This document explains all of the optionspreferences available in the Main panel of the OptionsPreferences window of Mozilla Firefox. To access the optionspreferences window, At the top of the Firefox windowOn the menu bar, click on the ToolsFirefoxEdit menu, and select Options...Preferences....
For other panels, see OptionsPreferences window.

The Main panel contains optionspreferences related to the most commonly used settings, such as what you first see when Firefox starts and how Firefox handles file downloads.

Table Of Contents

• Startup
• Downloads
• Add-ons

Startup

By default, when you open Firefox your home page is displayed. When you first install Firefox, your home page is the Mozilla Firefox Start Page, but this can be easily changed. You can change your home page or choose to display a different page or set of pages on startup in this section.

• When Firefox starts: By default, when Firefox starts it opens your home page (listed in the textbox immediately below), which corresponds to the Show my home page option. Alternately, you can choose to display a blank page on startup (perhaps to eliminate the time required to load that page from the Internet) by selecting the Show a blank page option.

As a final alternative, you can have Firefox reopen the windows and tabs you had open the last time you ran Firefox, effectively restoring you to where you were when you last stopped browsing the Internet. This can be a handy way of saving what you were doing when you close Firefox, perhaps to install an operating system update. You can choose this option by selecting Show my windows and tabs from last time.

• Home Page: If you've set Firefox to show your home page when you start Firefox, you specify your home page by typing it here. You can also click any of the buttons below the textbox to choose a special home page:
  • Use Current Page sets the currently-displayed page (or pages, if you have multiple tabs open) as your home page
  • Use Bookmark sets the selected bookmark (or if you select a folder, the set of bookmarks in that folder) as your home page
  • Restore to Default resets your home page to the default home page

Downloads

This section contains optionspreferences determining how Firefox downloads files.

• Show the Downloads window when downloading a file: With this optionpreference selected, Firefox will open the Downloads window when you start downloading a file.
• Close it when all downloads are finished: Select this optionpreference to have Firefox close the Downloads window when all downloads currently in progress finish.
• Save files to: Downloaded files are automatically saved to a default location (such as the Desktop or to a special Downloads folder), eliminating the hassle of specifying a download location for every file you download. You can choose a different folder by clicking the Browse…Choose… button.
• Always ask me where to save files: With this optionpreference selected, Firefox will ask you where you would like to save every downloaded file (instead of using the default location specified above).

Add-ons

To install or uninstall, update or configure add-ons, click the Manage Add-ons button to open the Add-ons manager. This is also accessible from the Tools menu as Add-ons. A detailed description of add-ons and the Add-on manager is available here.