Firefox profile

[Klaas Vaak]

Hi,
I am new to the Apple world and bought a MacBook Air 2019 last Saturday. I have installed Firefox, and copied/pasted my FF profile folder and .ini file over from Linux Mint into Mojave. I did this without a hitch when I migrated from Windows to Linux. This time, however, FF refuses to take it, recreating a new Profiles folder and .ini file.

Is there a way to do this so I don't have to set up FF from scratch?

 

[Brian33]

I'm just guessing, but I notice in my ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox I have two .ini files: profiles.ini and installs.ini. Maybe you need both of them??

 

[Klaas Vaak]

I'm just guessing, but I notice in my ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox I have two .ini files: profiles.ini and installs.ini. Maybe you need both of them??

Brian, thanks for replying. I have those 2 files too. In the installs.ini file there are 2 default profiles defined: the one I copied to the FF folder, and the other was newly created by FF.
But having those 2 files has not made any difference; in fact, why does it need the installs.ini file after FF has been installed?

 

[adrianlondon]

I quit FF and deleted installs.ini then tidied up my profiles.ini file just now for a test.

I re-opened FF and it worked fine, and recreated installs.ini. This is kept/created in case you play with different versions of FF at the same time, I believe.

Can you select your copied profile in about: profiles?

 

[Klaas Vaak]

I quit FF and deleted installs.ini then tidied up my profiles.ini file just now for a test.

I re-opened FF and it worked fine, and recreated installs.ini. This is kept/created in case you play with different versions of FF at the same time, I believe.

Can you select your copied profile in about: profiles?

Adrian, thanks for jumping in. When I open about: profiles it shows:

• Profile:default, with the path going to the FF folder and the profile folder I copied over
• Profile:default-release, with the path going to the FF folder and the profile folder created by FF itself.

Clicking on the Show in Finder button for each goes to those locations.
Below the line of the "Profile:default-release" it says This is the profile in use and it cannot be deleted.
Is there anything I should do?

 

[adrianlondon]

What happens when you click "set as default" for the default one, then try and delete the "default-release" one you don't want?

 

[Klaas Vaak]

This what I get:

And FF just created a new default-release profile that it has set as default.

 

[Klaas Vaak]

I have it sorted, sort of. I looked at the FF folder again in Library and I noticed the imported profile folder with the name xxxxxxxx.default was not in the Profiles folder. So, I moved it there, and deleted the other default-release folders. I also put the imported profiles.ini file back as a replacement, though that one has to stay in the parent folder. In about: profiles I changed the default profiles folder, then clicked on launch another browser, which launched my own version!! That's the one I have locked in the Dock.

Many thanks for your help, as well as to Brian33.

 

[Brian33]

Glad you got it working!

 

[adrianlondon]

That message happens when firefox thinks it's gone through some big upgrade, and doesn't want to mess up your old profile (as they're usually not backwards compatible - in other words, if it upgraded the profile you couldn't go back to your old firefox version).

The easiest way is just to set the profile you want as the default in "about: profiles" (without the space, but this website doesn't let me type that), or pick it when opening firefox with the profile chooser.

In terminal, run:
"/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin" -P

Anyway, as you've sorted it, you don't need to do anything!