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When I start typing the URL, Firfox would give a list of sites I have visited. How do I clean them permanently?

  • 5 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 12 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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I've tried Tools > Options > Privacy, Clear all current history. It didn't work!

Do I have to uninstall Firefox and reinstall it again?

I'm using Firefox v19.0 on a Windows 7 Pro 64-bit PC.

I've tried Tools > Options > Privacy, Clear all current history. It didn't work! Do I have to uninstall Firefox and reinstall it again? I'm using Firefox v19.0 on a Windows 7 Pro 64-bit PC.

All Replies (5)

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Hi Corsairgt,
as you type into the Location Bar, the default behavior is to display all results from both bookmarked items and your browsing history of visited pages in a drop-down list. (This feature is often called the "Awesome Bar"). You can change Location Bar autocomplete behavior in "Tools -> Options -> Privacy / Location Bar" by selecting one of the options in the "When using the location bar, suggest:" drop-down menu:

  • History and Bookmarks (default) - Displays both visited pages in history and bookmarked items (no filtering)
  • History - Restricts results to visited pages in history
  • Bookmarks - Restricts results to bookmarked items
  • Nothing - No autocomplete results are displayed

Selecting "Nothing" sets the preference browser.urlbar.autocomplete.enabled to false and completely disables Location Bar autocomplete. This also disables inline autocomplete in Firefox 14 and above
For more information look at this article:
Changing autocomplete behavior - Firefox
Please report back!

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Use these steps to remove saved (form) data from a drop down list:

  1. Click the (empty) input field on the web page to open the drop down list
  2. Highlight an entry in the drop down list
  3. Press the Delete key (on Mac: Shift+Delete) to remove it.
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Thanks cor-el, is this deletion permanent? Could I retrieve the history later on?

Deleting the history one by one is very tedious. Is there a way that I could click once and delete the entire history?

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"You can change Location Bar autocomplete behavior in "Tools -> Options -> Privacy / Location Bar" by selecting one of the options in the "When using the location bar, suggest:" drop-down menu:

   History and Bookmarks (default) - Displays both visited pages in history and bookmarked items (no filtering)
   History - Restricts results to visited pages in history
   Bookmarks - Restricts results to bookmarked items
   Nothing - No autocomplete results are displayed" 


Hi alco,

Selecting "Nothing" means only hiding the browsing history, it doesn't erase the history. Is there a quick way to delete the entire browsing history of Firefox?

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The list of websites that you've opened by typing or pasting the URL in the location bar is more difficult to remove then 'normal' history items (sites that you've visited via a link).

Items that are bookmarked (i.e. have a highlighted star) can only be removed permanently by deleting that bookmark.