100 of them. 99% of them were unloaded and just there for me to go back to whenever, that's not usually a problem for me, it doesn't lag my browser.
What *does* lag my browser is opening my bookmarks. Because Firefox has taken these 100+ tabs and bookmarked all of them. Thousands of times. There are over 170,000 bookmarks bogging down my browser and they're all these exact same tabs, over and over and over and over and over again. Obviously, I never did this. This just up and happened one day.
I managed to scroll through all of them, and couldn't find *any* of my *actual* bookmarks whatsoever. They're all gone. All I have are these tabs, over and over. What the hell is going on, and how do I fix this?
Chosen solution
Try to restore an older backup.
- Bookmarks -> Show All Bookmarks -> Import & Backup -> Restore
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-bookmarks-from-backup-or-move-them
The name of an automatically created JSON bookmarks backup in the bookmarkbackups folder includes a total item count (folders and separators included) and an hash value to prevent saving the same backup more than once. You also see this count in the Restore menu drop-down list.
- bookmarks-YYYY-MM-DD_<item count>_<hash>.jsonlz4.
All Replies (4)
In Firefox 85+ you can right-click the "Other Bookmarks" icon on the Bookmarks Toolbar show or hide this button (Show Other Bookmarks).
If you use Sync then best is to disconnect Sync temporarily during troubleshooting.
This can be caused by a problem with the places.sqlite and favicons.sqlite databases in the Firefox profile folder.
- use "Verify Integrity" button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page
If errors are reported with "Verify Integrity", close and restart Firefox or reboot and retry.
If "Verify Integrity" cannot repair places.sqlite, rename/remove all places.sqlite and favicons.sqlite files in the Firefox profile folder with Firefox closed. Firefox will rebuild places.sqlite and restore the bookmarks from a recent JSON backup in the bookmarkbackups folder.
- keep a backup copy of places.sqlite in case a new places.sqlite database has to be created
You lose the history when a new places.sqlite is created.
See also:
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Bookmarks+not+saved#w_fix-the-bookmarks-file
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fix-bookmarks-and-history-will-not-be-functional
You can use the button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page.
- Help -> Troubleshooting Information -> Profile Folder/Directory:
Windows: Open Folder; Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data
This didn't work. My bookmark backup must've been in the same corrupted state when it was last made, I guess?
Chosen Solution
Try to restore an older backup.
- Bookmarks -> Show All Bookmarks -> Import & Backup -> Restore
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/restore-bookmarks-from-backup-or-move-them
The name of an automatically created JSON bookmarks backup in the bookmarkbackups folder includes a total item count (folders and separators included) and an hash value to prevent saving the same backup more than once. You also see this count in the Restore menu drop-down list.
- bookmarks-YYYY-MM-DD_<item count>_<hash>.jsonlz4.
At first it just deleted everything, but then I went to an even older backup and it fixed everything. Tysm.