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by Perceptes 2597 days ago
Did this issue cause all add-on data to be wiped? After updating to 66.0.4, all of the containers I'd created with the multi-account containers add-on were gone and replaced with what appeared to be a default set of containers. I spent a lot of time setting that up—is there no way to get it all back if I don't have some sort of manual backup? And if not, what files do I need to manually back up to make sure I don't lose my data next time?

Edit: To be clear, at no point did I delete the add-ons I had installed.

6 comments

From the release notes (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/66.0.4/releasenotes/) :

> If add-ons that use Containers functionality (such as Multi-Account Containers and Facebook Container) were disabled as part of this problem, any lost site data or custom configurations for those add-ons will not be recovered by this release. Users may need to set them up and login again in about:addons (Bug 1549204).

> Themes may not be re-enabled. Users may need to re-enable them in about:addons (Bug 1549022).

> Home page or search settings customized by an add-on may be reset to defaults. Users may need to customize them again in about:preferences or about:addons

I don't know if there is a way to manually recover the settings you lost. It might be a good idea to check the related links in the release notes for more info.

Containers are notoriously finicky datawise.

I generally keep good backups of the non standard ~/.mozilla folder to compensate.

I think it was issue 339 on GitHub. They basically explain they won't add it to sync data because there is no containers on mobile.

https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/issues/3...

I could never understand why they were not synced. Its so incredibly frustrating, and the official reason does not help.

I simply don't understand Mozilla anymore. The power users are also the unpaid evangelists/marketers. They seem determined to alienate this demographic while iOS'ifying Firefox for a general audience. Which is great and all until they realize they don't have a marketing budget to complete with Google and MSFT.

> I think it was issue 339 on GitHub. They basically explain they won't add it to sync data because there is no containers on mobile.

Makes you wonder how on earth their data sync is working with regards to mobile. Surely if it doesn't have the components to leverage the data it just wouldn't read it..?

Its possible to implement the concern was that people would leak their cookies into the default container.

They should be essentially syncing but not syncing any non default container data into mobile.

Basically they had some work to do on the server end I think.

I too lost my multi-containers and assignments. I was just reading this (2017) discussion: https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/issues/3... and noticed mention of file 'containers.json', which I found in my current Firefox profile. It contains the descriptions of the containers I created since yesterday (for the 3rd time).

So it looks as though a manual backup of that (or the whole profile, knowing its in there) at least will end that chore.

But you still lose the Container -> websites associations. The same page recommends: "An effective way of exporting and importing containers safely is using ffcontainers."

The page for that syncer is here: https://github.com/pierlauro/ffcontainers ... but it's on hiatus at this moment.

containers.json wasn't enough in my experience. Still went through some kind of reset due to the way the plugin initializes.

ffcontainers looks promising but couldn't get it to work (spaces in my path..) probably needs a bit of a clean up.

Yes, the "Firefox Multi-Account Containers" was unfortunately reset for me too.
Mine seems fine. My currently open tabs are still in their containers, and when I open a new tab, my list of choices is still intact.
My Add-ons kept their settings as far as I can tell, but maybe there's something special about the container logic...
This is the biggest reason I'm still using Firefox. Containers have totally changed my workflow, much preferred over Chrome profiles.

I wish they added more colour and icon support, there's open cases for it but they're not prioritised. If only I was a good enough developer..

I found that the changes I made to container names and colors were reset, but my hostname assignments remained. I guess those were two different datasets and only one was reset.