Quick Tip: Turn off Prefetching in Firefox
Firefox has a spooky feature called “Prefetching” that downloads pages that it thinks you are going to click on. (note: this is a good excuse for how those pages ended up in your history). It’s also a waste of CPU and bandwidth that slows Firefox down.
To turn off this behavior, type about:config into the address bar, and then type the following into the Filter bar:
network.prefetch-next
Just double-click the item in the list to change it to false.
This article was originally written on 06/8/07
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Thanks for the tip but how does one show the “filter bar”
There is no entry in Firefox Help
Peter: The filter bar will appear automatically when you type about:config into the address bar. It will show up at the top of the browsing area.
How-to Geek: Do you have a source to cite for the comment that prefetching slows Firefox down? My understanding is that only links that are explicitly designed to be prefetched ( or ) are going to be accessed via this mechanism. I’m pulling my knowledge from http://developer.mozilla.org/e.....tching_FAQ
I, personally, turn off prefetching because of the prefetched cookies. I have Firefox configured to ask me about whether to allow a cookie or not, and prefetching definitely slows my browsing when I have to choose whether to allow or deny cookies for pages I haven’t yet visited! (This is what usually reminds me to turn it off, when I set up Firefox on a fresh system. That’s why I’m here today, in fact!)
I helped a friend switch to firefox recently and had him turn off prefetch since he has satellite internet and he gets “fapped” when he downloads over a set number of megs per day. A quite low number.
Anyone who is in this situation that also uses StumbleUpon must ensure they disable prefetch in SU as well.