While we browse the internet every day, there’s one thing many of us tend to forget: to clear the browsing history and the cache regularly.
Clearing the cache and the browsing history can be beneficial for a number of reasons. The most important ones are that it frees up disk space and improves suggestions that Firefox displays when you type in the browser’s address bar.
History Cleaner by Rayquaza01 is an extension for Firefox that can automate the task of deleting the browser history.
History Cleaner
Install the add-on and you’ll find that there is no button to click on the toolbar, and there are no options to toggle from the context-menu. How do you interact with the extension?
Open the about:addons page in Firefox and select History Cleaner. You will see three tabs here: Details, Options and Permissions. The only setting of the extension can be accessed from the Options page; it lets you set the number of days to keep the browsing history. Don’t set it to zero though, because that disables the add-on. You could set it to any number of days that you want. Once the set time is over, History Cleaner will delete the browsing history on its own. Just enter the number in the field and you’re good to go. It’s an install-and-forget add-on.
Remember, this extension only clears the history and not the browser cookies. So, your logins on websites should remain unaffected. If you need to clear the cookies, you should take a look at the Cookie AutoDelete extension. History Cleaner is an open source WebExtension, and a port of the Expire history by days add-on.
Clear Cache
Now what about your browser cache? It is not deleted by History Cleaner; this is what tends to fill up your storage, visit a few pages and it’ll gobble up a few Megabytes. Firefox’s cache is limited by design so that it won’t use all of a system’s hard drive for cached files. Deleting cached files may increase the time it takes to reload a resource as well.
Clear Cache extension by TenSoja can be used to clear the browser’s cache automatically. It allows you to clear the browser’s cache from the drive and the RAM with the press of a button. Once you have installed the extension, you just have to hit the F9 key and poof, your browser cache is deleted. macOS users should use the fn + F9 keyboard combo for clearing the cache. Or you could use the button that the extension adds to the toolbar to perform the same action.
Clear Cache has just two options that accessed from the extension’s listing on the about:addons page. The options are Reload active tab and Show Notification. Both of these work after the add-on has been used, i.e., the web page you were on will be reloaded, and a small pop-up notification appears to tell you that the cache has been cleared.
This add-on isn’t automated, so you should remember to clear the cache manually from time to time. Clear Cache is also an open source extension.
Closing Words
History Cleaner is fully automated, Clear Cache requires that you activate it. The latter may be useful for developers who want to make sure that files are loaded from a server and not from the cache.