My favorite Firefox extensions

Note

This page is about extensions for Mozilla Firefox, the best web browser!

For more details, maybe you should first read one of these:

My list of extensions

Please find below my list of favorite extensions for Mozilla Firefox, the best web browser!.

Note

What is an extension?

An extension is an additional piece of program a for your browser. I am focusing on the wonderful Firefox here.

These extensions are somewhat similar to Sublime Text plugins, so if you are interested: I wrote a page about Sublime Text too!

For a better user experience

  • Activate Reader View (0.1.0) to easily activate the « reader view » on any website,

  • In addition to enabling spell checking with the (built-in) dictionary, this LanguageTool extension checks grammar with LanguageTool.org. It integrates into any text box, it can be disabled for a particular website. By default, the plugin sends typed text online, which is not optimal for security and privacy (and doesn’t work offline), but you can install it yourself on your computer (with a little tweaking). I find it incredible, I just discovered it (February 2021),

  • Dark Reader (4.5.0) to turn on a « dark mode » for (almost) any website, very nice when working during the night!

  • JSONView (2.0.0) to display nicely JSON files,

  • Markdown Viewer Webext (1.3.0) to display nicely Markdown files,

  • Tab Session Manager (3.1.1) to save and restore sessions (list of open tabs and windows),

  • Tab Notifier (3.1) to notify whenever a tab changes its title (e.g., next video on YouTube).

  • Textarea Cache is tiny but very handy: it keeps the contents of the last textarea, those text editing areas in your browser. Very handy when you write an answer or a message but close the tab without paying attention…

  • Tab reloader to automatically reload a tab every 5 seconds or more. Useful for pages like agreg.org when waiting for the results of an exam (or other things)!

For improved privacy and security

  • Facebook container (1.3.1), see here on GitHub, to contain any tab when you log on Facebook: the other tabs don’t know you are logged in, and you minimize the risk of seeing some of your private data stolen!

  • Ghostery (8.1.2) to block all trackers and analytic beacons!

  • NoScript (10.1.8) is even more powerful, and it allows a very fine control on what scripts do you allow to run, for every page. Rich configuration, very powerful tool!

  • uBlock Origin (1.16.4), see here on GitHub, is the best ad-blocker. Nothing more to say. Warning: it is not the same as uBlock!

  • The tiny Tracking Token Stripper (2.1) allows to remove any Google Analytics (UTM) tracking tokens from URL query strings. Very simple but perfectly efficient!

For customizing user experience

Note

My user scripts and user style sheets are available in this folder on my website.

For some specific websites

  • Emoji Cheatsheet for GitHub, Basecamp etc. (2.0.1) allows to easily pick « the right emoji » to reply on website such as GitHub.

  • GitHub File Icon (0.5.0) shows icons associated with file types. Very small but very useful when browsing large code repository online!

  • GitHub with MathJax (0.2.3) (no yet published on Firefox addons. Simple but efficient: uses MathJax to display nicely any LaTeX math equation in Markdown (and other) files seen on GitHub.

  • Quick Commands provides a fast way to search and change between open Tabs or open tabs from History and Bookmarks. It’s similar to the « command » mode from VSCode and Jupyter notebooks.

  • YouTube Control Center (0.6.3), see on the editor’s website, allows a powerful control on YouTube.com. In particular, I use it myself to hide (and even, do not load) the comments area, which I have always found stupid and useless (and it’s more ecological and respectful of privacy!).

  • YouTube Speed Control is very small but allows you to change the video of your videos. It’s essential for me, to listen to (and watch some of) all the channels of the channels in my subscription list. I look at my videos in French and English x1.75 by default, and lots of them are so slow that when I’m awake, I can go to x3 speed!

For ecological purposes

  • Carbonalyser analyses which websites you browse the most, and which ones are the most polluting by analyzing the quantity of data sent and received. For me on February 2021, it was 34% YouTube, 12% Netflix and 11% 9Gag.

  • YouTube Audio allows you not to receive the video stream, and therefore significantly reduces power consumption and therefore the ecological impact of your consumption of YouTube videos, if you don’t watch them but just listen to them…

Voir aussi

What I watch on YouTube! ;

Previous list

There are a few lists of some useful extensions, kinda sorted by category.

Avertissement

Completely out-of-date!

This list was written in October 2015, so now it might be a little bit out-of-date… I checked it in May 2016, and it was alright. In 2017, from Firefox version 57, the format of extensions changed, and most of the extensions I was using no longer exist. I keep the original list just for fun.

Extensions everyone should have

  • AdBlock Plus to completely remove advertising, pop-ups and other vicious things,

  • InlineDisposition and Open In Browser to always be able to open a document in the browser, instead of downloading it,

  • NoSquint allows to set the zoom and text zoom settings differently for each websites (just try it, it’s awesome),

  • Speed Tweaks (Speedy Fox) to tweak some parameters of Firefox and improve its speed (just one click to do, it works wonderfully out-of-the-box),

  • Tab Group restores the old feature of tab grouping, which I consider mandatory (it was removed after Firefox v45+),

  • Tab Mix Plus adds many useful features if you like to use tabs.

Note

« What about Google Chrome? »

I have never used another browser than Firefox, sorry…

However, it should be easy for you to look for in the Google Chrome extensions store to find extensions similar to the one presented here.

Styling extensions

  • FabTabs colors each tabs with a color representing its page (a Facebook tab will look blue for instance). Simple but awesome!

  • FlagFox adds a small flag of the country of the website (domain name but also hosting server),

  • GNotifier and Tab Notifier to integrate the browser notifications into the notification system of your desktop (and to display notifications for some pages that should do it but don’t. For example it monitors any change of the page title for example, it works on Facebook, YouTube etc),

  • Location Bar Enhancer adds feature rich breadcrumb user interface in the location bar (weird at first, magical after),

  • New Tab Tools greatly improves the « new tab » page,

  • Tab Wheel Scroll to change tabs with the wheel (I don’t use it but it is a nice feature).

Extensions for geeks

  • Classic Theme Restorer allows to disable some of the new Firefox theme features. This add-on restores squared tabs, the application button with application menu (known from Firefox for Windows), the add-on bar, bookmarks/history menu/sidebar buttons and other buttons,

  • Customizable Shortcuts allows to customize every single Firefox shortcut (I just use it to disable Ctrl+q and Ctrl+Q… I don’t want Firefox to quit without asking me with just a small shortcut!),

  • Download Status Bar adds nice feature for a better control of the downloading feature in Firefox,

  • Stylish lets you easily manage user styles: user styles are themes for web sites. I am a huge fan of the sweet github-dark custom style for GitHub. See also my style for live.com and outlook.com (Outlook Microsoft webmail).

  • Textarea cache will save automatically the content in textarea or « WYSIWYG » editor when you are typing. Then you can recover the saved texts in the cache window, even if the tab or the window was closed unexpectedly.

Read and view more types of files

Extensions for secrets agents (or paranoid people)

  • BetterPrivacy removes useless cookies and Flash cache when closing,

  • Decentrales allows to locally emulate the Content Delivery Networks. It is a great idea to improve both performance and anonymousness,

  • Disconnect removes trackers and advertising,

  • Element Hiding Helper for AdBlock Plus to be able to remove any type of web element (image, banner etc) like if it was an advertising handled by AdBlock,

  • Facebook Disconnect to completely disable Facebook’s default tracking behavior on other websites,

  • FlashBlock disables by default Flash objects on every page (note: AdBlock or Ghostery offer the same feature). No more auto-played videos…

  • Ghostery is THE user-friendly tool to disable tracking cookies, tracking beacons and other mini spying softwares that are nowadays on every website (and I have nothing to about it: this website alse uses Google Analytics…),

  • HTTPS Everywhere protects your communications by enabling HTTPS encryption automatically on sites that are known to support it, even when you type URLs or follow links that omit the https: prefix.

  • NoScript Security Suite is THE less-user-friendly tool to significantly improve security in Firefox: by default, all unknown javascript programs will be disabled (and many other improvements like XSS checks etc),

  • SSLeuth ranks an established SSL/TLS connection and gives a brief summary of the cipher suite, certificate and other SSL/TLS parameters,

  • Toggle Proxy if you use different proxies.

Extensions for web-developers

  • Link Checker to… quickly check links!

  • Octotree is sweet if you use `GitHub`_ a lot.

  • Quick Locale Switcher to… quickly change the locale settings (the language you ask the pages to be displayed),

  • Reload Plus to regain control of your cache (Ctrl+F5 reload the page, erasing the local cached version).

Other extensions

  • All-in-One Sidebar if you like having history, downloads, favorites all in the sidebar (useful on a large screen for example),

  • Copy as Plain Text if you work a lot with Markdown or other markup languages,

  • Markdown Here if you want to write fancy emails with Markdown,

  • Mind the Time allows to precisely monitor the time you spend on the web, each day, week and month, website by website.

  • about:addons-memory is simple but useful if your Firefox uses too much RAM: it adds a about:addons-memory page displaying the memory use of each addons. If one is using way too much RAM, maybe it’s time to uninstall it!

Similar pages

Voir aussi

Applications for Android™

List of the best apps for a Android™ smartphone.

Plugins for Sublime Text 3

List of the best plugins for the awesome text editor Sublime Text (3).