Same thing happened to me on an iPad. There is no Session Restore for Firefox on an iPhone or iPad.

It’s a major failure for Firefox to have no Session Restore for those who use Firefox on an iPad or iPhone. Especially considering it is available/ included as part of the Firefox version for the Windows OS (operating system). And it’s been available for Windows users for some time.

——— Unfortunately Firefox was developed for the Windows OS and ontinued development of Firefox focuses on Windows users. iOS users are left out. I say this as a staunch user of Windows operating system and love Firefox on Windows.

But Because I need to use an iPad and an iPhone I installed my favorite browser Firefox. I’ve had two situations where Firefox lost all tabs. One like yours occurred after a Firefox update. Another happened where firefox was launched when I accidentally clicked a link to a business’ website in the iPad Map app. (I have Firefox set to be my primary browser so all links to websites open in Firefox). When it opened that website all the previously opened tabs were gone.

Bottom line: The only way to Restore/ retrieve your tabs that were open is to search through the History of the hundreds of previously viewed websites and open them one at a time.

I’ve resisted using Safari as my main browser. But with there being No Session Restore for those who use the Firefox version for an iPhone or iPad I have to make the switch. Safari doesn’t lose tabs. It saves them automatically. It’s a feature that also lets you save all the tabs you have open into what they call “Tabs Groups”. It’s an amazing feature and I wish Firefox had it too.

Not only do Tab Groups let you save all currently open tabs into a group Safari does it automatically. You can also name a Group whatever you want and can create as many Groups as you want as well.

As mentioned a group of all your currently opened tabs is made by default. It’s an impressive and invaluable feature. The default group is named is “## Tabs” where ## is the number of tabs you have open. AND you can switch from the “## Tabs” Group to any other group you have created and come back without losing any of the tabs in the “## Tabs” group. You can seamlessly switch from one group to another.

Tabs from one group can be moved and/ or copied to another Group. You can also delete a tab in a group. It’s a phenomenal tool to have in a browser. I so wish Firefox had this feature. Supposedly there are add ons for Firefox that do something similar but it’d great if it were a part of Firefox.

Best of luck getting your tabs back. It’ll be a slow painful process going through your history to find them. I speak from experience.

Thanks for your contribution. Sadly, I cannot go through my history and find the hundreds of tabs I had, because my history has millions of entries. So, that's not really a solution; I really, really want an actual solution to my issue.

Same happened to me once updated to Firefox for iOS 116.1 (App Store update from 2023-08-09)!

I urgently need my more than 50 open tabs back! Few of them inactive, some in private browsing.

If you unrecoverable lost all my open tabs/data dear Mozilla, this would be the end of using Firefox on iOS. I‘m so damn angry!!!

See https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-ios/issues/15989

Thank you for commenting on this Github issue. Let's track the issue there.

Hi

This is something that our developers are aware of and are looking into. You can follow progress on this and add comments at the GitHub issue at:

https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-ios/issues/15989

Hi

Thank you for your patience while our developers have been looking into this matter. Please look out for an update to version 116.2 from the App Store that should stop your tabs from disappearing.

I lost all my inactive tabs previously (80~90ish) was fine, some things were recoverable. however, today (sometime in the past hour) I lost all the tabs i had open since then, something like 40~50 tabs.

Want to let you know that the issue is absolutely still not resolved, as I’m on 116.4. absolutely ridiculous I cant keep using your browser of its just going to do this ffs. Absolutely beyond miffed

All of my tabs disappeared on iPad IOS 16.5 after updating to Firefox 116.5 via Apple Store App ~5-7days ago.'Thought (since I'm not even close to tech literate) I'd done it inadvertently--then realized there were no icons that I could've inadvertently hit that coould do that, so I've been searching & searching duck-duck-go & google for solution to getting tabs back. After many tries w/zero matches, search turned up only ONE applicable matching response, which led me to this page (thanks very much for being here).'Problem is I have zero skills to try to apply some of the things you all have listed above & I'm shocked & furious "Mozilla/Firefox" hasn't corrected this by now (espec. since all my bookmarks disappeared ~18 mos ago). Like so many of you, I lost info it took me hours upon hours to even find (due to search engines forcing onto seekers what they think you should be looking for/buying, vs the actual words (& b/c even use of "____________ " searching is useless, in my experience...I,too, digress). Anyway, Dear Firefox, I've been a big fan & encouraged lots of people to use you vs Safari, Google, etc, but I can't do that if they're going to lose their tabs & bookmarks--I thought these issues were re: Apple iOS limiting your capabilities, but it sounds like the problem isn't limited to Apple's products. I REALLY NEED SOME OF THOSE TABS' INFO BACK, AS THEY CONTAINED MEDICAL RESEARCHERS INFO THAT TOOK YEARS (really!!) TO FIND. I KEPT THE TABS OPEN B/C I COULDN'T TRUST FIREFOX'S iPad iOS TO KEEP THEM SAVED. I do appreciate all the work volunteers do & how user-friendly & privacy-protection-oriented FireFox has been. I just don't know what's causing this seemingly unresponsiveness. I hope you can turn it back around. I need the level of help that doesn't require the kinds of skillfulness/IT knowledge that the folks above have--pls & thank you.