I need to recover Mozilla Firefox

[Brian Levin]

Hi, Recently Firefox got deleted from my Mac. It is important to me because it contains a wealth of bookmarks I use regularly.
I tried to download it again but this was not accepted by Mac. But the Mac Store does not offer Firefox.
Is there a solution to this conundrum? Thank you.

 

[Jac Robinson]

Do you have a Firefox sync account? Get the disk image from its creators at mozilla.org using Safari on your Mac. (Firefox is not in the Mac App Store) Getting your bookmarks back should be as simple as signing into your Firefox sync account on your Mac. Also, Firefox is having issues with macOS Catalina; something to take a note of if you are running the macOS beta.

 

[Brian Levin]

Do you have a Firefox sync account? Get the disk image from its creators at mozilla.org using Safari on your Mac. (Firefox is not in the Mac App Store) Getting your bookmarks back should be as simple as signing into your Firefox sync account on your Mac. Also, Firefox is having issues with macOS Catalina; something to take a note of if you are running the macOS beta.

Thank you, but no, I don't have a Firefox sync account. I am not highly competent at that level and had never heard of it... Is that the only solution?

 

[adrianlondon]

What do you mean when you say "not accepted by Mac"?

Did you try and download a new copy direct from Mozilla?
https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/new/

It *should* just download and install - it simply copies itself into your /Applications folder. Ah - check to see if you still actually have it there and haven't simply deleted the dock icon or something. That depends on what "got deleted" means

 

[Brian Levin]

Adrian, see the attached screenshot to answer your first question, and Mac does not offer Firefox in the Apple Store. But I have now overridden the refusal, at the price of losing my history and bookmarks... But better that than nothing.
The "got deleted" issue is a bit of a problem, but there is no doubt that Firefox was no longer operative on this computer.
Thank you for your help.

 

[adrianlondon]

You say you've over-ridden the refusal - I assume by right-click then open (or changing the security settings n System Preferences) so you have Firefox working.

If you open up Terminal and run Firefox with a list of profiles, does that show you your old one?

> cd /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS
> firefox -p

 

[Brian Levin]

You say you've over-ridden the refusal - I assume by right-click then open (or changing the security settings n System Preferences) so you have Firefox working.

If you open up Terminal and run Firefox with a list of profiles, does that show you your old one?

> cd /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS
> firefox -p

[doublepost=1565166235][/doublepost]Yes, Mac allowed me to disregard the rule. And not only is Firefox now working, but - wonder of wonders - all my bookmarks are intact! (the main point of the exercise), and even, the windown opened with the configuration of weeks ago.

I will now look at the sync account process, and if necessary get back here. Thank you very much for your help.

... A Satisfied Customer

 

[adrianlondon]

The profiles are stored here:
~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/

You can simply copy the profile directory and keep it somewhere safe. Even just copying it where it is (ctrl-c ctrl-v) so you have a <profile_name copy> subdirectory is a good start.

The actual name of the profile you're using (if you have more than one subdirectory in the directory above) can be found in "profiles.ini" which is in the parent directory (i.e. ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox).

There are probably easier ways to do this within Firefox itself (something like about: profiles without the space after the colon that this stupid forum keeps changing to an emoticon) but Apple broke Firefox on Catalina dev beta 5 so I can't check