When you open Firefox web browser there is a lot that happens in the background that you don’t see. It performs routine checks, seeks profiles, loads your extensions and add-ons, establishes a network connection and activates the proxy server if used. All these things you might not see, but they all occur quietly in the background and all have an obvious impact on the startup time of Firefox. This will become even more evident as you overload the browser with extensions and add-ons. Basically, the more you pack in – the more you’re giving it to do – the longer Firefox will take to boot.
Once Firefox has loaded all the aforementioned background stuff, it will then connect to your pre-configured home page and render the page for you. Having your favorite search engine configured as your home page might be convenient, but unfortunately it also slows down Firefox even more. Thankfully there is a small tweak you can make to your Firefox home page to significantly reduce its startup time.
The small tweak involves simply replacing the Firefox home page from an internet website to a local image file on your hard drive.
Currently, we have our favorite search engine set as the default home page in Firefox.
For our example, we have created a simple placeholder image that we have saved to our hard drive and will use as our new home page.
First, open the image in Firefox by pressing “CTRL+O” and copy the local URL.
Now we simply need to delve into the Firefox configuration options. In the navigation menu simply enter “about:config” and confirm the warning message.
Once in the configuration options, simply search for the term “home”.
Now we simply paste in the local URL we copied earlier into the configuration option for “browser.startup.homepage”.
Now exit the configuration options and press on the “Home” button in Firefox. You will now see your new image file.
To really see the full benefits of this small yet effective Firefox tweak exit the browser completely and then restart Firefox. You will now see the full benefits of using an image as your Home page in Firefox, as it really makes Firefox startup much quicker.
