Firefox History: Search, Management, Export, and the Frecency Algorithm Explained

Firefox's browser history offers more search capabilities than many users realize, and there are several methods to manage, backup, and restore it. This comprehensive guide explains how to access, search, manage, and export your Firefox history.

Quick access to history can be achieved by typing part of a URL or page title in the address bar, or by using keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+H to open the History sidebar, or Ctrl+Shift+H for a full history in a new panel. An advanced history search is also available in the Library (Ctrl+Shift+H), allowing you to search by title, URL, or tags, and filter results by date (Today, Last 7 Days, This Month, Older) or sort by Last Visited, Most Visited, Date, Title, or URL.

The address bar history is the most useful daily feature, as it provides instant suggestions ranked by frequency, recency, and bookmark status. Firefox's history model stores two types of data: URLs visited (in the Places database), and bookmark data and search queries.

The Frecency algorithm determines which history suggestions appear first, taking into account both the frequency of visits and recency. Firefox keeps 90 days of history and up to 40,000 URLs by default. For those who desire longer history retention, this can be adjusted to 365 days of history and 100,000 URLs by modifying the browser.history_expire_days and browser.history_expire_sites settings in about:config.

To clear history, users can choose to clear immediately (for a partial clear), or select a specific time range (Last Hour, Last 2 Hours, Last 4 Hours, Today, Everything) when clearing all history. They can also choose which data to clear, including browsing and download history, form and search history, active logins, cookies, cache, and offline website data.

Clearing history on close is also an option in the Settings → Privacy & Security → History menu. Specific sites can be forgotten by right-clicking on the site and selecting "Forget About This Site" from the context menu, which removes all history entries for that domain.

The Nuclear option to clear all history is available in the Settings → Privacy → Clear Data menu. Additionally, individual pages can be removed from history by typing the URL or its title in the address bar, hovering over the history suggestion, and pressing Delete (or the X button) to remove just that entry, or by using the Library to find the entry and right-clicking to "Forget About This Site."

Private browsing windows do not save history to the main profile, and closing a private window results in the loss of all history from that session. Private browsing prevents local history storage, but does not hide browsing activity from ISPs, employer networks, VPN providers, or the websites themselves. Firefox Multi-Account Containers offer a semi-private browsing solution, allowing history tracking while maintaining cookie isolation.

Firefox does not support importing history from external files, but you can export history by querying the SQLite database places.sqlite (located in ~/.mozilla/firefox/PROFILENAME/) using a SQLite query. History extensions are also available for exporting history to CSV or JSON format.

The address bar suggestions algorithm, called Frecency, combines frequency and recency to rank history suggestions. Pages with a higher visit count and more recent visits receive a higher score, while bookmarks and title matches also contribute to the score. This means that pages visited only once are less likely to appear in the suggestions long-term, while frequently visited pages remain prominent in the ranking for months.

To boost a page's appearance in suggestions, visit it a few times. To suppress a page, remove it from history or forget that site.