Hello Anonymous.

Please don't be offended by this, but you need to click Ok, in the preferences window, after you select Never remember History.

If you are clicking Ok, you may be having a problem with some Firefox add-on that is hindering your Firefox's normal behavior. Have you tried disabling all add-ons (just to check), to see if Firefox goes back to normal?

Whenever you have a problem with Firefox, whatever it is, you should make sure it's not coming from one of your installed add-ons, be it an extension, a theme or a plugin. To do that easily and cleanly, run Firefox in safe mode and select Disable all add-ons. If the problem disappears, you know it's from an add-on. Disable them all in normal mode, and enable them one at a time until you find the source of the problem. See this article for information about troubleshooting extensions and theme. You can troubleshoot plugins the same way.

If you want support for one of your add-ons, you'll need to contact its author.

You may also want to try reading this article:

https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Private+Browsing

It will tell you about a very handy feature called Private Browsing, which will not store any data related to your browsing while in that mode, while conforming to your History settings while outside it.

Firefox shows the "(Never) Remember history" setting if all the history and cookie setting are the default. Make at least one change to the default setting if you want "Use custom settings for history" to stay selected. Otherwise Firefox will revert to "(Never) Remember history" if you return to the Privacy tab. The choice "Use custom settings for history" will stay selected if at least one setting is not the default to make you aware that you made changes.

You enter Private Browsing mode if you select: Tools > Options > Privacy > History: Firefox will: "Never Remember History" [[X] "Automatically start Firefox in a private browsing session"

I am also not able to permanently select "Never remember history", as it reverts back to custom settings whenever I close the preferences window.

I looked for a button saying "ok" in the preferences panel to finalize my choice, as Morbus described above, but this is not visible anywhere in the panel!

I have version 3.6.3 (mac), but am seeing complaints about this exact same problem posted by many other users online since 2009.

Any other suggestion for how to remedy this? (Besides switching to a new browser?)

Anonymous2, Mac panels are different from Windows panels.

Also, with 400 million users, it's normal that some have the same issue.

Please make sure you are not using private browsing. Also, a screenshot of the whole Firefox window would be even more helpful than that one, please.

Quote: I am also not able to permanently select "Never remember history", as it reverts back to custom settings whenever I close the preferences window.

That indicates that at least one history setting is not the default.

I can't get it to stop doing "private browsing", is the problem. I can set this preferences window to anything I want, but there is no "okay" button to finalize it, and when I reopen the window, everything always shifts back to "private browsing"

This screen shot show an example of what the privacy settings revert back to whenever I try to change anything.

Is there any known fix for this or no?

This is just frustrating to deal with. I have students using my computer at work, and it's not appropriate for them to have access to my non-work browsing information, such as what news sites I visited, or where I'm planning to go to dinner, etc. But currently, no matter how I try to clear history, clear the cache, never record history, whatever, as soon as I go back to the address bar and start to type something, a bunch of pre-recorded addresses (from sites I have visited at one time or another) start popping into the bar as an autofill. This is what I'm trying to prevent. Perhaps there is a different, better way to stop this from happening?

Anonymous2, if you need help exiting Private Browsing, hopefully this support article is what you need:

https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Private+Browsing#Turn_off_Private_Browsing

Also, you may want to consider using different Firefox profiles for different people: managing profiles.

If you are in Private Browsing then no new history will be kept, but that doesn't affect already stored history. If you exit Private Browsing mode then your old history and cookies will again be accessible. If that is what is happening then you need to clear the history in regular browsing mode.

See also: Remove websites from the address bar suggestions Cannot clear Location bar history Smart Location Bar

I just noticed something really interesting.

If I unclick "Accept cookies from sites" and clear all cookies, then the autofilled history information finally disappears from the address bar, which is exactly what I was aiming for. I guess there was a cookie associated with every single one of those addresses? There were a lot, apparently!

But if I leave the cookie acceptor off, I'm finding then certain websites boot me out immediately, such as yahoo mail. Weird.

I kept trying to upload this reply for 5 minutes, and this page kept saying that I'm "mistyping the anti-bot verification code", though I'm certainly typing the exact numbers that are there. Now I'm re-enabling cookies, and I bet the message will post fine. (If you can read this, then we'll all know the outcome.)

Yes, cookies are an integral part for most services on the web. Storing a cookie in your browser is the website's way of knowing if you're logged in or not, and who you're logged in as. For example. If they can't see a cookie, sites will assume you are not logged it. Verification codes like the one in this page also use cookies, to know which verification code was displayed and check that against the one you type. If the site can't know what verification code was displayed, it assumes it's not the one you typed and asks you to type it again.

Apparently, this is a problem with both Firefox 3.6.8 as well as the new beta version as I have had it happen to me on 3 different machines after a brand new install without any previous versions of firefox on the machine.

It has something to do with the prefs.js file which somehow gets corrupted in the initial install and won't let you change the settings. This file is located in the profile folder and you can find the location at this link for the different OS. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder

The solution to fix the problem where firefox keeps reverting back to a default history setting is to close completely out of firefox, browse to this folder, find the prefs.js file and delete it, then restart firefox which recreates the file.

Please note that by doing this, any internet preferences will need to be reset as well as if you use Thunderbird, you'll need to re-enter the email account information as all this is stored in this file.

Hopefully this helps as it has worked wonders for me on all 3 machines.