Firefox bookmarks

By default firefox saves your bookmarks to [code lang=”bash”]~/.mozilla/firefox/$PROFILE.default/bookmarkbackups[/code] You can see there a bunch of *.json files.

[code lang=”bash”]ls   ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/bookmarkbackups
bookmarks-2010-07-07.json  bookmarks-2010-07-29.json  bookmarks-2010-08-03.json  bookmarks-2010-08-05.json  bookmarks-2010-08-06.json  bookmarks-2010-08-10.json[/code]

If you use more than one machine or you’ve recently changed / reinstalled your OS and you want to restore the old bookmarks, you need to import them manually:

• backup your bookmarks files to a safe location e.g. [code lang=”bash”]cp -r ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/bookmarkbackups user@other_machine:~[/code]

• on your new / other machine, open firefox then go to Organize Bookmarks
• go to Import and Backup –> Restore and choose the most recent file from the list of *.json files that you previously copied

That’s it. You can now use your bookmarks. There are, of course, other (more elegant) solutions such as using a browser addon (e.g. Xmarks) but some people are concerned about privacy, or they just don’t want to complicate things.