Looks like that’s no longer possible. The frustrating thing is, my Mojave machine is running Firefox 115 ESR, which is technically still supported by Mozilla until March 2026, and it’s possible they may extend it. I’m writing this on my Windows 11 (YUCK!) laptop.
I just tested this site using Mojave and Firefox 115.28.0esr and it is not compatible. I also tested Orion (Version 0.99.136-beta) and it worked fine – so you might consider using that.
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Ditto here. No luck with 115 ESR.
I also tried using User Agent Switcher to make the user-agent string match that of Firefox 143. No luck with that either.
I’ll have to see if I can find some time to try out Firefox Dynasty to see if it works (and if it’s acceptable in general going forward).
Update: Firefox Dynasty lets me log in. I’ll need to migrate over my preferences and such, but it seems to be working.
Update2: Firefox Dynasty creates a new profile (as it should) to prevent conflict with other installations. Replacing the entire contents of that profile directory with the contents of my old (115 ESR) profile seemed to migrate everything OK.
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This was the announcement:
Firefox 128 or newer is now required.
My Mid-2011 iMac can’t go higher than Mac OS 10.13.6 so I’m stuck running older web browsers but on NONE of them will TidBITS Talk work: Safari, Brave, Firefox ESR, Tor, or Vivaldi.
I was able to download and install Firefox-Dynasty 143.0.2 and get TidBITS Talk to work but now I have to use 2 different versions of Firefox because so far F-D preference General>Import Browser Data doesn’t work.
How did you do that? On my install of F-D 143.0.2, the Import Browser Data option doesn’t work. I click on it but nothing happens.
Unfortunately Orion requires MacOS 10.14.0 minimum, and I’m stuck on 10.13.6.
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As far as I know, “import” is only for pulling data from other browsers, not from other instances of Firefox. I skipped that step, and it created a new default profile.
If you go to about:profiles, you should see all the Firefox profiles on your system. It will indicate which you are using. On my installation, Firefox Destiny created a new profile.
I think, however, that the profile-creation may be related to the filename and location. For myself, I renamed the app from “Firefox” to “Firefox Dynasty”. If you left it as the default “Firefox” name and/or moved it to Applications (overwriting your ESR installation), then it might be trying to use the same profile as before. That much should be obvious.
In my case, after noting the locations of the two profiles, I quit Firefox and replaced the contents of the new profile folder (used by Dynasty) with a copy of everything in my old profile folder (used by ESR). That worked for me - Dynasty probably upgraded the profile, as new Firefox releases always do, but it worked, including my various add-ons (which I think are installed to the profile directory).
Be sure you do not do this while any installations of Firefox are running or you may corrupt the profile!
If you want to experiment with profiles, you can manually launch Firefox with the -P option to view its profile manager. You can interactively create, destroy and switch profiles this way. Do it from a terminal window:
$ /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -P
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Thank you, David for directing me to the correct area. A few more questions:
What steps did you do?
My ESR profile folder is named ff26t4m8.default-esr-5 while the Dynasty profile folder is named ozgbemq9.default-default
Did you delete everything from the Dynasty folder before copying the contents of the ESR folder?
Also did you use Cmd-c or Duplicate?
BTW, I have 10 profile folders (probably from previous FF versions) and a 1Password sqlite file in the Profiles folder. Can I safely delete the other 8 profile folders?
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That sounds about right. I’m not sure why, but the new default profile on mine was also named default-default.
You can rename profiles in the profile manager (or in about:profiles), but that doesn’t rename the directory. To do that, you need to delete a profile (use the profile manager to get it out the database) and then you can create one with the name you like.
Yes. I assumed that by completely replacing its content with the old ESR profile, Dynasty would upgrade it, much like how Firefox would upgrade it if you directly upgraded Firefox from 115 to 143.
Neither. I opened the two folders in different windows and did an option-drag to copy everything. The effect should be the same.
Yes, but I would first delete them from the profile manager, changing the default profile if it’s not one of the ones you want to keep. After restarting FF and seeing that they’re not there, you can then go and delete the folders if they’re still around.
Otherwise, the profile manager may try to access them and will throw errors when they’re not found.
And of course, be sure you delete the right ones!
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