mikaela.github.io/pages/browser-extensions.markdown

If you need browser extensions, try the Privacy Guides page.

Chromium flags

These can generally be found from about:flags on Chromium based browsers, for Vivaldi explicit vivaldi://flags is required and it also has chrome://settings for the usual Chromium settings.

• #enable-quic - enabled
• #enable-force-dark - enabled with increased text constract
• #force-color-profile - sRGB
• #trust-tokens - enabled

Vendor-prefixed

These likely also exist, but just without the vendor- part when searhcing.

• #edge-automatic-https - enabled
• #edge-autoplay-user-setting-block-option
• #edge-tab-groups - enabled
• #edge-tab-groups-auto-create - enabled
• #edge-tab-groups-collapse-freezing - enabled

Firefox about:config

• privacy.firstparty.isolate to true for preventing domains from accessing each other’s data.
• dom.security.https_only_mode to true to force HTTPS and not need HTTPS Everywhere
• security.certerrors.mitm.auto_enable_enterprise_roots to false in order to not trust system CA store in case of enterprise MITM
• security.OCSP.require to true in order to not allow OCSP soft fail. This may be a bit paranoid, but only the paranoid survive.
• privacy.resistFingerprinting.letterboxing = true so letterboxing is used to hide real browser size. Tor Browser support
• (On Linux widget.content.gtk-theme-override (a string that has to be created by user) to Adwaita:light so text boxes in dark themes become readable, thank you Dovydas Venckus
  • Bug 70315: text in menus and boxes unreadable if using dark GTK theme)
• image.animation_mode to once in order to have gifs play once and then stop everywhere (none to never have them play).
• geo.provider.network.url to https://location.services.mozilla.com/v1/geolocate?key=%MOZILLA_API_KEY% in order to send nearby WiFi networks to Mozilla instead of Google. See also MLS Software.
• network.IDN_show_punycode to true in order to see punycode instead of UTF-8 in case of spoofing attempt. However makes reading non-ASCII domains painful. E.g. Cyrillic alphabet
• reader.parse-on-load.force-enabled to true in order to allow reader use to be used on ~all websites and devices (regardless of low RAM?)

Future note: network.dns.blockDotOnion;false ?

Advertising

Firefox seems to contain a lot of advertising or sponsoring nowadays, whether to other Mozilla products or whoever pays them. See also Bug 1773860: Provide global long-term “disable all promos” flag.

• browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.showSponsored & browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.showSponsored to false to stop sponsored links.
• browser.vpn_promo.enabled to false to hopefully stop Mozilla VPN advertisements
• browser.promo.focus.enabled to false to stop Firefox Focus advertisements?
• browser.preferences.moreFromMozilla to false to not hear from other Mozilla products?

DNS over HTTPS

• network.trr.mode depends, 2 to prefer DoH, but fallback to system resolver, 3 to enforce DoH without fallback) or 5 to explicitly disable.
  • DoH is required by Firefox ESNI support which encrypts SNI which would still leak which sites you visit. Another bug about ESNI + Android DoT
  • Are you using a VPN? Do they provide a DoH server? If yes, maybe the answer is 3 for eSNI?
• network.trr.early-AAAA true to hopefully prefer IPv6
• network.trr.uri for the actual resolver address, e.g. https://doh.mullvad.net/dns-query
• network.trr.disable-ECS to false if preferring speed over privacy or using NextDNS private ECS.
  • Wikipedia: EDNS Client Subnet

Some notes: * There is also network.trr.exclude-etc-hosts for those using /etc/hosts for blocking. * You can confirm TRR working by visiting about:networking#dns where you should be seeing DNS cache of Firefox and a lot of TRR: true. * While investingating how Android 9 Private DNS works, I also wrote a DNS provider comparsion here on 2019-07-11

SSDs

This information is from Arch Wiki on Firefox tweaks

• browser.cache.disk.enable to false to only cache to RAM.
• (browser.cache.memory.enable to true which should be default)
• browser.sessionstore.interval to 600000 in order to only store open session every ten minutes (instead of 15 seconds) in case of crashes.
  • alternatively browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash to false to not store the session data for crash recovery at all. I think this may be the more healthy option with all the information flood and dozens of tabs.

Why?

Every object loaded (html page, jpeg image, css stylesheet, gif banner) is saved in the Firefox cache for future use without the need to download it again. It is estimated that only a fraction of these objects will be reused, usually about 30%. This because of very short object expiration time, updates or simply user behavior (loading new pages instead of returning to the ones already visited). The Firefox cache is divided into memory and disk cache and the latter results in frequent disk writes: newly loaded objects are written to memory and older objects are removed.

Firefox stores the current session status (opened urls, cookies, history and form data) to the disk on a regular basis. It is used to recover a previous session in case of crash. The default setting is to save the session every 15 seconds, resulting in frequent disk access.

and this is the reason why Firefox is at times accused of killing SSDs.

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