Complete Guide to Clearing Cache, History and Cookies in Firefox

One of our most popular articles on groovyPost.com is How To Clear the Firefox History and Cache and How To Clear Firefox History, Cookies and Cache Automatically at Exit. Since then a lot has happened in the land of Firefox.  Specifically, the User Interface for clearing the cache has changed, a new Private Browsing Mode has been introduced AND, there are now several add-on tools which have been created that help you through the process of clearing your history, cache and cookies.  Let’s dive into each of these new areas!

How-To Enable Private Browsing in Firefox

Open Firefox and hit the ALT button to open the File Menu. Then click click Tools, Start Private Browsing.

You can also just use the Keyboard Shortcut Keys Ctrl+Shift+P.

Once you enable Private Browsing, don’t be surprised when all your other Firefox windows and tabs close.  This is by design.  Once you close the “Private Browsing” Firefox window and re-launch Firefox again normally, all your previous windows and tabs will open.

Now that we have that out-of-the-way, let’s now show you the NEW way to manually clear the Firefox History, Cache and Cookies vs. the old method.

How-To Clear the Firefox History, Cache and Cookies

Open Firefox and hit the ALT key to open the File Menu. Now click Tools, Clear Recent History.  Or the Keyboard Shortcut Ctrl+Shift+Del

Now this is where a few things have changed from previous versions of

Firefox.  The first thing you will notice is a new Drop Down menu based on a Time Range.

You can either just leave the default which is EVERYTHING or adjust the dropdown to only include the Last Hour, Two Hours, Four Hours or Entire Day.  Pretty groovy.

Click the Down Arrow to specify the Time Range you want to clear the history for and then Check the boxes for each of the categories of data you want cleared.

Most will want to clear their Cookies and Cache etc..  Either way, Click Clear Now to start the wipe.

How-To Manually Confirm Cache has been Wiped

Did you know you can simply type About:Cache into the URL bar of Firefox and get a breakout of your Cache?  Click the screenshot on the right to get a quick idea of what I’m talking about.  Very groovy little tip if you are paranoid and want to make sure all your cache has been nuked!

How-To Customize Firefox History, Cache and Cookie Settings

In the previous article I also talked about How-To automatically clear the private data when you close Firefox.  Since I wrote that article the screen’s have changed as well as a number of other options so let’s take a look at all of them.

Open Firefox, hit the ALT key and Click Tools, Options

Click Privacy Tab then Click Down Arrow in History Box and Click Use custom settings for history

Once you choose the Custom settings for history drop down, you will be presented with 2 key options many people search for:

1. Automatically start Firefox in a private browsing sessions
2. Clear history when Firefox closes

Configuring them both are as simple as a checkbox once you find where you set it.  Good news for you, now you know!

Decide which options you want to enable and check the boxes.  If you enable the checkbox Clear history when Firefox closes, be sure to Click Settings to customize what you want cleared automatically when you close Firefox.

So now that you understand the bowels of clearing your private data from Firefox, now you won’t feel guilty using an Add-on that makes the job a little easier.  After all, one thing that makes Firefox so attractive is the giant user community who are constantly building new add-on tools for it.

How-To Install a Firefox Add-on to Clear Private Data from Firefox

The first step to finding the tool we need is by just going to the Firefox Add-on site and searching for something like clear cache.  The results can be filtered to your version of Firefox however the site also does a nice job of detecting your version of Firefox and not giving you a Download prompt if the Add-on isn’t compatible with your version of Firefox.

I tried out 2 or 3 add-on tools for clearing the cache and overall they were fine.

• Cache Status – Adds a nice status to the bottom right of firefox that shows you your memory and disk cache status.  Right Click the status bar to Clear the cache.  Downside is this will only clear the cache, not the cookies…
• Click&Clean – Probably the best of the 3, allows the most options plus the option to clear Flash Cookies however is basically just an Icon that does the same thing as Ctrl+Shift+Del.
• Empty Cache Button – This probably would have been my favorite however the Options didn’t expose to me the option to let me configure it to clear Cookies + Standard Cache.

How-To Configure Firefox Add-On Tools

So now you one of the Firefox Tools installed to clear your cache, how do you configure them?  Simple.

Hit the Alt key and Click Tools, Add-ons

Click the Add-On you with to configure and Click Options

Note: Some configuration for each add-on application is unique so the options will vary greatly.  Some Firefox Add-on’s don’t even let you configure them so just an FYI.

How-To Add the Add-On Icon to your Firefox Toolbar

So now that you’ve installed the Add-On where is it?  Oh yeah, before you can use some add-on’s you need to add the Icon to your Toolbar.  Personally, I like to add the Clear Cache Icon next to my URL Bar.  Here’s how you do that.

Open Firefox, Hit the Alt key and click View, Toolbars, Customize

Find the Icon for the new Add-On, Click and Drag it to where you want it to live.  Click Done after you move it.

Here’s what it should look like when done.

So… As I said earlier, this tutorial was created using Firefox 3.6.2 as were all the screenshots etc…  Being that this is technology there is no question things will change so be sure to subscribe to groovyPost.com to receive all the latest updates in Firefox privacy / security.

Comments?  Did I miss your favorite tool, Firefox tip or did confuse you?  Join the discussion and drop a comment below.

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