The browser war that took place a few years ago can be said to have ended with a winner, Chrome, and an outsider, Firefox, who over time has lost some ground against the Google browser, but which is still widely used. What is certain is that now the choice of browser can no longer be based on a criterion of speed, since all are roughly similar in terms of performance, if the correct settings are used.
If in several articles we have already seen how to speed up Chrome, we dedicate this episode to how to speed up Firefox for PC, to understand what options to modify to speed it up to the maximum, to optimize it and make Firefox as fast as possible to load sites and open web pages .
READ ALSO: What to do if Firefox goes slow
1) Deactivate Plugins by setting them with click-to-play
The number of security vulnerabilities on the Adobe Flash plugin is so high that this plugin is now about to be permanently abandoned.
If it has not been uninstalled because it can still be used in certain sites, at least it is better to put it in click to play mode, that is to say deactivated, until you click on the content. This is an essential security measure that will also make a good contribution in improving Firefox's performance since the flash elements (actually less and less popular) will not be loaded. The above for Flash also applies to all other plugins that may be installed. To activate the click to Play on Firefox open the menu from the button at the top right, press on Add-ons and then on Plugins.
For all those present, for those for whom it is possible, always change Activate with Ask before activating .
2) Manage open tabs
As with any browser, Firefox also slows down significantly until it even freezes the computer when you open many tabs at the same time.
For those who surf the internet keeping several websites open together and to avoid slowdown problems, there are extensions that automatically download the unused cards from memory. The forms will remain formally open, but as frozen. Clicking them will reload the site and return to active.
We have already seen which extensions to use to decrease Firefox's memory consumption, among which two are better: Onetab which frees memory (recommended) and Auto Unload Tab.
3) Manage extensions
Extensions are the added value of browsers like Firefox and Chrome, but they are also the main culprits of slowness and weighting on the PC memory.
If possible, it is advisable to limit the installed extensions and to remove or disable the heavier ones or those that are not needed. With both Firefox and Chrome you can see the extensions that take up more memory from the task manager.
4) Disable extensions preinstalled in Firefox
The latest versions of Firefox include some built-in add-ons that cannot be uninstalled from the list of extensions.
Among these are the reader and Pocket.
To deactivate them, open the about: config menu again and modify these parameters:
- reader.parse-on-load.enabled put False
- reader.parse-on-load.force-enabled put False
- browser.pocket.enabled put False
- loop.enabled put False
5) Use fewer extensions and more bookmarklets
To replace many extensions, it is worth checking if there is a bookmarklet, i.e. a button to add to the bookmarks bar that only when pressed activates its function, without remaining in memory during all the time. If they have never been used and to search for them, I recommend starting from the list of the best bookmarklets to add functions to web browsers.
6) Changes to the internal Firefox system from the about: config menu
Firefox, compared to other browsers, provides a configuration interface not made of options to select, but of parameters to modify by typing with the keyboard. As seen, there are many useful hidden options in the Firefox about: config menu among which it is worth changing the following to speed up Firefox. To open the configuration parameters menu, open a new tab and write on the address bar about: config Accept the warning to be careful and continue. The various parameters are searched from the top bar and then modified by double clicking on the Status
Quickly these are:
- browser.tabs.animate put False
- browser.download.animateNotifications put False
- browser.preferences.animateFadeIn putting False
- browser.fullscreen.animate put 0
- security.dialog_enable_delay put 0
- network.prefetch-next put False (Only on slow Internet connections)
- network.http.pipelining put true
After these changes Firefox be visibly faster because the animations have been disabled, the countdown has been eliminated when you install the extensions, it prevents the preloading of web pages on a slow connection.
Other parameters of about: config to modify have been listed in the article on how to optimize Firefox to surf faster on the internet .
Now Firefox should be back fast if it was experiencing a bit of heaviness and slowness.
READ ALSO: Best 20 functions and tricks for Firefox on PC to know
