How to Restore Bookmarks in Firefox

Firefox keeps automatic, dated backups of your bookmarks and stores up to 15 of them in a folder inside your profile. In most cases a recent copy is already waiting, and restoring it takes a few clicks in the Library window. Before you start, avoid uninstalling Firefox or clearing your profile, because the backups live inside that profile and those actions delete them.

Restore from an automatic backup

This is the path that works for most people, using backups Firefox made on its own.

1. Open the Library window with Ctrl+Shift+O, or click the menu button and choose Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks.
2. At the top of the Library window, click the Import and Backup button.
3. Choose Restore.
4. In the submenu, pick a backup by date. Firefox lists its recent automatic backups here.
5. Confirm when Firefox asks. Your bookmarks reload from that backup.

Pick a date from before the bookmarks went missing. If the most recent backup still shows the problem, work backward to an earlier one.

Understand what Restore overwrites

Restoring is a full replacement, not a merge. The backup's contents take the place of everything currently in Firefox, so any bookmarks you added after that backup date are removed. If that matters, export your current set to HTML first (see the merge method below) so you can re-add anything you lose.

Restore from a manual JSON backup

If you saved your own backup earlier, or copied a backup file out of an old profile, you can point Firefox at it directly.

1. Open the Library window (Ctrl+Shift+O).
2. Click Import and Backup, then Restore.
3. Choose Choose File.
4. Select your saved .json or .jsonlz4 backup file and confirm.

Like the automatic restore, this replaces your current bookmarks with the file's contents.

Where the backup files live

The automatic backups sit in a bookmarkbackups folder inside your Firefox profile. You can reach the profile quickly:

• Type about:support in the address bar and press Enter.
• Find Profile Folder (called Profile Directory on some systems) and click Open Folder.
• Open bookmarkbackups. The dated .jsonlz4 files are the backups Firefox listed in the Restore menu.

Knowing this location helps in one important case: if you are recovering after a reinstall, copying this folder out of the old profile gives you the files to restore from.

Merge instead of replace, with an HTML import

When you want to add bookmarks back without wiping what you have now, use an HTML import rather than a restore.

1. Open the Library window (Ctrl+Shift+O).
2. Click Import and Backup, then Import Bookmarks from HTML.
3. Select an HTML export and confirm.

This adds the imported bookmarks alongside your existing ones. It can create duplicates where the two sets overlap, which you can clean up afterward.

If no backup exists

If the bookmarkbackups folder is empty or gone, your remaining options are Firefox Sync on another signed-in device, or any HTML or JSON export you saved elsewhere. Without one of those, bookmarks that lived only in a deleted profile cannot be recovered.

A note on backups going forward

TrueBookmark is a Chrome extension, so it does not back up Firefox. The honest takeaway for Firefox is that its built-in dated backups already do a lot of the work, and they become far more useful when paired with an occasional manual JSON or HTML export kept outside the profile folder. That way a reinstall or a corrupted profile is never the end of the story. If you also keep bookmarks in Chrome, how to export bookmarks from Firefox covers moving a copy over.