There are quite a few tips, tricks and tweaks to make Firefox faster and efficient and customize the way you like your browser to be. Here are some tips for Firefox users who want to add some functionality and make some changes in default settings of Firefox.
Change Firefox default search engine
If you do not want Google as default search engine in your browser, you can always choose to change the default search engine in Firefox. Follow these steps.
- Type in: “about:config” in your address bar
- In Firefox search box type in: browser.search.defaultenginename and double click the entry or right click to choose ‘Modify‘.
- Type the name of search engine that you want as default search engine in Firefox. Make sure you type the one that you have already installed, and the name of search engine is correctly entered.
- Let us assume you typed ‘Yahoo’. Now restart the Firefox and you will see the red ‘Y’ and Yahoo as the default search engine.
Backup Firefox bookmarks
If you do not backup your Firefox bookmarks, it can really be bad experience in case if they are lost. So Backup Firefox bookmarks before you need them. Here is how to do this.
- Go to Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks in Firefox to bring up bookmarks manager
- Click the top button that says ‘Import and Backup‘
- Now, select Backup and select the location to save the bookmarks (Note: Leave bookmarks extension to .jason)
- To export firefox bookmarks as html file, go to Import and Backup > Export HTML and get the html backup file
Undo closed Tabs and Windows
Firefox stores record of every tab you open or close in each windows during your browsing session. If you have accidentally closed a tab, you can bring it back pressing Ctrl+Shift+T. You can also bring back old tabs that you closed even after opening several new tabs.
Use Gmail as your default email application
Go to Tools > Options and select Applications tab. In search field, type ‘mailto’. In action drop down menu, select Gmail as your default client. Now when you will click on an email address, Firefox will open Gmail in a new tab. Better Gmail 2 addon gives you extra UI options if you are using Gmail as your default Firefox email client.
Firefox Profile Folder in Mac and Windows
You may be wondering what is location of profile folder for Mozilla’s Firefox in your computer. Here are the paths that lead to profile folder for Firefox (depending on your operating system choice ).
- For Windows 2000 and XP: C:Documents and SettingsApplication DataMozilla
- For Windows 7 and Vista: C:UsersAppDataRoamingMozilla
- For Unix: ~/.mozilla/
- For Mac: ~/Library/Mozilla/ and ~/Library/Application Support/
This should enable you to find the profile manager (folder) in your computer.
Backup Firefox Passwords
Here is the manual way to backup Firefox passwords. First navigate to the Profile Folder for Firefox (using above method). You have to copy three files from here, copy signons.txt, signons2.txt and key3.db and save them on the location where you want to place backup of Firefox passwords.
If you want to move these passwords information on a new computer (say your laptop etc). Copy them to the Profile Folder of Firefox in that computer to move everything there.
Disable displaying Websites icons (favicon) in Firefox
If you want to stop displaying website favicons (a small icon in address bar and tabs with site name) , here is a little tweak. Write ‘browser.chrome.site_icons = False’ in the ‘about:config’ file.
Extend spell check to forms
In Firefox, you can enable spell checking in forms that you fill online. Go to ‘about:config’ in the address bar of firefox and find ‘layout.spellcheckDefault = 2′ and change the value to 1.
Disable Firefox toolbar tip
Write ‘about:config‘ in the address bar of firefox and change as ‘browser.chrome.toolbar_tips = False’.
Recover lost password in Firefox
If Firefox is remembering passwords for you (if you allowed Firefox to remember passwords), you can recover passwords for your favourite websites if you forget any of them. Follow the procedure below to get your lost passwords.
- Go to Tools > Options > Security in Firefox menu
- In popup option box, go down to ‘Show Passwords….’
- Click the button and a new box will appear with all login names for different websites. To show the passwords, click ‘Show Passwords‘ option and then ‘yes‘ for warning
There is an extension to reveal the passwords in Firefox but I will not recommend that because of obvious security issues with use of that extension.
Speed up Flash videos in Firefox
If you get a problem during watching online flash videos (Youtube etc) where you notice an annoying, persistent lag every 10 seconds during video that is because of Firefox taking ‘snapshot’ of what you are doing so it can restore session in case of a crash.
This can slow down flash videos in Firefox but a little tweak can change this. Write about:config in your Firefox browser and type browser.sessionstore.interval in filter box. You will see value of 10,000 which is in milli seconds (10 seconds). Change it to 300,000 (5 minutes) or however you want so Firefox takes ‘snapshot’ every 5 minutes and Flash videos do not get disturbed so often.
Unhide Firefox toolbars in full screen mode
If you are wondering how to unhide Firefox toolbar in full screen mode, it is simple. When in full screen mode, right click the navigation toolbar and uncheck ‘Hide Toolbars’. It is as simple as that, you do not need any addon or about:config tweak to do this.
Delete stored passwords in Firefox
If you have stored a password in Firefox or allow firefox to remember your passwords and want to delete all stored passwords in Firefox. Go to Tools > Options > Security > Show Passwords and Remove All to delete all saved passwords.
Add icons on Toolbar
If you use certain options more often such as print, view history, manage downloads etc, there is an easy way to add these functionalities in toolbar for quick access. Go to View > Toolbars > Customize and you can drag and drop a number of extra icons to the top of browser for easy access.
Set up multiple homepages in Firefox
You can configure Firefox to start with more than one homepage open. For instance you can choose to start Firefox with your favourite social network website, search engine and another favourite site opened.
To do so, load up the websites that you want as your homepages and go to Options > General and hit the ‘Use current pages’ button. There you have it, when you will start Firefox next time you will get all these sites ready to go.
Clear single site from History
This may be happening with you as well. Let us say you have once written ‘googl.com‘ instead of ‘google.com‘ and you browser is always loading the wrong site. Firefox gives you option to clear that one wrong URL from your history without deleting entire recent history.
Go to History menu and click on ‘Show All History‘ and then type the name of the website that you want to delete in ‘Search History‘ box. Once it is loaded, right click on the site name and select ‘Forget About This Site‘. Its all gone.
Reduce Firefox RAM usage for cache
Type ‘about:config’ in address bar of Firefox and hit Enter. Find ‘browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewer’ and set the value to 0.
Decrease history size in Firefox
To decrease history size in Firefox, go to Options > Privacy > select ‘Custom Settings’ for history from drop down menu and reduce time to remembered history for 15 days.
Use blank home page
Use ‘about:Blank’ as you Home page and it will start Firefox quickly at the start.
Clear the download history
If your Firefox freezes up during or after you download a file. Here is what you need to do to make sure your future downloads go smooth and Firefox does not freeze again.
- Go to ‘Downloads’ list by pressing Ctrl+J
- If you have never cleared download list, you will see a long list of download items there. Press ‘Clear List‘ button to delete the list
Remember, this does not delete your downloads but Firefox record of those downloads. Next time when you will download a file, you will not have any delay or hang.
So these are some of the tips, tricks and tweaks for Firefox users to make your browser fast, useful and customize it the way you like it. You can add more Firefox tips in comments below.
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