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Comment by nominated1 | Hacker News Reader

Many of these sites suggest making edits via “about:config”. The problem is it’s difficult to keep track of which settings you’ve altered. I highly recommend you use a user.js [1] file. The best part is you can make notes so later you knows why a setting was enabled or disabled.

The only downside is if you decide to undo a setting in user.js you’ll also have to make the same change in about:config.

[1] http://kb.mozillazine.org/User.js_file

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Firefox's about:support page lists the about:config prefs that have non-default values ("Important Modified Preferences"). That includes prefs you've changed and internal prefs changed by Firefox code.

Unfortunately the info provided by about:support doesn’t separate changes made via the gui and changes made via about:config. It also includes settings that may have been altered by Add-ons.

Another benefit to using a user.js file is that your changes are persistent. If Mozilla changes a setting via an upgrade, like they did with experiments and plan to do with DoH, your changes aren’t overridden.

They are saved under the user profile directory in the `prefs.js` file. src[0] I have it symlinked to `~/.config/firefox/pref.js` (which also contains `chrome/userChrome.css`, also symlinked to from the firefox profile) in this way they get checked into git with the rest of my dotfiles.

[0] https://support.mozilla.org/si/questions/965842

Another issue is that most of such modifications also suggest editing the allowed ciphers, which makes it easier for servers to track you.

start with https://github.com/pyllyukko/user.js/

I counter with https://github.com/ghacksuserjs/ghacks-user.js

good call. looks more actively maintained.

The maintainers and pull requesters are very persnickety too, so they usually are ahead of Mozilla's future releases.

Modified about:config settings appear in bold, though. It's good for a quick glance, but yeah not much after that.

and I remember one time being able to reorder the list so it shows all the modified items at the top

Sorting by the "Status" column still does this.

As long as `chrome://global/content/config.xul` still exists, you can use it. I certainly do, since the new interface is horrible and Mozilla constantly dismisses the obvious usability issues.

Thanks for this, I use it and userChrome for some add-on alterations, but it didn't occur to me I could use it for 'manual' about:config changes.

> The only downside is if you decide to undo a setting in user.js you’ll also have to make the same change in about:config.

You could change it to the inverse/default explicitly in user.js?

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