My Flatpak Firefox v. 132 freezes regularly especially if I’m on a site with lots of images and videos (like YouTube).
I was told by another user that copying everything from the original profile’s directory (profile1) to a newly created profile’s directory (profile2) stopped the freezing issues for them:
/home/mario/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/cache/mozilla/firefox/profile1/
/home/mario/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/cache/mozilla/firefox/profile2/
However, after copying data from profile1’s directory to profile2’s directory, setting profile2 as the default profile in about:profiles, and restarting Flatpak Firefox, profile2 doesn’t load up any of my bookmarks, bookmark folders, passwords, or extensions from profile1—Firefox runs as if it was freshly installed (it guides me through the process of importing bookmarks, passwords, etc.).
How do I resolve this issue?
Edit 1: I think that I may have gotten it to work. I transferred files from:
/home/mario/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/.mozilla/firefox/profile1/
to
/home/mario/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/.mozilla/firefox/profile2/
And everything seems to be working. I’ll test this out and update this post to let you guys know if it really worked or not.
I know its antithetical to Flatpak sandboxing, but I genuinely spent hours trying to move a non-Flatpak profile to flatpak and gave up. I gave the Flatpak filesystem permissions and then it would use the usual ~/.firefox folder, even if it says it doesn’t in about:profiles.
I can’t explain why any of this works the way it does but it appears that Firefox is just very confused about profiles when it exists in a Flatpak container.
Are you sure you have the right folder? Does
~/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/.mozillaexist?cachesuggests you’ve only moved your cached data, not your profile.That’s the problem, when I go to about:profiles, Firefox says that the root directories for the two profiles are:
- profile1 = /home/mario/.mozilla/firefox/ctd2ygzm.profile1
- profile 2 = /home/haque1/.mozilla/firefox/fk2o00h5.profile2
But I can’t find the directories for either of these profiles in /home/mario/.mozilla/firefox/
I have enabled the “Show hidden files” option in Thunar and I have even launched it as root from the terminal (sudo thunar) and I still can’t find these profile directories.
Flatpak creates a “fake” home directory as part of its sandboxing. So what firefox sees as
/home/mariois actually/home/mario/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/. At least on Mint, might be different in debian?Flatpak firefox stores that stuff in ~/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox
i do this my setting up a firefox account and syncing all of those things into my account.
that way, my firefox setup is always the same from computer-to-computer as well as from computer-to-smartphone.
that fact that yours is freezing suggests that something is wrong with your setup; do you get the same behavior if you use a non-flatpak version of firefox?
I’m happy that syncing works for you but privacy is very important to me so I don’t want to upload my data to someone else’s server(s).
I’m going to experiment with uninstalling flatpak firefox completely and reinstalling it to see if it’ll fix the issue.
If that doesn’t work, I’ll try using firefox downloaded & installed with apt.
I’m happy that syncing works for you but privacy is very important to me so I don’t want to upload my data to someone else’s server(s).
i think that you’re smart to considering mozilla’s trajectory.
i’m kicking myself for not applying my enshitification experiences that comes naturally from profit driven organizations (especially when they claim to be non-profits). i should have seen it coming since i’ve been moving from one platform to another because of enshitification since the 1990’s and now i’m just as stuck inside an ecosystem like redditors and facebookers are; but it’s worse since the most viable alternatives are no better.
Tell me about it, it took me a long time to get out of google’s ecosystem. As cliche as it sounds, you have to do it one step at a time
