My must-have Firefox extensions

posted 2019/01/03

#addons #bitwarden #cookie autodelete #extensions #firefox #https everywhere #javascript switcher #ublock origin

Firefox Extensions

As my first blog post, I’m going to write about the first thing I do after installing/running Firefox for the first time: installing my extensions.

There are a lot of Firefox extensions at addons.mozilla.org and in this post I’m going to describe my ‘must-have’ extensions.

They are in a relevance order and the most important thing to me is the openess of the extension.

uBlock Origin

uBlock Origin has the best ad-blocking capabilities.

Unlike the most famous Adblocker, it doesn’t have a “sponsored-white-list” (Google, I’m looking at you) and it has a less CPU consumption and memory footprint[citation needed?].

License: GNU General Public License, version 3.0.

Bitwarden - Free Password Manager

After I discovered Bitwarden - Free Password Manager my “online authentication life” turned into something totally different, for better of course.

Now my passwords in every website are unique, has a lot of letters, numbers, symbols, etc… And the best part is… I don’t even know them ;) I just memorized my e-mail password and created a two-step login and that’s it.

Bitwarden allows you to store other information besides login/email and password, like Authenticator Keys (TOTP), notes, etc.

It has cloud storage (and the information is encrypted before sent to cloud servers) and allows you to create a self-hosted solution too.

The service is free (with some acceptable restrictions) but you can buy a Premium account for $10/year.

License: GNU General Public License, version 3.0.

Cookie AutoDelete is the WebExtension version of old Self Destructing Cookies. It allows the user to set an interval after you close all the tabs from a specific website (e.g: youtube.com) to erase all the cookies of that page.

One bonus feature of this extension is that it allows you to surpass the limit of reading articles in some sites, like newspaper sites, that set a limited articles/post per day.

License: MIT/X11 License.

HTTPS Everywhere

HTTPS Everywhere enforces HTTPS access in sites that support it while have HTTP as default.

It helps protecting communications while you navigate in that sites.

License: Multiple (GPLv2+, AGPLv3+, …).

JavaScript Switcher

JavaScript Switcher was a game changer when I discovered it. I used to open the Developer Tools to disable Javascript for a specific webiste.

This extensions adds an icon to the address bar and allows to enable/disable Javascript with a single click. Definitely a must-have.

License: GNU General Public License, version 3.0.

Last Words

Well, that’s all folks. There are some more extensions I use, but for now I just listed the most important of them. Maybe sometime I can write another post dedicated to them ;).