A quick overview of my currently installed Firefox extensions. Mostly privacy-oriented add-ons. Quick word of warning, some of these add-ons will break certain webpages, you might have to turn them off for some badly written websites.
“Friends don’t let friends surf without adblocker.”
The interwebs are a horrible place without ad filtering. Not only do you enjoy less cluttered pages with a blocker, you also save bandwidth and battery, get faster page loading times, increased protecting against malvertising, and better privacy. Why would you not use an adblocker?
uBlock Origin by Raymond Hill is, without a doubt, my № 1 extension. I added extra domains to my blocklist to help keep me focused. Clicked a Twitter link? The uBlock warning is enough to stop me from procrastinating (I can still temporarily unblock if needed). My custom blocklist includes some more privacy-violating domains, annoying chat bubbles, and more generic time sinks.
Firefox’s Multi-Account Containers is second. All Google properties are separated in their container, as is my work stuff. The coloured tabs help identify the purpose of each tab. Also useful for using multiple accounts in the same browser (instead of using different browsers): personal and work Twitter accounts for example. More info & screenshots.
The Cookie AutoDelete is a new addition this year, and it quickly rose to 3rd place. Firefox already blocks 3rd party cookies (if configured) but Cookie AutoDelete removes all cookies a few seconds after you close a tab. Over the last 4 weeks or so it removed over 15.000 cookies! You can whitelist domains as well (or you’ll have to log in every… single… time), so far I only felt the need to whitelist 4 domains. You can turn off the noisy notifications but keep it on in the beginning as a reminder, it will help you learn what to whitelist. Really happy I finally installed Cookie AutoDelete, it’s a game-changer!
KeePassXC-Browser, auto-fills my passwords in combination with the KeePassXC password manager. Not as well integrated as 1Password or LastPass but fully open-source, free, and no “cloud” stuff.
Moving on to the less essential add-ons. URL to QR code shows the current URL as a QR code. I use it to easily open the current page on my phone. A poor mans iPhone Handoff solution for those without a Mac.
Link Cleaner+, a fork of the no longer maintained Link Cleaner, removes UTM parameters from URLs. UTM params are the garbage at the end of a URL to make it easier to track how you ended up on their site. This add-on helps copy & pasting cleaner URLs and limits my digital footprint.
This post is open source. Did you spot a mistake? Ideas for improvements? Contribute to this post via Github. Thank you!