As you make your way through the Internet, Firefox writes a large number of temporary files to your computer’s hard drive. It caches files like images and video files so that when you visit that site again, the page will load faster (because it pulls the files directly from your computer and not have to download them again). While this is a great idea, if you spend a fair amount of time on the net everyday, the amount of space used up can grow pretty large! This is particularly true if you have setup your browser to allow offline browsing. For a cleaner - read: better performing - computer you should have Firefox clean out these temporary folders automatically and defrag your hard drive!

  1. On the tool bar, click Tools and then “Options…”

  2. Click the “Privacy” tab. In the “Private Data” section, check the “Always clean my private data when I close Firefox” button and click the “Settings” button

    Firefox's Clear Private Data Settings

  3. Check the “Cache” check box and any others you’d like to clean automatically

    Clear Whatever Your Wish

  4. Click Ok

Optional Confirmation

You can choose to have Firefox double check with you before it deletes these files, Under the “Privacy” Tab, in the “Private Data” section, check the “Ask me before clearing private data” button.

Have Firefox Display A Confermation