Posted: July 23, 2019

Updated: November 17, 2020

This is how I like Firefox. I don’t bother with Chrome.

Addons

Find your favorite addons in the store: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/extensions/

Firefox has this weird thing where they call addons both “addons” and “extensions”.

My favorite addons are:

• Bitwarden
• Enhancer for YouTube
• Firefox Multi-Account Containers
• HTTPS Everywhere
• LeechBlock NG
• No Playlist Autoplay For YouTube
• Privacy Badger
• uBlock Origin
• Ctrl+Number to switch tabs
• Vue.js devtools

Configure uBlock Origin

This addon is so great it gets it’s own <h3>

To enter the settings for uBlock, click the uBlock shield, then click the bottom-right icon below the Big Power Icon (I know…)

• Settings > Enable cloud storage support
• Settings > “I am an advanced user”
• Filter Lists > Purge all caches
• Filter Lists > Update now

At the top of that screen you can download or upload rules to cloud storage as needed. I highly recommend reading more about cloud storage here: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Cloud-storage

I like to disable 3rd party javascript and frames globally. I often disable 1st party and inline javascript as well.

To do this, click the uBlock shield, then click “requests blocked” under the Big Power Icon.

More info: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-quick-guide

Configure HTTPS Everywhere to reject ALL unsecured connections

Click on the icon, then set “Encrypt All Sites Eligible” to On.

Preferences

Everybody’s got ‘em. Here’s mine.

• Edit > Preferences > Tabs > Disable “Ctrl+Tab cycles through […]
• Edit > Preferences > Scroll > Enable Autscrolling (middle click to scroll)
• Edit > Preferences > Scroll > Disable Smooth Scrolling
• Edit > Preferences > Privacy & Security > Permissions > Autoplay > Settings > Block Audio and Video
• Edit > Preferences > Privacy & Security > Permissions > Notifications > Settings > Block new requests
• Edit > Preferences > Logins and Passwords > Disable Ask to save logins and passwords for websites
• Edit > Preferences > Firefox Home Content > Uncheck everything except “Web Search”
• Edit > Preferences > Default Search Engine > DuckDuckGo
• Edit > Preferences > Default Search Engine > Uncheck “Show search suggestions ahead of browsing history […]

Here be dragons?

These settings must be set in about:config

browser.fullscreen.autohide: false # shows tab bar in fullscreen
browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground: true # always open new tabs in background
browser.tabs.warnOnClose: true # prevent closure with ctrl+q
media.autoplay.block-event.enabled: true # I had to set this to block autoplay, despite autoplay being disabled in my preferences
network.security.esni.enabled: true # https://www.cloudflare.com/ssl/encrypted-sni/
network.trr.mode: 2
ui.context_menus.after_mouseup: true # on Linux, open right-click context menu only after the mouse button is raised (I click mouse buttons for no reason a lot)