Normally, when Firefox crashes out of a regular (non-private) session, it will try to redisplay your windows and tabs automatically. If that fails, then it usually displays a screen that says "This is embarrassing" and gives you the option of which windows and tabs to restore, or to just start a new session. Are you only getting the list screen?

That can be caused by a setting, which you can check here:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste sess and pause while the list is filtered

(3) If the browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes preference is bolded and "user set" to 0, right-click it and choose Reset to restore the default value of 1.

If that preference already has its default value, then hmm, I'm not sure exactly what is happening.

Perhaps it would work best to always restore your previous session at startup, even if Firefox shut down normally? A few different settings can affect this:

(1) Startup setting needs to be "Show my windows and tabs from last time" as described in this article: Startup, home page, tabs, and download settings

(2) Privacy setting cannot be "Firefox will: Never remember history" or using automatic private browsing

(3) Privacy setting for clearing history at shutdown must not be selected

By default, Firefox keeps your session cookies for all sites to make restarting in your previous session seamless. If you want to be logged out of secure sites, Firefox can discard session cookies for those sites. There is a hidden setting for this:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste sess and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.sessionstore.privacy_level preference and change it from 0 to 1 (zero saves both HTTP and HTTPS, 1 saves only HTTP, when you shut down Firefox).

jscher2000 said

Normally, when Firefox crashes out of a regular (non-private) session, it will try to redisplay your windows and tabs automatically. If that fails, then it usually displays a screen that says "This is embarrassing" and gives you the option of which windows and tabs to restore, or to just start a new session. Are you only getting the list screen? That can be caused by a setting, which you can check here: (1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful. (2) In the search box above the list, type or paste sess and pause while the list is filtered (3) If the browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes preference is bolded and "user set" to 0, right-click it and choose Reset to restore the default value of 1. If that preference already has its default value, then hmm, I'm not sure exactly what is happening.

---

Perhaps it would work best to always restore your previous session at startup, even if Firefox shut down normally? A few different settings can affect this:

(1) Startup setting needs to be "Show my windows and tabs from last time" as described in this article: Startup, home page, tabs, and download settings

(2) Privacy setting cannot be "Firefox will: Never remember history" or using automatic private browsing

(3) Privacy setting for clearing history at shutdown must not be selected

By default, Firefox keeps your session cookies for all sites to make restarting in your previous session seamless. If you want to be logged out of secure sites, Firefox can discard session cookies for those sites. There is a hidden setting for this:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste sess and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.sessionstore.privacy_level preference and change it from 0 to 1 (zero saves both HTTP and HTTPS, 1 saves only HTTP, when you shut down Firefox).

I do get "That's embarrassing" message with the list of tabs that were there before the crash. Though the point of this question is how to bypass it? I don't want Firefox to ask me, I wanted it set to "restore all tabs" by default. I don't want to get into situations where I lose my tabs because of misclicking or any other reasons

Hi Ceasarius, I can't tell whether you proceeded with checking the setting I mentioned in my earlier post: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1072161#answer-753672

Please let me know what you found.

jscher2000 said

Hi Ceasarius, I can't tell whether you proceeded with checking the setting I mentioned in my earlier post: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1072161#answer-753672 Please let me know what you found.

Hello. Thank you for your reply. What you suggest is a little bit misleading to what I really meant. "Screen that says "This is embarrassing" and gives you the option of which windows and tabs to restore, or to just start a new session" works as intended. What I want is to make Firefox open all those tabs automatically without asking me which tabs I want to restore. Basically I want to ignore that "This is embarrassing" and the list just proceeding with automatic restore of all open tabs. Some other software have it as arguments like "firefox.exe -ForceRestore"

Okay, but you should ONLY see the "This is embarrassing" screen after a crash, and ONLY if Firefox was not able to do automatic recovery UNLESS the following setting was changed. Did you check this setting?

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste sess and pause while the list is filtered

(3) If the browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes preference is bolded and "user set" to 0, right-click it and choose Reset to restore the default value of 1.

If that preference already has its default value, then hmm, I'm not sure exactly what is happening.

Thank you for reply again. I did your steps and it's set to default value. I think you're not getting what I ask for unfortunately. I see that "This is embarrassing" screen ONLY after a crash, it works just as intended. BUT I don't want to see it, I want my browser to automatically restore my tabs after a crash WITHOUT that screen. After all crashes it NEVER automatically restored, it always showed me "This is embarrassing" screen with the list of previously opened tabs (works as intended).

To sum up: I want to ignore "This is embarrassing" screen and force Firefox to restore tabs before crash without any additional information. My browser crashed -> I reopen Firefox -> Firefox opens all my tabs automatically just like they were before the crash.

Hi Ceasarius, I think I understand but I haven't explained completely.

The purpose of the browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes preference is to prevent an infinite loop. The default value of 1 means try to restore the session automatically one time and if it fails (for example, it crashes before it can finish restoring), then show the "This is embarrassing" screen. You could try increasing the value to 2 or 3 and see whether it works on the second or third time. If you still see the "This is embarrassing" screen after a crash, then Firefox is still failing to do an automatic restoration.

You might also check whether there is a user.js file in your profile folder. A user.js file is an optional settings file that Firefox reads at startup and uses to override the settings saved during your previous session. Unless you created a user.js file yourself, you generally can just remove it. This article has a section on tracking down a possible user.js file: How to fix preferences that won't save.

Note: By default, Windows hides the .js file extension. To work accurate with file names, I suggest setting Windows to show ALL file extensions. This article has the steps: https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/