Stop Firefox From Tracking Downloads

I’ve never actually used the Firefox download window for anything useful. I don’t really care about keeping a list of downloads, and anytime I accidentally open the downloads window, it seems to hang the browser for a few seconds.

Turning off the tracking of downloads is really very simple. I didn’t realize how simple it was until

Click Tools \ Options and then the Privacy tab.

Uncheck the box for “Remember what I’ve downloaded”. You might also want to clear the download list while you are at it.

The Geek is the founder of How-To Geek and a geek enthusiast. This article was written on 03/16/07 and tagged with: Firefox, Firefox & Internet

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Comments (4)

1. June 12, 2008 1:40 am
   Scott S.

   Thanks a lot for the tip…I should have realized how easy it was. I’m in the process of manually downloading hundreds of images for a project and up to this point it’s been a pain in the ass with the browser tensing up each time it opened the downloads box. Thanks again.

2. June 12, 2008 1:49 am
   Scott S.

   A curious sidenote…I disabled it, and everything was working fine, but then it started up again – opening the downloads box and tracking the downloads. I opened up the settings and rechecked the option to store my data and it seems to have solved the problem.

3. January 8, 2009 6:11 pm
   bingojubes

   i am using Firefox3 with the “download manager” add-on. it helps to continue the downloads when the main window has been closed, so it still gives me the download window, but not as often

4. March 29, 2009 6:39 am
   alex

   @ scott, download download them all to download a lot of images… DOH