History Deleter, Firefox History Auto Deletion rules

Martin Brinkmann
Nov 12, 2010
Updated • Apr 9, 2014
Firefox, Firefox add-ons
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The history in web browsing terms refers to the group of websites and web services that have been visited previously. Depending on the settings the history can contain the websites that have been visited on that day, the individual browsing session or several days.

Why is the browser recording the history? To give the user a tool at hand to open previously visited websites.

Browsers like Firefox integrate the history by default in other parts of the browser. This includes for instance the address bar. Firefox will search the bookmarks and history to display suggestions when you begin to type in the address bar.

The default options to delete entries from the web browsing history are limited. It is possible to remember the history, or force Firefox to ignore the history.

The Library is the main management tool for the Firefox browsing history and bookmarks. Here it is possible to edit and delete individual history items. But that's obvious not an optimal solution. The Firefox add-on History Deleter offers a better automated history management solution.

History Deleter enables you to configure history deleting rules for specific pages, domains or titles. The following rules are available:

  • Keywords: This matches the keyword to the domain name or page title.
  • Days visited before: Will only delete history entries if the site has been visited before x days.
  • Deadlinks: Will only delete links from matching sites if the links are no longer valid which means if the site in question returns a 404 not found error.
  • Visited at least two times: Will only delete items in history if the page has been visited at least twice

The add-on can execute the deletion on Firefox exit, when the history exceeds a certain number of entries or on demand. The rules can be modified for each entry individually. It is for instance possible to configure automatic deletion of entries for specific domains so that they never appear in the history after the browsing session.

firefox history management

The options page offers link checking and statistic generation parameters. Here it is possible to change the link checker interval, the number of concurrent connections or the page fetching interval.

Verdict

History Deleter offers web browsing statistics of the browsing history. The main purpose of the add-on is however to add a rule based management of the history to the Firefox web browser, and in particular better options of deleting individual items.

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History Deleter
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Comments

  1. Roman ShaRP said on September 27, 2011 at 1:17 pm
    Reply

    Recently I found that my Palemoon 6 (custom Firefox build) just doesn’t delete history, so…. I had it all onboard since February (wow!) – despite config settings set to:
    browser.history_expire_days_min = 20
    browser.history_expire_sites = 7000

    My findings (if I interpreted them right) suggest that FF changed history policy since 4.0 https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/696413#answer-15208

    “These (controlling history) prefs will be removed in future Firefox 4.0 versions and replaced with a single places.history.enabled pref to remember history or not. ”

    So… I found and installed History Deleter, and finally (!) cleaned my history with ease.

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