Copy Firefox User Profile from Snap to Flatpak

When we use Firefox on Linux, whether it's Ubuntu, Debian, or any other on Snap, there are some drawbacks. Some Snap users complain that apps launch very slowly the first time, and this is somewhat true due to the level of restrictions this new packaging handles. Although the idea is good, the execution leaves much to be desired, which is why there are already some competitors.

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Migrate Firefox user profile

First we must have both versions installed, both Snap and Flatpak, and both must run normally. I recommend opening both before continuing with this procedure.

We open a Terminal in Ubuntu, change to the Firefox profiles folder in Snap, and list all the files and folders inside it.

cd ~/snap/firefox/common/.mozilla/firefox/
ls

There we will list the content, and we will observe two possible folders, one that ends in .default and another that ends in .default-release. Typically, these are random numbers and letters.

We must copy the folder that exists, it can be any of the two, if only one exists, but if both folders exist at the same time we must choose the one that ends in .default. In this scenario, the profile name is 29mbb126.default.

Copy the folder to the new location in Flatpak.

cp -R PROFILENAME  ~/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/.mozilla/firefox/

Then inside the Flatpak profiles folder ~/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/.mozilla/firefox/. Edit profiles.ini file and modify the StartWithLastProfile option from 1 to 0 in the [General] section.

nano ~/.var/app/org.mozilla.firefox/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini

With this modification, when we run Firefox installed with Flatpak we will choose the profile we copied that will appear as default and the procedure will be done. If the profile is wrong, we can choose another from that same list.

Note: to migrate from Flatpak to Snap, we perform the same procedure, changing the order of the folders.

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