Mozilla Firefox is one of the most useful and popular internet browsers in the market. With its plethora of useful apps and plugins, Firefox has become a very useful browser to have for both businesses and personal use.
Moreover, the web developers at Mozilla are consistently working on making important changes to make the Firefox browser faster.
Although Firefox is considered quite fast, over time you may be prone to download apps and plugins that slow the overall experience and loading times.
In this article, we will explain a step by step process to make the Firefox browser faster and more efficient by editing the about:config file. In addition to editing the config file, we’ll also go over some other plugins and things you can do to greatly increase the speed if Mozilla Firefox.
What is About:config in Mozilla?
about:config is a feature of Mozilla Firefox that allows the users to change and manipulate the preferences on Firefox on a more complex level.
It lists application settings that are known as preferences. The preferences are read from profile files user.js and prefs.js and application defaults. Many of these application settings are not seen in the Preferences menu.
Using about:config is one of many methods of modifying preferences and adding other “hidden” ones to increase the speed and enhance the performance of Mozilla Firefox. It is also one of the main benefits of using the browser – Firefox gives its users’ customization features that many other browsers simply don’t have.
How to Open About:config?
In order to open about:config in Mozilla Firefox, type “about:config” in the address bar and press “Enter“.
This displays the list of various settings, as shown in the picture above. You might see a warning message, “This might void your warranty!”. Just click the button, “I accept the risk” or “I’ll be careful, I promise!” to continue.
You can also use the checkbox out there for avoiding the warning in the future.
Adding or Changing Preferences
In order to add a new preference or change the existing ones, right-click anywhere in the provided list of preferences. In the context menu, select “New”, then select the type of preference that you are going to add or modify.
String is a sequence of text.
Integer is a number.
Boolean is true-false value.
To reset a preference to its default value or to remove an added preference, right click on the required preference and select the “Reset” option. If you added the entry via about:config, the preference will no longer be listed after restarting the program.
How to Speed-up Firefox Using About:config?
Now that we have learned how to open about:config, and change and add preferences, we can speed up our browser by following the steps given below:
Normally, the browser makes only one request to a web page at a time. If we enable “pipelining” from about:config, it will make several requests at once, which really speeds up the loading page.
STEP 1: Opening the Config in Your Browser
Type “about:config” into the location bar and hit Enter.
STEP 2: Adjust the Pipelining Settings
Search the following entries by entering them in the search bar. You can double-click on each entry to change its value.
First, set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”.
Now, set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”.
Then change “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to a larger number like 8.
(This means that it will make about 8 requests at once)
Now search for max-connections in the search bar.
Change “network.http.max-connections” to 96.
Then, change “network.http.max-connections-per-server” to 32.
STEP 3: Adjust the Delay Option
Finally, right-click anywhere and then select New and then Integer value.
Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to 0 i.e. “Zero”.
This value is the total amount of time that the browser waits before it acts on the information it receives. If you have a broadband connection, you’ll load pages faster now.
Optionally, here are some more options for your about:config to increase the speed.
Set “network.dns.disableIPv6” to “false”
Then, set “plugin.expose_full_path” to “true”
Other Ways to Speed-up Firefox
Speedup Extensions to Make Mozilla Firefox Faster
There are some extensions which when installed can make your page load faster in Firefox. Installing too many extensions makes Firefox slower but if there are already a few extensions installed, you can use these methods to increase the speed of your browser.
- Disconnect: Disconnect loads pages faster and blocks tracking ads.
- Speedyfox: Another extension to speed up your browsing.
- Ghostery: Another great Firefox extension that blocks ads and speeds up browsing.
General methods to make Mozilla Firefox faster
These are not exactly methods to amplify your speed but these things should be kept in check so that no external factors are lagging the speed of your browser. The things to consider are given below:
- Clear browsing history regularly.
- Remove unnecessary add-ons.
- Remove unnecessary toolbars.
- Disable Flash.
- Disable Firefox Auto-update.
If you follow these steps, it will definitely help in increasing the speed of your browser and will provide you with more of a satisfactory browsing experience.
These are the methods that you can apply to make Firefox faster and more efficient. The main method is by altering your about:config preferences. However, other methods given above can also be used along with the about:config method to increase the browsing speed.
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