DEV Notes

Firefox cleanup

Despite the fact the Firefox is more privacy-friendly the company often makes unexpected moves which looks rather annoying for Firefox’s users. So here is my short collection of things to disable in Firefox.

All settings below can be accessed using about:config or they can be put into a file named prefs.js (or user.js) which is located in a Firefox profile folder.

user_pref("some.setting.name", false); // "some.setting.name" is the same name as for about:config

The profiles folder located in:

  • ~/.mozilla/firefox/ on Linux or `~/snap/firefox/common/.mozilla/firefox/ if Snap is used
  • /Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles on Mac
  • %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ on Windows

IMPORTANT: Firefox parameters are quite messy. They could be boolean (true/false). They could be numbers, which sometimes act as booleans (1/0 as true/false) or it could be a range of numbers (see DoH below).

Disable data submission for advertising purposes

This is for the times when Mozilla decided to play with “good” advertisers..

dom.private-attribution.submission.enabled

The parameter must be set false. The parameter type is boolean.

Disable various LLM and AI “integrations”

This is for the times when Mozilla decided that all users want LLMs in the browser..

browser.ml.enable

The parameter must be set false. The parameter type is boolean.

browser.ml.chat.enabled

The parameter must be set false. The parameter type is boolean.

browser.ml.chat.hideFromLabs

The parameter must be set true. The parameter type is boolean.

browser.ml.chat.hideLabsShortcuts

The parameter must be set true. The parameter type is boolean.

browser.ml.chat.page
browser.ml.chat.sidebar
browser.ml.chat.page.footerBadge
browser.ml.chat.page.menuBadge
browser.ml.chat.menu
browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled
browser.ml.pageAssist.enabled
browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled
browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnabled
extensions.ml.enabled
pdfjs.enableAltTextModelDownload
pdfjs.enableGuessAltText

All the parameters above must be set false. The parameters type is boolean.

Disable DoH

While DoH (DNS over HTTPS) considered privacy-friendly and useful thing it proved to be quite unstable if providers like CloudFlare goes down which happens not that rarely.
Unfortunately Firefox uses CloudFlare for DoH (at least it was for the feature rollout) and this makes DoH quite unreliable sometimes.

network.trr.mode

The parameter must be set 5. The parameter type is number. The value can be in range 0-5 where 5 means the DoH disabled definitely and will be not enabled automatically back again..
NOTE: The DoH also can be disabled in firefox settings.

network.trr.uri

The parameter type is string. At the moment it is empty for me maybe because I disabled DoH completely. The network.trr.mode must be set to 3 to use it.

Disable IPv6

Not a proven issue but there are some claims that disabling IPv6 could improve long TLS handshakes in some cases.

network.dns.disableIPv6

The parameter must be set true. The parameter type is boolean.

Tweak Firefox UI

ui.prefersReducedMotion

The parameter must be set 1. The parameter type is number.
NOTE: I used this because Firefox introduced context menus (right-click menus) which are sort of resized while activated and for some reason this annoyed me. Previously the context menu “just appeared” without any effects.

Bring back the full URL in address bar

browser.urlbar.trimURLs

The parameter must be set false. The parameter type is boolean.

browser.urlbar.trimHttps

The parameter must be set false. The parameter type is boolean.
NOTE: There is also a setting for Firefox Search named Show search terms in the address bar on results pages (browser.urlbar.showSearchTerms.enabled in about:config).

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