Geenat.com Nathan’s blog about software development, design and the people behind it.

HOW TO: Copy, backup and restore your Firefox bookmarks, settings and add-ons.

Written on December 7th, 2008

Firefox Logo

I formatted my workstation the other day and needed a way to transfer all of my Firefox bookmarks and settings. I stumbled upon a very simple and quick method through copying the Application Data folder. Interestingly enough, this method also has the welcome side-effect of transferring all of your add-ons as well; so things like DownThemAll and Firebug will all stay intact.

The folder you need to copy is: C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox (in my case C:\Documents and Settings\Nathan\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox).

The Application Data folder may be hidden on your system. To enable hidden system files do the following:

  1. From the explorer window, go to the “Tools” menu.
  2. Select “Folder Options…”
  3. Select the “View” tab.
  4. In the “Advanced Settings” area, enable “Show hidden files and folders”.
  5. Hit the Ok button.

The previously hidden Application Data folder should now be accessible.

Once you have this folder backed up, you can paste it into a Firefox Application Data folder on another system and have your entire user profile and customizations fully restored.

Note: This method has only been tested with Firefox 3 under Windows XP.

Posted in Firefox, How To Guide, Open Source

View Comments - 3