WildFyr Documentation > Other Tutorials > Switching from Firefox to Librewolf. The easy way

Switching from Firefox to Librewolf. The easy way

So, if you have not heard the news. Firefox's parent company Mozillla has created a Terms of Use for Firefox (Yes, Firefox did not have a ToU before) some people are scared as to what this means for the future of privacy on their browser.

Fear not, as I have a solution for you; and no it does not require switching to a Chromium based browser. Librewolf is a fork of Firefox, running on the same Gecko based engine that Firefox uses. It is maintained by the OpenSource community and does not have any monetary gain. Meaning they won't sell your data to anyone, well account they don't collect any data at all! Librewolf was build from the ground up to be privacy focused first, so you have sleep soundly knowing your browsing habits are not being sold to China or anyone else. Also, because it is a Gecko based browser if you used Firefox before switching is super easy, you can even copy over your bookmarks, passwords, extensions, themes, etc. So let's get started.

1. Installing Librewolf

https://cdn.wildfyr.net/go/librewolf

First head to this link and download the latest release of Librewolf for your system, and install it.

Here I am installing Librewolf using yay on my Arch Linux computer

a screenshot of a terminal window installing Librewolf using yay

2. Importing Firefox profile

To import your Firefox profile it is a lot easier then it sounds, just like if you installed Firefox on a new computer all you have to do is log into your Mozilla account. Simply head to the browser settings and locate sync. Enable it and it will ask you to restart, do so and click on the new sync tab then sign in. This will sync all your browser settings from Firefox to Librewolf, including add-ons, bookmarks, passwords, and the like.

Turning on sync in Librewolf settingss
Logging into your Mozilla account

If you did not have a Mozilla account, create one in your Firefox window, then log into that same account on Librewolf.

3. Protecting your safety and security

Using a different browser is not a one stop solution to your privacy on the web. Librewolf does block a lot of trackers and malware, but to take full advantage you will need some browser extensions. Here are my recommendations:

Ad, Tracker, Cookie blocking

  • Adnauseam An ad blocker that will automatically click ever ad for you, making it impossible for ad companies to track your interests because you look like you click on everything. This includes uBlock Origin, so no need for that one!
  • FastForward Skips tracking links, ad links, and others. Simply letting you see the content you clicked on, not anything else.
  • ClearURLs Removes tracking from URLs, nice for when someone sends you a link, or you send one to them.
  • DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials Blocks tracking and cookies, sets default search engine to DuckDuckGo and gives you the option of using email forwarding.

Browsing Tweaks

  • Dark Reader Makes any website that is not already in dark mode, dark. Great for your eyes, this also does so client side only, so it does not add extra finger printing from requesting a dark version of a website.
  • Web Archives Makes it really easy to see an archived version of a website, through places like The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
  • Search By Image Makes reverse image searching a breeze, do it right from your browser, even from images on the web page you are looking at!
  • Buster Solves captchas, or blocks them all together. Does not work all the time but expect about a 35% reduction in captcha requests.

Password and Card Management

  • Proton Pass An all in one password manager, much better then saving them in your browser, also has dark web scraping to find exposed passwords, password generator with many options, and email forwarding.
  • Privacy.com Allows you to create virtual credit cards to pay on websites, cards are locked to that website. If there is a that breach and that card is leaked no one will be able to use it.

YouTube

  • ImproveTube Adds a lot of tweaks and modifications you can make to the YouTube web app, like removing shorts, adjusting website colours, blocks ads and more.
  • SponsorBlock Adds the ability to skip sponsor segments, filler, intros/outros, interaction reminders, and more!
  • DeArrow By the same developer as SponsorBlock, DeArrow helps make YouTube better by removing click-bate thumbnails, formatting titles, and in some cases fully replacing titles with community sourced alternatives.
  • Return YouTube Dislike Does exactly what the title says, ads the dislike counter back to YouTube videos.

New Tab

  • Renewed Tab Replaces the "New Tab" with a custom one with support for background images, widgets, and more. See mine here
    A screenshot of my Renewed Tab

QoL Changes

There are a few changes you can make to ensure Librewolf runs as smooth for you as possible.

Saving your open tabs

Enable this setting

Settings>General>Open previous windows and tabs

Not Deleting browser history

Disable this setting

Settings>Privacy & Security>Clear history when LibreWolf closes

Open with your desired windows size

Librewolf enables RFP to help protect you online. One of things it disables is the browser remembering your window size, websites can see your window size and thus use this to build a profile on you. Librewolf starts in a generic window size to prevent this, one small issue. If you maximize your window as soon as you launch the browser the website can still see your window size. So to save you tine here is what you can do.

First maximize and go to this site Browser Resolution Tester and get the width and height of your current browser

Go to about:config

Search for both privacy.window.maxInnerWidth and privacy.window.maxInnerHeight

Edit each of these values to the size you got from the Resolution Tester.

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wildfyr
  • 27 days ago - updated (26 days ago)

Firefox Librewolf privacy

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