/ Applications

Firefox & Thunderbird Profiles

On my Linux box I use Thunderbird for handling all my email and Firefox is my default browser. Even if I don't eventually remain using them I would like to copy their respective profiles across to my Mac so I can keep all my emails and bookmarks etc.

The default locations on Linux are in hidden folders ~/.mozilla/firefox and ~/.thunderbird. I tired copying the profiles to the same location on my Mac but to no avail. A little bit of search using find on the command line showed up the default profiles in the following locations:

  • Firefox: ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox
  • Thunderbird: ~/Library/Thunderbird

The profiles.ini files for the default profiles gave away their locations. I think it's kinda cool that all the application configuration and data files that you don't want to be hanging around your home directory have a place to live that doesn't mean that are just hidden the your home directory.

My Firefox plugins seemed to work fine and with the exception of the a different theme it's just the same as the Firefox for Linux. I've installed all the major browsers (Firefox, Safari, Chrome & Opera) and I'm currently test driving them to decide which to use. I like different things in all of them, if only I could pick and choose which bits I want from each I could make my ideal browser!

Thunderbird's OpenPGP plugin is complaining that it can't find gpg anywhere on the path. A friend recommended MacPorts which automatically downloads and builds the source for a lot of packages a bit like Gentoo's Portage. I haven't got around to installing it yet but it sounds like just the thing to sort it out.

Just like that, and my surfing and mail environments are ported from Linux to Mac with no real problems to speak of. Impressed.