Tweaking Firefox With about:config

Posted on May 6, 2005

One of the genius decisions behind Firefox was the decision to simplify everything — to limit the number of choices the browser exposed to the average user. Firefox’s preferences panel is clean and relatively simple, and the defaults are set to the choices that make the most sense for the average user.

But what if you’re not the average user? What if you want to tweak Firefox beyond the options available in the preferences panel?

It’s as simple as this: go to the address bar in the browser and type

about:config

and hit “Enter”. This will bring up a page listing all of Firefox’s preferences — not just the common ones you can set through the GUI.

How many preferences does this give you access to, you ask? This many. Tweakers, start your engines 🙂