Can I copy my profile between Firefox/Pale Moon/Basilisk?

Frequently Asked Questions about the Pale Moon browser and their answers.
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Moonchild
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Can I copy my profile between Firefox/Pale Moon/Basilisk?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2017-12-18, 11:15

Can I safely copy my profile between Firefox, Pale Moon and Basilisk?

In one word: NO! Don't ever do this.

Firefox, Basilisk and Pale Moon are different applications. Although they are based on the same family of platform code, there are massive differences between the profiles of Pale Moon, Firefox (and derivatives) and Basilisk. Even if just looking at Firefox itself, Mozilla has made breaking changes in their profile from version to version, especially in the 50-series, and these changes are only ever migrated one way, making it incompatible with the previous release.

In addition, you will be copying across data that would not apply to the target application.

A prime example of this is the extension blocklist: When Mozilla-style applications download the blocklist from the server it is specified to download from, it saves a copy of this blocklist in your profile.. When you copy a profile from Pale Moon or Firefox or Waterfox. Your profile will contain a blocklist.xml file from that application. That blocklist will not apply to the application you are copying it to, and you end up with extensions being blocked in your browser because the blocklist in your profile says to block them (because what you may have installed on Basilisk is likely a version that is incompatible with Pale Moon and the other way around, and specific versions and types of extensions get blocked on one application but not another, both ways).
If this happened to you, you MUST delete the cached blocklist so that the target application can use the one baked into the application as an initial list until it is time to download a new version from the server.

So, once again, It is VERY inadvisable to copy a profile from Pale Moon to Basilisk, Basilisk to pale Moon, Firefox to Basilisk, Waterfox to ... (you get my drift) because of the radically different platforms and profile formats. It is also a bad idea to specifically copy a profile from Firefox 55 or higher because of incompatible changes to the profile that WILL cause issues.
These profiles cannot really be shared problem-free between applications. This is especially true when it comes to Pale Moon and Basilisk which are radically different; as radically different as Pale Moon 27's profiles are compared to Pale Moon 26's profiles.

In addition, when going cross-application, many, many important preferences may not be what they should be. This issue will be reduced (but not vanish entirely) once Pale Moon is ported to UXP, but they are still different applications, with different use cases and as a result: different default preferences.

It is strongly recommended (understatement) you keep your profiles separate to prevent problems for you and headaches for the community: start with a new profile on a new application, and export/import data using built-in and extension methods.

If you run into issues and you have copied a profile across from a different application, we cannot reasonably provide support for your setup. If you have issues in this setup, please create a new profile, and properly import or re-create your bookmarks/preferences/etc. before asking for help.
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Tony0945

Re: Can I copy my profile between Firefox/Pale Moon/Basilisk?

Unread post by Tony0945 » 2018-02-22, 15:04

How about copying between windows and Linux versions at the same version level? I have a new Linux installation and it's quite a job to transfer all the bookmarks and passwords.
I was able to copy Thunderbird but just zipping up the Windows profile and unzipping it into /home/tony/.thunderbird

conzeit

Re: Can I copy my profile between Firefox/Pale Moon/Basilisk?

Unread post by conzeit » 2018-04-10, 20:03

I am mostly switching to Basilisk so that I can keep old non WEextensions functioning. I do not know what is the reccomended way to copy the settings and extensions extensions that are still installed in from my old Firefox ESR profile to Basilisk. Can anyone please tell me?

fillerup

Re: Can I copy my profile between Firefox/Pale Moon/Basilisk?

Unread post by fillerup » 2018-04-11, 04:58

Tony0945 wrote:How about copying between windows and Linux versions at the same version level? I have a new Linux installation and it's quite a job to transfer all the bookmarks and passwords.
i run a windows WM inside Linux and transfer the profiles over both way all the time, it's fine

conzeit

Re: Can I copy my profile between Firefox/Pale Moon/Basilisk?

Unread post by conzeit » 2018-04-12, 19:31

Ok wanted to come here to delete my post because I figured it out but it seems editing and deleting is disabled.

One thing I didnt know that helped me a lot with transferring "Go parent folder" is that a lot of installed extensions keep their XPI inside your extensions folder, so you dont need to download them from the web to re-install them. Other than that I was able to re-download and export extension settings individually.Deffinitively keeping the XPIs to everything now as an habit.

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