If you use Firefox or Chrome, you should know that they keep a history of everything you have downloaded. You can clear it easily but its better to disable it if there are multiple users using the same computer. There is no doubt you can clear your download history from the download manager, but there are times when you forget to clear it which can put your privacy at risk. If you don’t want anyone to find out what you have downloaded, and are concerned about your privacy, you can disable Download Manager in few simple steps.
Go to Firefox options by clicking on Firefox Menu > Options > Options.
Go to Privacy tab and under History section, select Use Custom Settings for History from the drop down menu.
Uncheck Remember Download History and click OK.
Now, Firefox will not save the files or anything you download using Firefox.
Of course, if you’d only like the list to only be cleared once you exit Firefox you can adjust that from the config.
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Pax
How would you do that in Firefox 13?
Now there’s only one checkmark to disable BOTH browsing history AND download history…
Is there an about:config setting that will allow me to only disable the download history?
(I know I can ask FF to delete the download history on close, but I would rather disable it alltogether.)
Thanks.
Pax
UPDATE:
Nevermind… Just found, that browser.download.manager.retention is still in about:config.
Just set that to 0 and it works as before.
Austin Krause
Nice catch @Pax the good ole about:config never fails! https://www.groovypost.com/howto/howto/clear-firefox-4-download-history-automatically/
It’s interesting that Mozilla would make a backwards move on features like this. Maybe they figure people don’t want the customization?