Firefox Starting With A Blank User Profile – 2 Ways To Fix It

When Mozilla released Firefox 67.0, it was expected that everything would run smoothly and no Firefox installations or profiles would be affected. However, some users reported that they find Firefox starting with a blank user profile even if the release came with a feature that assigns unique profiles to each installation of the browser.

The implementation of the new version is a good thing because you need not create and assign profiles for Firefox installations manually through means like profile manager and others.

A new unique profile will be assigned to any new installation and this is good especially where there are multiple Firefox installations. It’s no longer necessary to tell Firefox what to do as it uses the set profile once it’s installed, or during start. This means you don’t have to do it manually or even with shortcut parameters.

If you find Firefox starts with a blank profile, it could be that all your bookmarks, user data, passwords, history, open tabs and other information can appear gone. This problem happened to some users because the browser assigned new default profiles to the installations when it shouldn’t have.

However, it doesn’t mean the data is completely gone or deleted. You just need to assign the previous profile to the Firefox installation for it to be restored and you can do it using one of the two options we describe below.

How to fix Firefox Starting with a Blank User Profile

The two main options to fix this problem include using the Firefox interface to change the profile, and loading Firefox using parameters you can add to its shortcut.

Set default profile for Firefox

To do this:

• In the Firefox address bar, load about:profiles. A new page will open with all profiles and their assigned paths. The current profile is at the top while any unused profile is below
• Find the previous user profile using its folder name or open the folder to browse the profile folder and find it
• Select Set as default profile to assign a new profile, or click Launch profile in a new browser

Add profile parameter to Firefox’s shortcut

This forces Firefox to load specific profiles or the profile manager on start. To do this:

• Right click Firefox shortcut
• Select Properties
• Under Shortcut tab, you’ll add the instructions to the target listed
• Add this parameter: -p -no-remote to the end of the target line. This will force Firefox to open profile manager on startup. –no-remote allows you to run Firefox installations alongside each other
• Add the parameter: -p profile  -no-remote to instantly load a specific profile. Replace Profile with the actual name of the profile. If you don’t know it, check about:profiles