How can you recover data belonging to extensions?
Background: My computer was acting up and, going into task manager, I brazenly exited out of some of the processes of Firefox thinking it might help. Obviously it didn't help and I'm sure at this point I just need to reinstall because it's basically been slowing my computer to a halt every time I've tried to use it since then, but weirdly enough, it completely messed up my extensions too*, even though nothing else regarding settings nor my profile was affected.
I'm fine manually reinstalling the extensions, especially considering I can carry over bookmarks and history anyway, but I must have had thousands of elements blocked on uBlock, all of which are gone, and there's a lot of styles that I don't know if I'd be able to find again as well. If there's some way to retrieve the data related to these extensions if it still exists somewhere, like the aforementioned blocked elements and styles, or scripts on Tampermonkey, or even settings related to the extensions- maybe they're all stored in similar places- then I'd really like to be able to do that. It would be fine just to be able to copy and paste the items back manually again. Even if I can't actually put it back in, it would be nice to be able to retrieve the files where they are so at least it's not wiped out on a reinstall. I realize that it's possible that one of these extensions is causing an issue, but they certainly weren't before this happened (I doubt what I did was actually an issue exacerbated by the extensions and as long as I don't do the same thing again I'd think it would be fine) and either way, even if I don't even use the extensions again, I'd just like to have the data there.
- The extensions themselves aren't uninstalled. Some work normally, some don't, but notably, every time I start Firefox, anything that's stored related to the extension, whether it be settings or just certain specifications, is gone. The toolbar drop-down menus open consistently. For instance, uBlock not only won't actually bring up its element blocker, but it also says it has zero elements blocked since install. Stylus also doesn't work, and all my styles have vanished. Tampermonkey worked running a script on Youtube, but once again, on startup, the script was gone.
All Replies (7)
I think You can use TrID (http://mark0.net/soft-trid-e.html) for that. There are versions for both Windows and Linux.
Modified by Dinushi Dhananjani
HI dr, So I think the extensions that you enabled in
your previous Firefox installation will no longer exist,
1.
Launch Firefox. Click "Firefox"
and then click "Help" and "Troubleshooting
Information." Click the "Show Folder" button to
display the location of the files that comprise your
current Firefox profile. A File Explorer window opens.
2. Click "File" and "Exit" to close Firefox. Click on the File Explorer window that shows your profile folder.
3. Click "Profiles," the parent folder of the current directory, in the address bar. for this computer in the Profiles directory. Browse the Extensions folder inside each profile to locate the folder that seems to contain the files from your old or damaged profile.
4. Click the Extensions folder to highlight it,
right-click and click "Copy." Navigate up one level
to Profiles, and then choose your current profile directory. Right-click and select "Paste" to recover your extensions by copying them from your old Firefox profile.
5. Launch Firefox. Firefox discovers the new extensions and asks you if you want to enable them. Confirm the prompt for each extension you added.
Dinushi Dhananjani said
HI dr, So I think the extensions that you enabled in your previous Firefox installation will no longer exist, 1. Launch Firefox. Click "Firefox" and then click "Help" and "Troubleshooting Information." Click the "Show Folder" button to display the location of the files that comprise your current Firefox profile. A File Explorer window opens. 2. Click "File" and "Exit" to close Firefox. Click on the File Explorer window that shows your profile folder. 3. Click "Profiles," the parent folder of the current directory, in the address bar. for this computer in the Profiles directory. Browse the Extensions folder inside each profile to locate the folder that seems to contain the files from your old or damaged profile. 4. Click the Extensions folder to highlight it, right-click and click "Copy." Navigate up one level to Profiles, and then choose your current profile directory. Right-click and select "Paste" to recover your extensions by copying them from your old Firefox profile. 5. Launch Firefox. Firefox discovers the new extensions and asks you if you want to enable them. Confirm the prompt for each extension you added.
Thank you! Just to be clear, this saves both the extensions as well as anything saved within the extensions, correct?
Extension data is stored separately from the extensions themselves.
In your profile folder:
- [profile]\extensions
- [profile]\storage\default
The problem is that at install time, Firefox assigns each extension a randomly generated local UUID, and that is used for the extension's storage folder. This is for your privacy, but it makes it very difficult to match up the existing folder with the newly installed extension.
Does your Firefox still work well enough to display the about:debugging page? If so, and you click This Firefox in the left column, can you find uBlock Origin on the list? If so, great. That will show you the local UUID so you can track down its storage folder and back up those files (making a note somewhere that they belong to uBlock Origin).
The later step of subbing in those files for whatever default ones are created would require looking up the new UUID. I haven't personally had to make such a swap; you might check on the uBlock Origin subreddit for advice on which files you really need.
https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/
Ditto for Tampermonkey.
jscher2000 said
Extension data is stored separately from the extensions themselves. In your profile folder:The problem is that at install time, Firefox assigns each extension a randomly generated local UUID, and that is used for the extension's storage folder. This is for your privacy, but it makes it very difficult to match up the existing folder with the newly installed extension. Does your Firefox still work well enough to display the about:debugging page? If so, and you click This Firefox in the left column, can you find uBlock Origin on the list? If so, great. That will show you the local UUID so you can track down its storage folder and back up those files (making a note somewhere that they belong to uBlock Origin). The later step of subbing in those files for whatever default ones are created would require looking up the new UUID. I haven't personally had to make such a swap; you might check on the uBlock Origin subreddit for advice on which files you really need. https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/ Ditto for Tampermonkey.
- [profile]\extensions
- [profile]\storage\default
From what I can gather, the former of those directories and the latter of them are the actual extensions and the extension data respectively?
There are also these prefs that might be helpful to transfer the storage folder from one setup to another profile.
The UUIDs that you see listed on about:debugging are stored in this pref in JSON format:
- extensions.webextensions.uuids
These two prefs determine what happens if you uninstall and reinstall an extension:
- extensions.webextensions.keepStorageOnUninstall
- extensions.webextensions.keepUuidOnUninstall
With both these latter prefs set to true you can make Firefox believe that you have extension data from a previous install that you wish to reuse.
The only problem would be to edit extensions.webextensions.uuids and copy/paste the UUID of extensions that you want to install. Editing key/value pairs {"key":"value"} as used for JSON data can be tricky if you aren't familiar with this format.
cor-el said
There are also these prefs that might be helpful to transfer the storage folder from one setup to another profile. The UUIDs that you see listed on about:debugging are stored in this pref in JSON format:These two prefs determine what happens if you uninstall and reinstall an extension:
- extensions.webextensions.uuids
With both these latter prefs set to true you can make Firefox believe that you have extension data from a previous install that you wish to reuse. The only problem would be to edit extensions.webextensions.uuids and copy/paste the UUID of extensions that you want to install. Editing key/value pairs {"key":"value"} as used for JSON data can be tricky if you aren't familiar with this format.
- extensions.webextensions.keepStorageOnUninstall
- extensions.webextensions.keepUuidOnUninstall
I'm confused as to what the problem actually is- is the only thing here just to set both of the keys to true, or am I missing something? Additionally, I saw that there's a bunch of booleans for each extension, some of them simply being labeled with the UUID and others not, and they're all both set to true and labeled as Modified. I have no idea what it quite means, but it seems relevant?