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Firefox actually purges history automatically. For instance, the oldest history I have on this browser right now is from January 2018. I found about this the ha

Firefox actually purges history automatically. For instance, the oldest history I have on this browser right now is from January 2018. I found about this the hard way.

kccqzy 7y ago
Safari does the same, even though I tell it to never clear browsing history.
- Avamander 7y ago
  I think Chrome(ium) does as well. Very annoying tbh.
  - heavyset_go 7y ago
    Chrome was the first browser I encountered that deletes history without being instructed to.
    - Thorrez 7y ago
      It looks like Firefox has been doing it since 2010[1]. I wonder how long Chrome has been doing it, since launch, 2008? Here's a Chrome bug discussing it[2]. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20151229082536/http://blog.bonardo.net/2010/01/20/places-got-async-expiration https://web.archive.org/web/20151229082536/http://blog.bonar... [2] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500239 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500239
6510 7y ago
Mosaic had full text history search.
nayuki 7y ago
I noticed this behavior in Firefox too. So I started writing personal Python scripts to scrape FF's SQLite database where it stores all the browsing history information.
dbtx 7y ago
I have this problem. Some bits of history are gone except from old backups of profile directories and profiles where I've already set places.history.expiration.max_pages to some absurdly high number. I need to do a handful of experiments to see exactly how this interacts with Sync, even though I've (foolishly) already synced the important profiles. I'd hope that the cloud copies of the places database just keeps growing, but in any case, I'd rather combine them all offline anyway.
- gwern 7y ago
  Even if you set the setting, how can you be sure that it won't be reset on an upgrade or that you'll remember to set it if you need a new profile (perhaps your old one becomes buggy, crufty, corrupt, or all three)? I thought I had all my history retained until one day I couldn't find a website I knew I had visited years ago, and took a closer look at my history and was very unpleasantly surprised... What happened? I'll never know, but my suspicion is that Firefox reset the history retention setting at some point along the way. If you do any web dev, you know Firefox occasionally backstabs you and changes on updates. The only way to be sure over a decade-plus is to regularly export to a safe text file where the Mozilla devs can't mess with it. I can't undo my history loss, but I do know I have lost little history since.
  - dbtx 7y ago
    I can't be sure. When I say 'combine them all offline', I mean using something like [1] which refuses to do anything for me because the Waterfox database version is a rather old Firefox version, and that seems to expect all the db's versions to be up-to-date and equal, which seems pointless. #include <sqlite3.h> was my next step-- only I don't walk very well, so that didn't happen "yet". Or I'm lazy, or distracted, or depressed, or something. When I recently got tired of realizing a thing was on the other machine, I bit the bullet and synced them, if only to see how well that worked. Anyway, thanks for the guide. [1] https://github.com/crazy-max/firefox-history-merger https://github.com/crazy-max/firefox-history-merger
pabs3 7y ago
You can increase the retention period to centuries via about:config.

Firefox actually purges history automatically. For instance, the oldest history I have on this browser right now is from January 2018. I found about this the hard way.

kccqzy 7y ago

Safari does the same, even though I tell it to never clear browsing history.

Avamander 7y ago
I think Chrome(ium) does as well. Very annoying tbh.
- heavyset_go 7y ago
  Chrome was the first browser I encountered that deletes history without being instructed to.
  - Thorrez 7y ago
    It looks like Firefox has been doing it since 2010[1]. I wonder how long Chrome has been doing it, since launch, 2008? Here's a Chrome bug discussing it[2]. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20151229082536/http://blog.bonardo.net/2010/01/20/places-got-async-expiration https://web.archive.org/web/20151229082536/http://blog.bonar... [2] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500239 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500239

6510 7y ago

Mosaic had full text history search.

nayuki 7y ago

I noticed this behavior in Firefox too. So I started writing personal Python scripts to scrape FF's SQLite database where it stores all the browsing history information.

dbtx 7y ago

I have this problem. Some bits of history are gone except from old backups of profile directories and profiles where I've already set places.history.expiration.max_pages to some absurdly high number. I need to do a handful of experiments to see exactly how this interacts with Sync, even though I've (foolishly) already synced the important profiles. I'd hope that the cloud copies of the places database just keeps growing, but in any case, I'd rather combine them all offline anyway.

gwern 7y ago
Even if you set the setting, how can you be sure that it won't be reset on an upgrade or that you'll remember to set it if you need a new profile (perhaps your old one becomes buggy, crufty, corrupt, or all three)? I thought I had all my history retained until one day I couldn't find a website I knew I had visited years ago, and took a closer look at my history and was very unpleasantly surprised... What happened? I'll never know, but my suspicion is that Firefox reset the history retention setting at some point along the way. If you do any web dev, you know Firefox occasionally backstabs you and changes on updates. The only way to be sure over a decade-plus is to regularly export to a safe text file where the Mozilla devs can't mess with it. I can't undo my history loss, but I do know I have lost little history since.
- dbtx 7y ago
  I can't be sure. When I say 'combine them all offline', I mean using something like [1] which refuses to do anything for me because the Waterfox database version is a rather old Firefox version, and that seems to expect all the db's versions to be up-to-date and equal, which seems pointless. #include <sqlite3.h> was my next step-- only I don't walk very well, so that didn't happen "yet". Or I'm lazy, or distracted, or depressed, or something. When I recently got tired of realizing a thing was on the other machine, I bit the bullet and synced them, if only to see how well that worked. Anyway, thanks for the guide. [1] https://github.com/crazy-max/firefox-history-merger https://github.com/crazy-max/firefox-history-merger

pabs3 7y ago

You can increase the retention period to centuries via about:config.