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Waterfox

Mozilla Firefox Waterfox Google Chrome Microsoft Edge uBlock Origin

^{Version 12/17/25}

Author’s Note

Waterfox is a no-nonsense, privacy driven fork of Firefox. That means no spying on user activity, no telemetry, no analytics, no experiments, and no AI.

Installation

Install with winget or download from https://www.waterfox.com/download/

winget install -e Waterfox --accept-package-agreements --accept-source-agreements

Open Waterfox

• Click Let's Get Started
• Import browser data if you want or click Skip in the lower right corner
• Select a theme and click Save and Continue
• Click Continue
• Leave both boxes checked for defaults and click Continue
  • For the popups from Windows, click Yes and Done
  • In the Settings App that opened automatically, click Set default at the top and then close Settings
• In Waterfox, click Continue and then Start Browsing

Appearance

*This section is Optional

• If you don’t like the default Dark theme, try this one instead https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-dark-theme/

  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-dark-theme/
  

• Right click some empty space on the top bar and select Customize Toolbar
• Click Toolbars at the bottom
  • Optionally check Menu Bar
  • Set Bookmarks Toolbar to Always Show
• Click Density and select Normal
• Optionally add white space squares to the top toolbar by dragging them from the center box
• Drag Home to the toolbar next to reload
• Click Done

Settings

Click the Options Menu in top right corner > Settings

General

• Startup
  • (Optional) Uncheck Open previous windows and tabs
• Tabs
  • Uncheck Enable Container Tabs
  • (Optional) Uncheck Show an image preview when you hover on a tab
• Browsing
  • (Optional) Uncheck Control media via keyboard, headset, or virtual interface to disable Media Hotkeys

Home

• New Windows and Tabs
  • Set “Homepage and new windows” to Waterfox Home (Default)
  • Make sure “New tabs” is set to Waterfox Home (Default)
• Waterfox Home Content
  • Check Web Search
  • Uncheck Shortcuts and Recent activity

Search

• Default Search Engine
  • Select preferred Default Search Engine
  • My recommendation: DuckDuckGo
  • Check Use this search engine in Private Windows
• Search Suggestions
  • Uncheck Show search suggestions
  • (Optional) Uncheck Show recent searches
• Address Bar
  • Uncheck Search engines
  • Uncheck Quick actions
• Search Shortcuts
  • Uncheck everything

Privacy & Security

• Permissions
  • Location > Settings > Check Block new requests asking to access your location > Click Save Changes
  • Notifications > Settings > Check Block new requests asking to allow notifications > Click Save Changes

Look & Feel

• Theme
  • Select Lepton Style
• Icons
  • Check Hide All Icons

Advanced Changes

In the address bar type: about:config or copy the link from below

about:config

On the “Proceed with caution” page, click Accept the Risk and Continue or press Enter on the keyboard

Search for the setting and double click true|false to toggle the boolean

• Disable Firefox Accounts
  • Change identity.fxaccounts.enabled to false

  • identity.fxaccounts.enabled
    

• Disable sites asking to handle email links (Optional)
  • *This also prevents “mailto:” links from working
  • Change network.protocol-handler.external.mailto to false

  • network.protocol-handler.external.mailto
    

Once you have finished configuring your settings, restart Waterfox

uBlock Origin

Install

• Open the Firefox Add-ons page https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/
  

• Click Add to Firefox
• In the popup check Allow this extension to run in Private Windows and click Add
• In the second popup, leave Pin extension to toolbar checked and click OK
  • If uBlock doesn’t show on the toolbar, click the Overflow Menu button
  • Right click the uBlock icon and select Unpin from Overflow Menu

Configure

• See the uBlock Origin article

Automatically Clear History

Settings > Privacy & Security > Scroll down to “History”

• Clear any history first
  • Click Clear History
  • Change “When” to Everything
  • Select all boxes and click Clear
• Set “Waterfox will” to Never remember history
• Select Restart Waterfox now