How to Speed Up Firefox in 2 Minutes

No matter which browser you choose as your favorite, they each can have problems at times. They will fill up and slow down – seemingly for no reason. They can crash and oftentimes those are a direct result of some of the things we are going to fix in this article.

Firefox is no exception. It is normally quite speedy, but there are a few little things you can do to speed it up even further or help it along if it is lagging on you. This is my guide to speeding up Firefox in under 2 minutes.

1. Update Firefox

The first thing you want to do is update the browser to the latest iteration. Mozilla releases updates much more often than most every other browser to improve performance and safety of its product. To update, you’re going to open up Firefox, select at the top-right corner, and choose ”Help”.

Select ”About Firefox”.

The browser will now automatically update itself!

Select the ”Restart Firefox” button to allow the process to finish.

Congratulations! You now have the latest version of this awesome browser.

2. Free Up Space or Memory

The next thing we are going to do is clear up some of the memory being used by the browser. In the past, there were a lot of complaints about Firefox using too much system memory, thus slowing your entire system (and the browser) down. This has mostly been resolved, but could still occasionally cause you problems, especially on older machines.

To help this, open up your Firefox browser. In the address bar, type about:memory.

You will be presented with a page that looks like the below. If you are an advanced user, you can take advantage of the reports offered here.

For the rest of us, we are simply going to click that ”Minimize Memory Usage” button.

You will then see a message under each of those memory options that states “Memory minimization complete,” along with the date and time.

3. Clear Cache, Cookies and History

The third and final quick step in our speed-up process is going to be clearing out your cache, cookies, history and other more minor things from the browser. You’d be surprised how much space these things can take up – sometimes very quickly, depending on how much surfing you are doing each day! This can significantly slow down the browser’s response times, so let’s clean it up.

First, click those three lines at the top-right again, but this time choose ”Options”.

Click on ”Privacy and Security” on the left-hand side.

Scroll down to where you see ”Cookies and Site Data” and choose that.

Click on the ”Clear Data” button and a new box will pop up with your options. Place an X in both boxes and click the ”Clear”.

Now, scroll further down the page to the ”History” section. Click that ”Clear History” button.

Choose carefully which items you wish to clear in the box that comes up. I chose to clear it all… there is nothing there that is crucial for me to keep.

Once you have made your selections, decide the time-frame of history to clear from the drop-down box. You can choose between 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, the past day or everything. I recommend choosing ”Everything” in order to maximize the speed-up process.

When it has finished clearing, you can even choose to have the browser never remember your History by selecting that option from the drop-down menu.

There. You’re all cleared up! Your Firefox browser should be running much faster now. If it is not, there is one more thing you can do, but you may run a few seconds over that two-minute mark I promised!

4. Disable Extensions

If you have enabled / installed several addons in the browser, one or more of them may be what is slowing you down. I would start by disabling all of them. To do this, first click those lines at the top again, then choose ”Addons”. On the left, click on ”Extensions”.

If you look at each extension you have installed, you will see three dots on the right side. Click those dots and chose ”Disable” next to each one.

When you have more time, you can re-enable one extension at a time (and then browse for awhile) to see if it was the one that was slowing you down.

Once all of the extensions have been disabled, click ”Themes” on the left side of the page.

Be sure that the ”Default Theme” option is selected. Using any of the others can slow your browser by a few – or several! – degrees.

There you have it… my speedy guide to speeding up your Mozilla Firefox browser.

What other Firefox or browser questions do you have for me?

Happy speedy surfing!