Why can't I see Firefox window?

September 10, 2012 4:17 AM

I started OS X this morning and Firefox isn't visible. That is to say, I can't see a window or any tabs, though I can see the top toolbar -- the Apple - Firefox - File - Edit... row. Normally it opens at startup. What to do?
posted by partner to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Press Command-N to start a new window.
posted by third word on a random page at 4:24 AM on September 10, 2012

Response by poster: @third word -- Thanks, that worked, but I lost the tabs from yesterday, which normally open. Ideas?
posted by partner at 4:30 AM on September 10, 2012

History > Recently Closed Tabs or History > Recently Closed Windows.
posted by Happy Dave at 4:39 AM on September 10, 2012

Ctrl+T works too.
posted by devnull at 4:46 AM on September 10, 2012

Response by poster: OK. Why do you think this happened? Are my preferences being changed for some reason?
posted by partner at 4:50 AM on September 10, 2012

It's possible you closed the Firefox window (clicked the red button in the upper left, or used command-W) instead of quitting Firefox (command-Q). If you then shut down the computer, Firefox quit with no windows open. So, the next time you started Firefox, if it remembered it last state when quitting, that would be: no windows open.

(Educated guess; haven't used Firefox in a long time.)
posted by The Deej at 5:02 AM on September 10, 2012

Are you on Mountain Lion? If so, this is a known issue but not Firefox-related. Something's buggy with Mountain Lion. On my machines, for instance, starting an app starts the app fine but the app does not appear in the dock and cannot be accessed with cntrl-tab. There are various solutions online (deleting the dock file with Terminal and other things) but the issue keeps returning.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 5:12 AM on September 10, 2012

Response by poster: Thanks Deej
posted by partner at 5:12 AM on September 10, 2012