If you’ve been using Firefox since the old days, you may have noticed that in version 2 (Bon Echo), the downloads history list automatically clears itself. This is in contrast to the former behavior (say, in 1.5) where it retains the list. Now this became a performance issue since keeping a long list of downloaded items can hamper performance (one downside of Firefox is that it’s a resource hog).
Here are some ways to tweak this behavior.
Option 1 – The Easy Way
- You can simply access Tools -> Options
- In the Privacy tab check or uncheck “Remember what I last downloaded” option
Option 2 – The Expert Way
- Access the about:config page.
- Find the
browser.download.manager.retentionpreference name - Double-click on it and enter any of the following values:
- 0 – List clears upon download item completion
- 1 – List clears upon browser exit
- 2 – List clears only by clicking ‘Clean Up’ button
- The changes take effect instantly