1. Clear Private Data
Security is of the utmost importance to consider whenever you’re surfing the web. Even by today’s standards things are a lot less risky than 5 or 10 years ago. But you should understand how private browsing data is stored and what you can do to clear your info.
This short menu which pops up is a condensed version of the settings panel. You can choose how far back in time to clear out along with specific types of data such as cookies, cached pages, active login sessions, etc. I recommend that you clear everything within the list every time you close down the browser window. This is only my personal preference to keep my data secure – but of course you should adopt some form of routine cleanup which works best for you.
Shortcut - Ctrl + Shift + Delete
2. Add-Ons Toolbar
The Firefox add-ons menu is a small toolbar which appears at the bottom of your Firefox window. From here you can access add-on commands and menus which are normally reserved from within the regular plug-ins area.
This may be one of the lesser-known shortcuts but does come in handy frequently. If you like to keep your browser slim with reduced add-ons then this may pose as a bit uninteresting. And I have to agree that fewer 3rd-party extensions means much quicker browser performance. Just keep this in mind as you’re testing out new add-ons from time to time.
Shortcut - Ctrl + /
3. Open Downloads Window
There have been numerous instances using Firefox where I’ve been downloading files and accidentally clicked out of the downloads window. It’s a harmless gesture, though it can be a pain to find your menu again. This command brings up not just your active downloads but also recent history of previous files – very handy when you forget which folder you saved into!
Shortcut - Ctrl+J
Note: For Mac users, replace Ctrl with Command.
Increase Local Cache Storage
When Firefox saves a cached version of website content it reduces any future requests needed for re-downloading code. By default you can only max out to 1GB of saved cache from the web. But this is likely such a small amount compared to your overall disk space, it’s well worth the effort to update your cache sizes.
I recall Firefox 8.0 had local cache storage at 256MB by default. Honestly this is a fair amount of room, especially if you’re clearing out private data at the end of each session. Yet if you browse for hours at a time each repeat website visit will accumulate possibly 10-15 minutes of saved load screens.
In the top menu open Tools -> Options or Firefox -> Preferences... on Mac and click on the Advanced Tab. Somewhere in the middle of this menu you’ll see “Limit cache to” along with a number input. I’ve chosen 1024MB which happens to be the maximum allowed. Simply hit OK and restart the browser for this to take effect.
