Need to copy browsing history and bookmarks to another installation of Firefox
I need to copy browsing history and bookmarks from one laptop with FF v.60 to another laptop with FF v.52.
I know there are different ways of doing this, but in my case I don't have use of the source laptop. BUT, I do have the full profile saved in both laptops. I also had saved a json bookmarks copy, but it's 5 days old. No huge deal but I had some major restructuring of my bookmarks yesterday.
There's also sync, but I tried to just sync history and it does nothing. Plus I'm not sure if it's going to sync to "last updated" which is actually the other (destination) laptop with FF v52.
In my profile I see bookmarks clearly, but no history. They are both in places.sqlite? Should I just copy this? What else would be copied?
By the way, in bookmarkbackups folder, I see the last jsonlz4 file is from June 9 12:10 am, not June 10 12:10 am as it should have been perhaps. Does this jsonlz4 file work with the restore command of "import and backup"?
Thank you!
Modified by elzach
Chosen solution
Sync takes time, so you might not give up on it right away.
You are correct that bookmarks and history are stored in places.sqlite and the corresponding site icons are stored in favicons.sqlite. If you copy these from Firefox 60 over to Firefox 52, they might work, or they might not, depending on whether any file format changes made after Firefox 52 make the files unreadable to Firefox 52.
And yes, if that fails, Restore reads the bookmarks-2021-06-10_678_gibberish==.jsonlz4 file, although again file format changes might interfere.
Read this answer in context 👍 1All Replies (7)
Chosen Solution
Sync takes time, so you might not give up on it right away.
You are correct that bookmarks and history are stored in places.sqlite and the corresponding site icons are stored in favicons.sqlite. If you copy these from Firefox 60 over to Firefox 52, they might work, or they might not, depending on whether any file format changes made after Firefox 52 make the files unreadable to Firefox 52.
And yes, if that fails, Restore reads the bookmarks-2021-06-10_678_gibberish==.jsonlz4 file, although again file format changes might interfere.
Safest would be to use an HTML backup to ensure proper working with an older Firefox version.
I copied places.sqlite and favicons.sqlite to the other profile after deleting (but making a copy) the places.sqlite on FF 52. Curiously there was no favicons on the FF 52 profile. I didn't work, it renamed it as "places.sqlite.corrupt" and basically ignored everything. It placed a new places.sqlite with zero history and the old bookmarks as of June 5.
I'll just try to restore that June 10 jsonlz4 file.
Should I delete that "corrupt" file?
Btw, @ cor-el, the reason I don't want to use the html file is because it doesn't save description, among other things.
jscher2000 said
Sync takes time, so you might not give up on it right away. You are correct that bookmarks and history are stored in places.sqlite and the corresponding site icons are stored in favicons.sqlite. If you copy these from Firefox 60 over to Firefox 52, they might work, or they might not, depending on whether any file format changes made after Firefox 52 make the files unreadable to Firefox 52. And yes, if that fails, Restore reads the bookmarks-2021-06-10_678_gibberish==.jsonlz4 file, although again file format changes might interfere.
Modified by elzach
Yes I'll delete it. I restored the jsonlz4 file, so at least I have the bookmarks up to June 9.
Btw, any idea why the FF 52 profile doesn't use the favicons? Should I delete that also?
Thanks jscher.
elzach said
Btw, any idea why the FF 52 profile doesn't use the favicons? Should I delete that also?
I guess that data used to be saved somewhere else. It's been a few years, hard to remember now.
Firefox 55 started using favicons.sqlite for storing the favicons and no longer stores them in places.sqlite (#977177).