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How can I restart Firefox from the command-line and restore the previous state completely (or as much as possible) after restart? Sure, I can do something like killall firefox; firefox, but that would not restore the session.

user598527
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student
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5 Answers5

5

You can set Firefox to open with the previously open windows & tabs. It should be under Preferences -> General -> "When Firefox starts". Set that to "Show my windows and tabs from last time":

enter image description here

You should now be able to restart firefox with killall firefox; firefox & and have the same session.

terdon
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5

I think you need to do a setting in firefox before you restart it from command line. Go to:

   Prefrences->General->When Firefox starts

and select :

   Show my windows and tabs from last time

then from the command line , restart it the way you like ( may be killall firefox; firefox&) and you ll get the desired result.

For more advance tuning about session restore you can type about:config in address bar and search for session or restore to change it.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1089103#answer-794586

Ijaz Ahmad
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  • The 'show my windows and tabs from last time' setting has been renamed to 'open previous windows and tabs' (about:preferences#general) – user598527 Apr 27 '22 at 13:50
2

Unfortunately, there's no easy way to accomplish this. The closest thing to it would actually be using the Firefox Console (Shift + F2) and typing in restart.

Firefox Console restart function

Aside from that, one could install an Addon or take @terdon's advice in his answer and change Firefox Preferences to "Show my windows and tabs from last time" When Firefox starts and "restarting" with

$ killall firefox; sleep 1; firefox &

UPDATE: The "gcli" was removed from firefox in 2018. Therefore, the "Shift+F2" shortcut no longer works.

ILMostro_7
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2

If you desire to restart Firefox with two or more profiles, this Bash script appears to work consistently:

#!/bin/bash
killall -s SIGTERM firefox; sleep 60
firefox -P "user" &
firefox -P "default settings" &

Replace the quoted profile names with your own (see about:profiles). Use the -foreground flag to control which windows appears on top, if desired.

As noted by the other answers, enable the 'open previous windows and tabs' setting in the preferences (about:preferences#general)

The value in sleep 60 (seconds) can potentially be lowered.

user598527
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  • At 60 seconds, I've still got the "Firefox is still running" error when the script starts Firefox after sleep. Ryzen 5700G, 32GB DDR4 RAM. – user598527 May 23 '22 at 21:53
  • Regarding cron, see: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/700698/a-basic-bash-script-to-start-a-gui-program-works-partially-in-cron – user598527 May 23 '22 at 21:59
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As of 2020, edit advanced settings via about:config, search for resume and set the browser.sessionstore.resume_session_once flag to true, then exit.

Here's documentation on the flag: https://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.sessionstore.resume_session_once

user598527
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mnemotronic
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