Updating Pale Moon Portable

[Herman Strange]

Can someone help me with a short version of how to update Pale Moon Portable (64) and install a new version into the same folder where a previous version was already installed without losing all my settings and preferences from the previous version?

Even though the page says "Since Pale Moon Portable comes in a "virgin" state, you can simply download and overwrite an existing Pale Moon Portable folder with the files from a newer version. Your user profile will remain untouched as it doesn't exist in a freshly extracted Pale Moon Portable."

I find this not to be the case. Even simple settings like "small icons" seem to revert to default. I've tried simply running the installer in the location of the existing installation, and unpacking it to a separate folder then copying with similar results. Also, any custom settings in the .ini file get overwritten by the new .ini in the installer.

Any helpful pointers about how this should be done, or what I'm doing wrong, appreciated.

[Moonchild]

UI settings should not be touched by installing a new version of Pale Moon portable over an old one, as that is all stored in your profile data (which is empty), UNLESS you have made these changes in the actual bin/ application folder.

It is correct that any .INI file customizations are overwritten. A new portable installation includes a default .ini file because the portable "framework" may change between versions and the .INI file should remain valid for the launcher used. It is a good point though, and I will have a look at the portable framework to change the launcher and avoid these problems by supporting a "user settings" .INI file, instead, in the future.

You have a few options:

You can use the internal updater of Pale Moon to upgrade the browser only, under Help -> about, check for updates. This will only update the browser binaries and leave everything else alone.

You can also simply download the .zip packed version of the browser, available from the download pages (so NOT the portable version), and upgrade the browser in your portable installation by:

1. Going to bin/palemoon and deleting everything there
2. unzipping the contents of palemoon/ in the zip file to that folder