How to Speed Up Mozilla Firefox

Posted on June 11, 2008 at 5:29 am

SlowFirefox-Itis. n. The thing that happens to Firefox over time. Symptoms include decline in speed and efficiency.

So, you’ve turned on your computer, clicked on Mozilla Firefox, and then….you waited. “Why,” you say, “Is firefox slower now?”

Well, we’re here to fix that problem! Whether it’s just because you want to make Firefox faster than it already is (which is wickedly fast anyway), or because you want to fix your declining speed, you’ve come to the right place.

Please note that if you do not have firefox as your default browser, I advise you to get it immediately. It is faster and more efficient than every browser out there. It is obtainable at mozilla.org/firefox.

If you use all the methods put together, you should be able to see a speed increase of at least 50% on Firefox.

Method 1:

Okay, well. To begin with, I will tell you how to increase your bandwidth speed by 20%.

Windows actually reserves 20% of your bandwidth for purposes I will never know. I’ll show you in a few easy steps, how to reclaim it.

Step 1:

Click “Start“, and go on “Run“, and type in “gpedit.msc“. You should see this:

Step 2: You should see a thing called ‘Group Policy’ open.

Step 3: Double-Click on “Computer Configuration”.

Step 4: Double-Click on “Administrative Templates”

Step 5: Double-Click on “Network”

Step 6: Double-Click on “QOS Packet Scheduler”

Step 7: Double-Click on “Limit Reservable Bandwidth”

Step 8: Check the box that says ‘Enabled’ and change Bandwidth Limit (%) to 0.

You got 20% increase on your bandwidth speed! Easy, was it not?

Method 2:

The next way is to modify the amount of requests can accept at once. By changing it to a very high number (30+), you should see a massive rise in speed.

So, to this, I’ll put it in a few easy to follow steps.

Step 1: Load up Mozilla Firefox. Now, in the address bar, type “about:config” (Without the ” ” of course). You should see this:

Step 2: Scroll down the page until you find browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs, and then double-click it. This will set it to “True”.

Step 3: Next, scroll down look for the line that says network.http.pipelining, and double-click this. This will set this to “True”.

Step 4: Now, scroll down and look for network.http.pipelining.maxrequests. Once you have done this, double-click it, and a box will pop up. Change the number to 60.

Close Firefox. You will now experience a 10% to 40% increase in speed.

Method 3:

Finally, the last way to increase your speed, is by using an add-on for Firefox, called FasterFox. It’s increased my speed greatly. Although, my friend, who owns a weak computer, said it doesn’t work well for him, so if your computer is weak, you may want to stop here.

FasterFox basically increases your speed by recycling all the idle bandwidth not doing anything, and makes it load your pages faster.

You can get FasterFox at http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/.

Install it, and your done! Hopefully, you now have a faster running Firefox! Any other ideas, post a comment!

This is a guest post by Anthony Duong, a tech enthusiant.

» Filed Under Computer Tips

Comments

37 Responses to “How to Speed Up Mozilla Firefox”

DWiner said on : June 11th, 2008 at 7:38 am

Forget all these tweaks…just wait for a few more days…when FF is to release its brand new FF3…with super amazing features…that can make browsing so lovely! Dump IE!

Frank said on : June 11th, 2008 at 9:13 am

There is no appearance of line:-
“browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs”
in my “about:config” list.

Spæctro said on : June 11th, 2008 at 10:55 am

Neither mine shows it!

mut said on : June 11th, 2008 at 12:51 pm

There is no appearance of line:-
“browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs”
in my “about:config” list.

mut said on : June 11th, 2008 at 12:53 pm

other ideas = 1.increase cache. 2.Uninstall unwanted addons.

AJ said on : June 12th, 2008 at 12:21 am

It’s funny that we have to tweak in order to speed up firefox. I didn’t upgrade to Vista nor did I upgrade from IE 6 to IE 7 and IE 6 loads faster than firefox on my PC.

Warpid said on : June 12th, 2008 at 6:42 am

XP works, don’t for Vista

mut said on : June 12th, 2008 at 11:23 am

ya iam using xp but here is no appearance of line:-
“browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs”
in my “about:config” list.

Kitkat said on : June 12th, 2008 at 11:13 pm

Cool! I thought the only way to speed up is to add more RAM.

Mahesh said on : June 13th, 2008 at 12:43 pm

There is no such file named “browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs”

AnthonyD said on : June 13th, 2008 at 12:55 pm

I believe that on some versions of Firefox, instead of “browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs” there is “network.http.proxy.pipelining”.

So instead, set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true” instead.

Sorry I did not specify this.

AnthonyD.

j4cx sparrow said on : June 20th, 2008 at 8:59 pm

I use this only
network.http.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

thanks

Gads said on : June 29th, 2008 at 5:21 am

I tried step 4 for speeding up Firefox and found an immediate improvement. Thanks for the tip. However, I could not find the other two paths :

browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs
network.http.pipelining

Any idea why they are missing ?

Gads

Pete Wilson said on : July 23rd, 2008 at 1:57 pm

Most of this information is wrong.

The QOS reservation does not affect the speed or available bandwidth unless you are actively using a QOS aware application (like VOIP) and the server and network is also QOS aware (in which case you need it).

http://support.microsoft.com/d.....6&

network.http.pipelining.maxrequests controls the number of requests FireFox will queue at one time to a server and has nothing to do with accepting requests. Also, FireFox only accepts a maximum of 8 and increasing it up to 8 may actually slow you down or break some web sites:
http://newtechheroes.com/node/18

Turning on pipelining may help some sites, how much depends on a lot of variables.

Livingsone said on : August 19th, 2008 at 12:17 pm

I think i like this article, at least i learnt something from this site

lou said on : October 14th, 2008 at 8:02 pm

if you can’t find “browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs” in about config, just right click to any area of config page then select new>boolean.. you are then prompted to enter the name, just put “browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs”.. enter then select yes..DONE!

Unknown Dude said on : November 28th, 2008 at 12:29 am

This to increase surfing speed using mozilla firefox:::

Type about:config on addr bar;
set

network.http.maxconnections=60
network.http.maxconnectonperserver=30.
network.http.pipelining=true
network.http.pipeliningmaxrequest=60.

NNNNNNNNNNjoy!!
We’ll needs speed.

Aree said on : December 6th, 2008 at 2:25 am

theres no browser.tabs.showsinglewindowsmodesperfs
but im enjoying my speed
xD

Tony said on : March 7th, 2009 at 12:30 pm

browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs does not exist on my Firefox config. Assume I would need to add it somehow?

Johan said on : March 22nd, 2009 at 7:32 am

How do you do this in XP HOME ?

gpedit.msc = NOT HTERE :’(.

THanx

Juzz^bLaZe said on : April 9th, 2009 at 9:42 pm

There is no appearance of line:-
“browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs”
in my “about:config” list.

Nazibullah said on : May 8th, 2009 at 2:19 am

There is no appearance of line:-
“browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs”
in my “about:config” list.

Yutian said on : May 17th, 2009 at 1:48 am

Win XP Home doesn’t have the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc), only XP Pro has it.

Francis said on : November 21st, 2009 at 5:25 am

It is true that if you do these things your firefox will be faster, but it will slow your animation games, like in Facebook and you can’t play well… I recommend fasterfox.

Lance said on : November 30th, 2009 at 4:06 am

Yes, I’ve tried fasterfox and it has sped up my browsing in Firefox overall! Thanks!

Cody said on : December 2nd, 2009 at 8:55 am

Awesome! I was surprised to see that Firefox actually loaded web pages faster!

subir bhadra said on : December 8th, 2009 at 8:23 pm

Please send me process to increase my Internet and Firefox speed! I need more tips because mine is very slow.

gwgw said on : January 18th, 2010 at 11:50 pm

“browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs”
in my “about:config” list.

just make one, right click -> new -> string -> browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs set value to true

Ron said on : January 19th, 2010 at 5:16 pm

browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs was not there !!!!

dollra said on : January 20th, 2010 at 4:09 am

There is no appearance of line:- “browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs” in my “about:config” list???

Fahad said on : January 22nd, 2010 at 6:18 am

if you can’t find “browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs” in about config, just right click to any area of config page then select new>boolean.. you are then prompted to enter the name, just put “browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs”.. enter then select yes..DONE!

Gale said on : January 22nd, 2010 at 6:07 pm

I will be sharing your website on Twitter – many thanks! Firefox is running a lot faster now.

Jack said on : January 22nd, 2010 at 6:26 pm

I really do not like when you close of Firefox then you need to open it again quickly, you get that pop-up saying you cannot. Hope this helps that!

shwet said on : February 12th, 2010 at 4:42 am

firefox has prevented me from downloading Fasterfox software……..How can i download it??

Marge said on : March 13th, 2010 at 9:08 pm

I love FasterFox for Firefox, but is there a similar add-on or extension for Chrome? I like using Chrome, but wasn’t sure if there was a way to speed up or optimize the network settings? Thanks