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Guide

Firefox's bookmarks file

Firefox doesn't keep bookmarks in a document — it keeps them in a database called places.sqlite, alongside your history. The good news is that it also writes its own backups every day, and most people never find out.

Lost your bookmarks? Don't go looking for files. Press Ctrl+Shift+O and go to Import and Backup → Restore — Firefox has probably been quietly keeping daily snapshots for you.

Finding your profile folder

Firefox profile folders have random names like 8k2j1x9p.default-release, so don't try to guess. Type about:profiles into the address bar and click Open Directory next to the profile marked as in use. (about:support → Open Folder does the same thing.)

If you'd rather have the path:

Windows

C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<random>.default-release\

Win+R then %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles gets you there in one step.

macOS

~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/<random>.default-release/

Linux

~/.mozilla/firefox/<random>.default-release/

What's in there

  • places.sqlite — bookmarks and browsing history, in one SQLite database. This is the live file.
  • places.sqlite-wal — recent changes that haven't been folded into the main database yet. If you copy places.sqlite on its own while Firefox is running, you may get a stale or broken copy. Close Firefox first, or copy both files.
  • bookmarkbackups/ — the folder that saves people. Inside are files named like bookmarks-2026-07-12_1843_abc123.jsonlz4: dated snapshots, one per day, several kept at a time.
  • favicons.sqlite — just the site icons. Not needed.

Those .jsonlz4 files are JSON compressed with Mozilla's own variant of LZ4. Ordinary unzip tools can't open them and neither can we — restore them through Firefox itself, as below.

Restoring from a daily backup

  1. Press Ctrl+Shift+O (⌘+⇧+O on a Mac) to open the Library window.
  2. Click Import and Backup in the toolbar.
  3. Hover Restore — you'll see a list of dates. Pick one from before things went wrong.
Restore replaces everything. It doesn't merge. Every bookmark you've added since that snapshot disappears. So before restoring, use Import and Backup → Export Bookmarks to HTML to save the current state — then, if the restore takes you too far back, you can merge the two files and import the result.

If the file you want isn't offered in the menu, choose Restore → Choose File… and point it at any .jsonlz4 from the bookmarkbackups folder — including one copied from another computer or an old profile.

When the profile itself is broken

If Firefox starts with an empty bookmark bar and no history, places.sqlite is probably corrupt. Firefox handles this better than you'd expect:

  1. Close Firefox.
  2. In the profile folder, rename places.sqlite to places.sqlite.old (and do the same for places.sqlite-wal if it's there).
  3. Start Firefox. It builds a fresh database and automatically restores bookmarks from the most recent file in bookmarkbackups.

Bookmarks come back; browsing history does not. That's the trade.

Getting a portable copy

Import and Backup → Export Bookmarks to HTML writes a standard bookmarks.html. Unlike .jsonlz4, it opens anywhere, imports into any browser, and works with every tool on this site — duplicates, dead links, conversion.

The Backup option in the same menu writes a .json file instead. It preserves a little more Firefox-specific detail, but only Firefox can read it. Export the HTML as well.

Related: Chrome · Safari · Edge