how can I switch from Nightly to the new Firefox and keep bookmarks etc
I have been using nightly for some time to get 64 bit performance but now that Firefox is 64 bit I would like to switch to it. I'm not really a computer whiz and haven't been contributing to nightly's development. I don't know whether i must first uninstall nightly & then install Firefox latest 64 bit Quantum from scratch, or whether I could simply install Firefox over Nightly. Or perhaps i can keep my favorites, cookies, passwords & addons etc by copying my roaming and local profiles? Thanks in advance for your help
All Replies (8)
You will have to save your bookmark and then import them into FF58 that is the only way that I know of.
Mozilla has had Win64 Firefox for Releases since 42.0 (November 3, 2015) and was listed on www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/ since 43.0 Release.
The stub installer served on www.mozilla.org to Windows users have had a new one since Firefox 53.0 (used to only be 32-bit) which can install Win64 by default if they have 64-bit Windows 7, 8, 10 and 3+ GB RAM.
You should backup your Profile(s) just in case.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles
Modified by James
James said
Mozilla has had Win64 Firefox for Releases since 42.0 (November 3, 2015) and was listed on www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/ since 43.0 Release. The stub installer served on www.mozilla.org to Windows users have had a new one since Firefox 53.0 (used to only be 32-bit) which can install Win64 by default if they have 64-bit Windows 7, 8, 10 and 3+ GB RAM. You should backup your Profile(s) just in case. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles
Thank you for your help. Do I understand correctly that I can simply install Firefox 64 bit over nightly without removing it ? Or must I first delete Nightly to install the latest Firefox 64 bit version? From your comments I take it that the profiles from Nightly are compatible with the latest Firefox 64 bit ? Is that right ? Thanks again in advance.
WestEnd said
You will have to save your bookmark and then import them into FF58 that is the only way that I know of.
I guess you're saying I must first uninstall Nightly before downloading and installing the latest Firefox ? If I save my Nightly profiles to keep my history, favorites, add-ons, cookies etc will they be compatible with the latest Firefox 64 bit version? Thanks for your help.
You should use a new profile if you revert from Nightly to an (older) release build. Nightly can make a lot of changes to files and preferences and the profile may not be compatible any more. There may also be issues when release gets to Firefox 59 or 60 and some new features are enabled.
You can copy files like these with Firefox closed to the current profile folder to recover specific data.
- bookmarks and history: places.sqlite
- bookmark backups: compressed .jsonlz4 backups in the bookmarkbackups folder
- cookies.sqlite for the cookies
- formhistory.sqlite for saved form data
- logins.json and key4.db (decryption key) for Passwords saved in the Password Manager
- cert9.db for certificates stored in the Certificate Manager
- persdict.dat for words you added to the spelling checker dictionary
- permissions.sqlite for Permissions and possibly content-prefs.sqlite for other Site Preferences
- sessionstore.jsonlz4 for open tabs and pinned tabs
Best is to uninstall Nightly to remove all files and cleanup the Windows Registry, but make sure not to remove personal data. Also check that the Firefox program folder is really gone and no files are left.
- (64-bit Firefox) "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\"
- (32-bit Firefox) "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\"