How in the Tech

Clearing the Download History in Firefox Automatically

By Adam Myers ⋅ February 4, 2009 ⋅ Tags: Firefox, Privacy

I never quite understood the rationale for the Firefox Download’s pop-up to maintain and display a list of recently downloaded items. By default, a clean installation of Firefox will present a psuedo download manager popup when files are downloaded from a website. The dialog lists the current progress of any active download as well as the last few completed downloads. Without stating the obvious privacy concerns if you are on a shared computer, it’s just annoying! I typically download files and deal with them at that time – a running history with search capabilities just isn’t useful to me. I have to realize that I am in the minority though, this is a default feature that is enabled after all. Nevertheless, this is an easy thing to resolve.

While this is a straight forward and simple process, there are multiple steps that need to occur in order to fully address the issue.

1. From the Firefox Toolbar click Tools->Options and select the Privacy tab. Under the Private Data section check Always clear my private data when I close Firefox and un-check Ask me before clearing private data.

   

2. From the same Private Data section above, click Settings.
3. There are a few items that I do not want removed upon each Firefox closing so you will want to un-check them from the Clear Private Data window. To clear your download history on closure, check Download History and click OK.



4. You should now be returned to the Options window from Step 1. Click to the Main tab and find the Downloads section. To stop the Download pop-up, un-check Show the Downloads window when downloading a file.