Speeding up Firefox on OSX

Wow! There's two very simple actions that will speed up firefox.

After some time of using firefox the address bar can slow down considerably. SpeedyFox is an extension that claims to speed up the browser, but there's no need for an extension - it's simple enough to do manually.

Here's how you do it.

1. Quit firefox.

2. Open your favorite Terminal.app or iTerm.app

3. Change to your profile directory
cd ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/your_profile_code.default

4. Issue the command to vacuum your sqlite db's
for x in *.sqlite; do echo 'VACUUM;' | sqlite3 ${x}; done

That's it! Next time you start firefox it'll be faster.

And the second tweak you can make is to reduce the page render delay. I guess firefox has this since it assumes pages take a while to come in - but I don't see the point.

1. Open up the about:config area:

2. Edit the print.print_pagedelay config item, and set it to 0 (zero). This tells firefox to start drawing the page immediately instead of waiting half a second.