One of the best features in Firefox is one of its least-known. Many, many people complain of Firefox feeling slow and bloated over time, and in a number of cases, they’re not wrong. They just don’t know that surfing the web can be analogous to playing Katamari Damacy, where simply browsing can accumulate cruft until you have this big ball of metadata that slows you down.
If you find your Firefox experience is sub-par and a little more pokey than you’d like, you should try resetting your profile before moving over to another product. You should know that your preferences, extensions, and themes will be reset/removed, but since you’re planning on installing Chrome or another browser, I’m willing to bet that’s ok (and you should back your profile up before you do this, just in case). Your browsing history, bookmarks, and form info will be saved, and that’s the important thing.
To reset your profile, open up Help->Troubleshooting Information from the Help menu, and click the reset button. This simple procedure will cure most things that ail you performance-wise with Firefox. You should also read our support article on Resetting Your Firefox Profile, which will give you the the full scoop on what happens when you click.
There, doesn’t that feel better?
Personally, I’m glad my less tech-savvy relatives don’t read things like this. It’d be a pain in the butt to get a whole bunch of calls complaining that their browser is broken because the toolbar button to download YouTube videos vanished.
As for my own use, I’ll stick with a mix of un-Reset Firefox for features and Chrome Incognito Mode (with built-in analogues to CookieMonster, NoScript, etc.) for speed until I find time to research how to use shell scripts to dump lists of extensions and non-default about:config settings and then re-apply them in an unattended fashion a reset.
So what happens when you have Firefox Sync enabled? Does it then proceed to wipe everything across all your synced systems?
Jody,
After a reset, sync will no longer be setup on that computer (profile) but your Sync account will still exist and work on your other devices. You can connect the reset profile back to the account if you wish.
If you already have sync setup, I would recommend creating a new profile and syncing to it instead. It will do a better job than reset but will also preserve some preferences and AMO-hosted extensions.
Matthew
Firefox reset developer
MattN,
Good to know. I don’t really have much problem, apart from FireFox suffering occasional temporary lockups. But that seems to depend on the machine and how much free RAM exists. I usually have 40 – 70 tabs open though.
Thanks, MattN!
Tip: If synchronizing fails, first connect through the proxy by requesting a webpage. The proxy will ask for username and password, and afterwards the update succeeds.
I am Pissed off with the Adverts that Block my CPU and memory to Slow me down. This is after I stupidly UPDATED Firefox and It Now Harasses me to do the same Fucking update by an advert behind the top page of the FUCKING BROWSER
i’m Pissed off and I Fuck Hate this Harassing Intrustive Behaviour…. AnD WHEN WILL FIRE FOX Get Rid of this Eppilectic Fitting Stupid GREEN FUCKING Download ARROW
8pm …. Its not 8pm … It is 1-15am You stupid Pricks cannot even get the time of day right.
I use a fire fox recharge
Dharmesh