When you type an address in the address bar of Firefox, it comes up with a list of sites you’ve previously visited. You may want to clear this list because of privacy concerns. However, finding out how to do this proved very difficult for me.
If you want the address bar history to be completely cleared, there are a series of things you’ll need to do. In this tutorial, I will cover each one, and you can do what works best for you.
Step 1. Clear Recent History
Websites you have visited recently will appear in the address bar when you begin typing. You can clear this list by going to the Menu button and selecting “Options” > “Privacy“. From there, select “clear your recent history“. For the “Time range to clear:“, select “Everything“. Check all of the boxes, then choose “Clear Now“. This will NOT get rid of everything though.
Step 2. Disable Suggestions
It’s quite an extreme thing to do, but you can disable the suggestions that appear when you type in the address bar. To do so, type “about:config” in the address bar and change the setting for “browser.urlbar.maxRichResult” to “0“.
This doesn’t really clear address bar suggestions. It just makes the suggestions go back 0 days. If you decide to later change this setting again, it will still display the same items that were there before.
Step 3. Delete Bookmarks
Bookmarks appear as suggestions too. So you can individually delete any bookmarks you don’t want. Personally, I resorted to a tip regarding deleting the “places.sqlite” file from my Firefox profile folder. Deleting this file cleared all bookmarks out of Firefox.
- Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\ Mozilla\Firefox\Profile\profile folder
- Windows 10, 8 & 7: C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\profile folder
Step 4. Clear Third-party Plugin Data
Even after doing all of the above steps, I still had items show up when I typed a URL. I found out they were sites that were located in my bookmarks section. But I didn’t bookmark any of the items that were appearing. How’d they get there? Well, my StumbleUpon plug-in was saving items to my Bookmarks automatically. There are a variety of applications that automatically bookmark items as well. You may need to look into this possibility on your own system.
I hope these tips have helped you. Please share your experience in the Comments section below.
PJ says
Thanks a lot!
How to do this on a Mac:
“places.sqlite” on Mac is found this way: Finder > ALT-press on Go > Library > Application Support > Firefox > then look through the folders to find “places.sqlite”. I copied that to another folder and deleted it. My bookmarks didn’t disappear thankfully but it prevented my “Amazon.co.jp”-link from always popping up whenever I type “ama” (I prefer to have other regional Amazon sites as suggestions).
I also deleted all amazon related bookmarks while searching for “amazon” in my bookmarks manager.
Lankast0r says
Mozilla sucks!
The used to be the best in privacy, now they’re THE WORST!
P-Vella says
The unwanted autofill entry was in my bookmarks, and I don’t recall adding it. Deleted it and unwanted autofill disppeared in url suggesions
John Mullen says
How does one clear the currently displayed URL in the address bar or search bar without having to first select the content? I find it annoying to have to first select all text in the fields to delete it in order to type in a new URL. There used to be a plugin called “clear fields” that did this but it unfortunately no longer exists.
Dave Velasquez says
i downloaded a plug in to Adobe Update, it uploaded “AnySearch” . So when I open up my Firefox it shows up with “AnySearch” as a tab and then my “usual” tab that was always coming up for Firefox. This site “AnySearch” I DO NOT WANT ON MY COMPUTER. I cannot find how to get rid of it…
Richard says
great stuff, thanks!
Val says
Hi,
I used Step 2 to disable suggestions and it worked fine.
Much appreciated. Great website.
Val