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14 Hidden Firefox Functions for Browsing Like a Boss

Firefox is fast, secure, and customizable. Plus, it's chock-full of features you probably don't know anything about. Here's how to get the most out of Mozilla's browser.

By Eric Griffith
Updated September 29, 2020

You might think a browser is a browser. Perhaps you don't think about your web browser at all—by default you simply use whatever came with the operating system or the browser someone set up for you. If you're like 70 percent of people in the world, you downloaded Google Chrome and never looked back.

However, it's not smart to put all your digital eggs in one corporate ecosystem's basket. Mozilla's Firefox is a worthy alternative and has been PCMag Editors' Choice for some time.

Firefox is fast, secure, customizable, private, and attractive. Plus, it's chock-full of features you probably don't know anything about, even if you are one of the 8 percent of US web users who were smart enough to download it and put it to regular use.

Let's look at all the extra functionality you can squeeze out of Firefox without even installing an extension. You'll wonder why you ever bothered with another browser.

All About That Primary Password

All About that Master Password

A primary password (previously called master password) keeps your stored passwords safe (which comes in handy if you share your computer with anyone). To create a primary password, go to the Menu > Options > Privacy & Security (or type in about:preferences#privacy). Check the box next to Use a primary password. Follow the directions in the pop-up window. Disable or change your primary password through this same window.

If you find yourself in the unfortunate position of losing or forgetting your primary password, you re-set it in a roundabout way. (NOTE: This action will remove all your saved usernames and passwords.) To re-set, in the location bar type chrome://pippki/content/resetpassword.xul, hit Enter, read the warning and click Reset at the bottom of the page. You can then go and create a new master password from there.

Manage Passwords With Lockwise

It's always a challenge to manage website passwords. Using a dedicated password manager is the best bet, but with Firefox Browser you can can tap into a feature known as Firefox Lockwise. The Lockwise app (iOSAndroid) grabs the website logins you've stored in Firefox and signs you into websites on an iOS or Android device. Best of all, it works with Firefox Monitor to let you know if your credentials have been part of a breach. Here's how to use it.

Customize Tool Bar Menu

Customize Tool Bar Menu

Customize which items you see in the Firefox tool bar, or the overflow drop-down menu by clicking the hamburger menu on the top right and selecting Customize.

Easily Jump Through Tabs

Easily Jump Through Tabs

Have a lot of tabs open? Toggle through them via simple keyboard shortcuts:

  • Focus on the next tab on the right: Ctrl + Page Down

  • Move to the left: Ctrl + Page Up (on a Mac, you can toggle between tabs using command + option + [left/right] arrow)

  • Jump between multiple tabs: Ctrl + [1 through 9] allows you to jump between a long set of tabs where 1 represents the one on the far left and each subsequent number represents the next tab over. (On a Mac use the command key.)

Or, do a tab switch that's visible on screen by hitting Ctrl+Tab—it brings up thumbnails of the pages you'll be jumping to with each subsequent tap of the Tab key. (If it doesn't work, type about:preferences#general in the location bar to find the area of browser preferences where you can toggle it on.)

Play with Media Shortcuts

Play with Media Shortcuts

Firefox supports keyboard codes to control media playback, and Mozilla has a comprehensive list here. First, "focus" on the video or sound file by clicking directly on it. These commands don't always work—it depends on the service you're using—but they all work well with YouTube. Here are some good ones to know:

  • Play/Pause: Spacebar

  • Increase/Decrease volume: Up (⬆) or Down (⬇) Arrow

  • Seek Back/Forward (15 second increments): Left (⬅)/Right (➡) Arrow

  • Beginning: Home

  • End: End

  • Mute: Ctrl + Down Arrow (⬇)

Zooma Zoom Zoom

Zooma Zoom Zoom

You can use shortcut keys to zoom in and out on a web page—Ctrl+ (plus sign) to zoom in, Ctrl+ (minus sign) to zoom out. However you can also do it with your mouse. Hold down the Ctrl key and move the click-wheel in or out (Mac: hold down the command key). Alternatively, you can zoom via the View menu or the hamburger menu button in the top-right corner of your browser. Or use the Zoom tool on the Customized toolbar or overflow menu.

You also have the ability to just increase the size of the text while keeping the images stable. Just go to View > Zoom and check Zoom Text Only. Now when you zoom in and out, only the font size increases or decreases.

(If you're playing with the zoom function and get stuck in some unwieldy aspect, go back to the default by pressing Ctrl + 0; command + 0 on Mac.)

Praise the Firefox Porn Filter

Praise the Firefox Porn Filter

You don't have to do anything for this to work, just be thankful. Turns out that when you launch the new tab page on Firefox, which usually displays your most recently/frequently visited sites, it will never show an adult site. Even if it was the last thing you visited. Firefox has apparently had a filter in place since 2014 to prevent this, so you don't accidentally show someone peaking over your shoulder your nocturnal proclivities, so to speak.

(Turn it off by going to about:config and setting the value for browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.filterAdult to "false.")

Forget Your Recent History

Forget Your Recent History

If you looked at some sketchy stuff on Firefox in the very recent past—like the last hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, or 24 hours—you can easily dump all that from the history, plus clear the cookiescache, logins, and download history.

One way: go to Options > Privacy & Security, scroll down to History menu and select Clear History. Pick a time frame and what data to dump.

The other method, especially if you do this a lot: using the Customize option above, put the Forget command on the toolbar. It provides a quickie way of deleting either 5 minutes, 2 hours, or 24 hours of your activity. Make sure you really want to ditch this data, though, as it can't be recovered.

Push the Performance

Push the Performance

Do you feel like Firefox is running sloooow, especially compared to other browsers on your desktop? Turn on the hardware acceleration option. Go to about:preferences > General > Performance. You'll see a box that says Use Recommended performance settings; uncheck it. A new box appears that says Use hardware acceleration when available. Make sure it's checked. That's it.

Another option appears called Content process limit. If you know you've got more than 8GB of RAM and a dedicated graphics processing unit (GPU), then set it higher. Otherwise leave it at the default.

Screen Grab Within Firefox

Screen Grab Within Firefox

Access the Take a Screenshot command by right-clicking anywhere on a web page or clicking the Page Actions menu (the ellipsis) in the Location bar. The feature can only takes a shot of what's on the page. Nothing outside the browser window (not even the tool bars or menus above) can be captured. That said, it's super-handy.

When invoked, move the cursor around and it highlights part of the page you might want to grab, or you can drag the cursor to get everything you want, even scrolling down long pages. A menu appears to make it easy to capture the full page (scrolling for you) or only what's visible. Whatever you select can be copied to the clipboard or downloaded as a PNG file. If you click Save, you're taken to a page where you can annotate the screen, crop it, highlight things, etc.

Strangely, there's no hotkey available for the screenshot feature, nor is it part of the customization of the toolbar.

Send to Pocket

Send to Pocket

Did you know that Mozilla owns Pocket, the read-it-later app/service? With a Pocket account, you literally mark anything you find online to read later at your convenience, on any device. That's why you'll see the Pocket logo in the Firefox location bar. You can use your existing Pocket account or Firefox login. Place the Pocket app on your phone or tablet and you can read those articles later.

Hate Pocket? Hide the icon. Type about:config into the location bar, search for the browser.pocket.enabled entry, and set it to False.

The Secret Tweak Interface

The Secret Tweak Interface

You can really get into the coding weeds and tweak your browser settings—including many things not in the Options that you access—by typing about:preferences in the location bar.

Instead, type about:config. You'll get a pretty stern warning that Changing advanced configuration preferences can impact Firefox performance or security. You should only continue if you are sure of what you are doing. Select Accept the Risk and Continue to enter (after you again receive a warning), a window that looks mostly like impenetrable codespeak. If you do nothing, you won't change anything: it doesn't hurt to look. But you'll find lots of tutorials and suggestions online about what you can and maybe should change in about:config to get the most out of Firefox.

Supercharge Some Bookmarks

Supercharge Some Bookmarks

Bookmarks of your favorite sites are easy to make in Firefox. Click the star icon in the address bar when visiting a site, and a bookmark is saved. But take note: when you make the bookmark, the menu that drops down gives you the option to tag the site. That's a little bit of extra organization for your bookmarks beyond the folders you'll want to make. To make those folders, click the Bookmarks menu and select Show All Bookmarks. You can use this window to control the tags as well.

When you click on a particular bookmark, the info at the bottom includes a keyword. Assign your frequently accessed bookmarks a unique keyword (use just a couple of letters) and whenever you type them into the address bar, the whole site loads. You can't assign the same keyword to multiple bookmarks.

If you like to select multiple bookmarks at a time to open, you'll find it annoying that the bookmark menu closes after each selection. To make it stay open until you're done, go to about:config, then find browser.bookmarks.openInTabClosesMenu, set it to false. Then it only disappears when you click away from it.

You can only open multiple bookmarks at once by putting them all in a folder, right-clicking the folder on the Bookmarks menu or the Bookmarks toolbar, and selecting Open All in Tabs.

Clean Up the Fox

Clean Up the Fox

Want to give your Firefox Browser experience a clean set of tires and fluids, without losing all you settings? It can be done. Go to the hamburger menu, select Help > Troubleshooting Information > Refresh Firefox. The options here include: giving it a quick refresh tuneup, where you don't lose anything like bookmarks and passwords and extensions; a Safe Mode that starts with the add-ons disabled; or a full cache clear. This is also where you go to get browser information dumped to a text file to send to tech support, if that's ever needed.

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About Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally for over 30 years, more than half of that time with PCMag. I run several special projects including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys, and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, plus Best Products of the Year and Best Brands. I work from my home, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

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