Firefox - Tips and Tricks

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This pages collects my tips and tricks for the changes I usually do to customise my Firefox.

Custom search engines

Firefox allows you to easily add and manage custom search engines. This can be useful if you frequently use a specific search engine that is not included by default. You can add custom search engines in the Search Settings page.

  1. Open Mozilla Firefox and navigate to the address about:preferences#search.
  2. Scroll down to the Search Shortcuts section.
  3. You can add a custom search engine by clicking on Add and entering the search engine’s name, keyword, and URL with %s as a placeholder for the search query.
  4. Click Add to save the custom search engine.

If the Add button is not available, you can enable it by setting the following key in the Advanced Configuration page:

  1. Open Mozilla Firefox and navigate to the address about:config.
  2. Accept the warning if required.
  3. Set the following key to True to enable the Add button:
    • browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh
  4. Close tab

Container Tabs

Firefox supports container tabs, which allow you to separate your browsing activities into different contexts. This can be useful for managing work and personal browsing, for example. You can enable and configure container tabs in the Advanced Configuration page.

  1. Open Mozilla Firefox and navigate to the address about:config.
  2. Accept the warning if required.
  3. Set the following keys to True to enable container tabs:
    • privacy.userContext.enabled
    • privacy.userContext.ui.enabled
  4. Close tab

Desktop Notifications

See this post on how to enable the desktop notification in Firefox.

Hardware media keys

For some devices I want the media keys should control the media application and not the webbrowser. FireFox can be configured to ignore the media keys input from the keyboard in the Advanced Configuration page.

  1. Open Mozilla Firefox and navigate to the address about:config.
  2. Accept the warning if required.
  3. Set the following key to False to disable hardware media keys:
    • media.hardwaremediakeys.enabled
  4. Close tab
  5. A restart of the browser may be needed.

Open bookmarks in new tab by default

By default, when clicking a bookmark in Firefox, it opens in the current tab. If you prefer to have bookmarks open in a new tab by default, you can change this behavior in the Advanced Configuration page.

  1. Open Mozilla Firefox and navigate to the address about:config.
  2. Accept the warning if required.
  3. Set the following key to True to enable opening bookmarks in a new tab:
    • browser.tabs.loadBookmarksInTabs
  4. Close tab

Overscroll gesture for navigation

When using my laptop I use the touchpad to scroll around the webpage. I most cases this means scrolling up and down, sometimes this also means scrolling side to side.

Firefox includes this overscrolling gesture that if you are at the very left of the webpage and scroll further left, the browser will instead navigate to previous page, and respectively to right page if you try to scroll right instead.

This can be disabled in the Advanced Configuration page.

  1. Open Mozilla Firefox and navigate to the address about:config.
  2. Accept the warning if required.
  3. Set the following keys to False to disable the overscroll gesture:
    • browser.gesture.swipe.left
    • browser.gesture.swipe.right
  4. Close tab

Sometimes it is practical so save links to files without having them opened with any other programs or the webbrowser. FireFox supports saving a link by ALT+clicking the link. This setting can be enabled in the Advanced Configuration page.

  1. Open Mozilla Firefox and navigate to the address about:config.
  2. Accept the warning if required.
  3. Set the following key to True to enable saving links by ALT+clicking:
    • browser.altClickSave
  4. Close tab

Spelling and Grammar check

Firefox includes a spelling and grammar check feature. Sometimes a bug occurs that this feature must be re-enabled in the Advanced Configuration page.

  1. Open Mozilla Firefox and navigate to the address about:config.
  2. Accept the warning if required.
  3. Set the following keys to 1 or 2:
    • layout.spellcheckDefault
  4. If need be, install the following dictionary extension from the Firefox Add-ons page:

Windows taskbar icons for profiles

Normally, multiple Firefox profiles share the same taskbar icon in Windows. To enable a Firefox profile to have its own taskbar icon in Windows, you need make changes in the Advanced Configuration page.

  1. Open Mozilla Firefox and navigate to the address about:profile.
  2. Launch the profile you want to have its own taskbar icon.
  3. In this profile, navigate to the address about:config.
  4. Accept the warning if required.
  5. Set the following key to True to enable a separate taskbar icon for this profile:
    • taskbar.grouping.useprofile
  6. Restart Firefox profile to apply the changes.