If you are a Firefox user, you may be tweaking and customizing it through the general settings available through the menu. But, there are tons of advanced settings hidden behind an about:config page. Generally, a user is not aware of these settings or does not know how to use them for his benefit. Today, we are going to look at some of the best-hidden settings—accessible through this page—to make Firefox more secure, productive, and fast. These settings are not available from within the default settings pages. So, let's get started and check out these advanced Firefox settings to make it better than before.
Remember, if you are not tech-savvy and have no idea what you are doing, I recommend avoiding playing with these settings. Some level of tech awareness is necessary to tweak these advanced settings.
It's not just Firefox, Google Chrome too offers tweaking of advanced settings through a dedicated page. But that's for another post. These advanced settings are available in all variants of Firefox browser.
Warning: Before tweaking advanced settings, back up your Firefox profile or create a system restore point. If things go wrong, go to about:support and click the Refresh Firefox button.
To access these settings, type about:config in the address bar. You'll be welcomed with a warning page shown above. Click the button to acknowledge the risks involved.
Privacy & Security Tweaks
The first section is dedicated to tweaks related to privacy and security. It'll help you add more privacy and security to your browsing sessions. Let's see all these settings.
1. Disable WebRTC to Prevent IP Leaks
While using a VPN, the use of WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) can reveal your real IP address. This is a security risk.
media.peerconnection.enabled → falseFind the setting shown above using the search bar and toggle its value to false. It'll fix leakage of the actual IP address whenever you are using WebRTC protocol during communication.
2. Block Fingerprinting for Better Anonymity
Browser fingerprinting is used by websites and services to identify your computer or web browser to market their products. It uniquely identifies you among millions of other internet users.
privacy.resistFingerprinting → trueThis setting makes browser fingerprinting hard for specialized tools and scripts. This way, it helps in keeping you anonymous on the web keeping your privacy—intact.
3. Stricter Referrer Policy to Reduce Tracking
When you hop from one website to another, a lot of your information is passed to the website where you are landing. This is easily captured by the web analytics tool used by that website.
# Sends referrer only within the same domain
network.http.referer.XOriginPolicy → 2
# Strips everything except the origin
network.http.referer.XOriginTrimmingPolicy → 2These two settings prevent the passing of this information. You can equate it with the rel="noreferrer" attribute generally added to the external links on a website.
4. Enable Tracking Protection for Enhanced Security
And, now we are going to take a look at some of the important settings related to your privacy and security. I'll strongly recommend you tweak these settings with the true value.
privacy.trackingprotection.enabled → true
privacy.trackingprotection.fingerprinting.enabled → true
privacy.trackingprotection.cryptomining.enabled → trueWhether it is tracking scripts, fingerprinting data collection, or crypto-jacking malware, these three settings save you from all these security threats.
5. Isolate First-Party Cookies (Blocks Cross-Site Tracking)
Quite similar to the previous setting, this one too prevents information from being passed on to the next website you are visiting. Do tweak this setting, without fail.
privacy.firstparty.isolate → trueWhen enabled, this setting prevents cookie sharing between websites. This effectively reduces tracking attempts and thereby increases your privacy.
6. Disable Mozilla Telemetry
If you are not comfortable sending telemetry data to Mozilla, the following two settings need to be tweaked. You can also do it through the default settings interface though.
toolkit.telemetry.enabled → false
datareporting.healthreport.uploadEnabled → falseThe second option will ensure that diagnostic data is not sent to Mozilla. If you are comfortable sharing this data, you can skip changing these settings.
7. Force HTTPS Everywhere
Gone are the days when websites used to run on insecure connections. Nowadays, almost all of the internet runs on https connections.
dom.security.https_only_mode → trueTo ensure all of your browsing sessions run on https connections, you can tweak this setting. Once again, you can change this setting from the default settings GUI interface too.
8. Ban Outdated Encryption Protocols
Sometimes, it's the use of old protocols that leads to system corruption or infection when browsing the internet. To address this issue, the following setting can be tweaked.
security.tls.version.min → 4By applying the value of 4, you are enforcing the use TLS 1.3 protocol. It's not only faster but is also more secure than its predecessors.
UI Customization: Make Firefox Your Own
After settings related to security and privacy, let's move on to the next set of advanced settings that enables you to customize the UI of the Firefox browser. Let's start!
9. Restore Compact Mode
If you have a small screen size, switching to the compact mode can help in getting more area for website content and in making the UI elements fit nicely in the available space.
browser.uidensity → 1To get a much denser UI, tweak the setting shown above with the value specified and your browser will play nice on small-screen devices too.
10. Unlock Advanced Theming with CSS
If you are a front-end developer or have a working knowledge of CSS, you can use your skills to customize the UI of the Firefox browser. All you need to know is how to do it.
toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets → trueActivate the setting shown above and you'll be able to use userChrome.css to customize Firefox's UI elements. For example, you can use it to create gradient address bars or simply hide the tab bars.
11. Move Tabs Below the Address Bar
Depending on your preference, you may want to change the position of several UI elements and tabs are one such group of elements. What if you want to move them below the address bar?
browser.tabs.inTitlebar → 0Use the settings shown above to do so. It'll make them more accessible and will greatly speed up your browsing experience. You can combine it with userChrome.css to fine-tune the placement of the tabs.
Performance Tweaks
If you are experiencing sluggish performance and want to speed up your Firefox instance, the following settings will come in handy. Try them and see the difference.
12. Increase Cache Size for Faster Browsing
Browser cache works at the same principle used by operating systems, servers, and business applications. Enough cache makes it easy to reduce the load on the application.
# Sets cache to 2GB
browser.cache.disk.capacity → 2097152The larger the cache, the more space is there to store frequently accessed data. This speeds up the browsing experience. Ideally, 1GB cache is enough for most use cases, but if you are still experiencing low performance, you can increase it to 2GB for better results.
13. Reduce UI Animations for a Snappier Feel
Although animations and special effects may look good when interacting with an application's interface, they come with a cost. If you are using an old computer, these animations put an extra burden on your machine.
ui.prefersReducedMotion → 1Reducing Firefox animations speeds up the Firefox browsing experience by many folds. Once try it you'll love it to the core. But, if you love animations, you may want to skip this setting.
14. Enable HTTP/3 for Faster Page Loading
Who doesn't love a fast browsing experience? Sometimes, it also depends on the protocols and the software stack used by your browser. And, that's what we'll tweak in this setting.
network.http.http3.enabled → trueEnable HTTP/3 protocol to enhance both the speed and reliability of your internet connections. It's the latest web protocol in its category giving you all the benefits of improvements.
15. Improve Pipelining for Faster Page Rendering
Another way to speed up your browser is to enable multiple connections requests—in one go. It can be loosely compared with multitasking in operating systems though it is not the same, technically.
network.http.pipelining → true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests → 8Tweaking or enabling both the settings shown above allows Firefox to send multiple connection requests in bursts to speed up the page loading speed.
16. Boost Multitasking with More Processes
Have you ever experienced Firefox getting stuck or frozen? You can address this issue by ensuring it has more processes available to execute heavy tasks.
dom.ipc.processCount → 4 to 8 (Default: 4)Tweak the setting shown above to increase the process count for Firefox to 8 so that it can remain responsive even if some of the tabs are doing CPU-intensive tasks. Remember, if you have the bare minimum RAM on your computer, do not fiddle with this setting.
17. Preload Links for Faster Navigation
Another effective way to speed up the browsing experience is to preload links on hover. This technique fetches web pages in advance making the browsing session much faster.
network.http.speculative-parallel-limit → 8 to 16 (Default: 6)To enable this feature, tweak the setting with the maximum value. But, make sure you have a fast internet connection to get the best results.
Customization Tweaks
This section is dedicated to tweaks that are somewhat generic and don't fit nicely in any of the categories above. So, let's see what these settings do to our browser.
18. Enable Tab Auto-Discarding to Save RAM
Well, you can put this setting in the performance section too. At times, you may feel a lag when too many tabs are open and you have a limited amount of RAM on your system.
browser.tabs.unloadOnLowMemory → trueThis setting removes the unused tabs from the memory to free it for the new tabs. This keeps the browser responsive for all the active tabs. If you have ample RAM, you may want to skip this setting.
19. Show Pinned Tabs on the New Tab Page
This setting is kind of a productivity hack. If you have a bunch of websites you frequently visit throughout the day, keeping them handy is a good option.
browser.newtabpage.pinned → truePin these websites and enable this setting as shown above. Now, every time you open a new tab page, these pinned tabs will be accessible on it giving you quick access to those websites.
20. Prevent Videos from Autoplaying
If you have a limited data internet plan and you love to watch videos, a lot of unnecessary data may get consumed due to the autoplay feature of the browsers. It automatically plays the video on page load.
# Block all autoplay triggers
media.autoplay.default → 5To stop the autoplay of videos, customize the setting as shown above. It'll not only load the page much faster but will also save a lot of your data. If you love to binge-watch, do try tweaking this setting.
21. Disable Pocket Integration (If Unused)
By default, Pocket is integrated within Firefox. Some people use it while others don't. If you fall in the latter category, you can disable it altogether.
extensions.pocket.enabled → falseTo do so, use the setting shown above. Once configured, it'll be removed from the UI and will be disabled. It helps in improving the overall performance of the web browser.
Pro Tips for 'about:config' Customization
Finally, here are some pointers to help you use it correctly and carefully so that you do not break your browser. It'll make sure you do it safely.
- Search Smartly: Instead of scrolling through list, use the search bar on the top to quickly find the desired setting.
- Double-Click to Toggle: Simply double-click whenever you have to modify the boolean value.
- Experiment Safely: Do not change several settings at once. Go for one at a time and observe if everything is working correctly before moving on to the next one.
- Community Wisdom: If you are skeptical about what these settings are all about, you can use premade configurations to ease the entire process.
Conclusion
These advanced Firefox settings can significantly enhance your browsing experience. Whether you want better privacy, faster performance, or more customization, tweaking about:config is a powerful way to make Firefox work exactly how you want it.
