Deleting history entries by pressing the Delete key was surprisingly slow when I had to do it this morning (selected about 100 items). Firefox seemed to remove about 20 items every 5 seconds (the scroll bar thumb would get larger). I don't know what's going on during that time.

Firefox has a database maintenance tool that might help. Open Firefox's Troubleshooting Information page using either

• "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
• (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
• type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

Scroll down or use Find to jump to the Places Database section, then in the Integrity row, click the Verify Integrity button.

That probably will take a minute to run because it operates on the entire database.

But to the larger question, you may want to look for History-related extensions on the Add-ons site:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/search/?q=history&tag=firefox57

Hi your first answer might help me if I understood better what it means. I have a Dutch version of Firefox. I found a 3 bar button and a ? and a Dutch word which roughly means troubleshooting. this gave me the Internet page with the title about:support.

there I found long list of things separated into sections and some are in Dutch. The finder didn't locate something called "places database". I had it look up the dutch word for Integrity (integriteit). and found it under the heading Places-database the "-" between the words instead of a space meant the finder did not work..

I am somewhat afraid to click on (the Dutch translation of) "verify integrity" as I have zero idea what that means and what it will do.... I tried to look it up but this only got more mystifying to me.

Thanks for your explanation.

PS I put in a history deleter and will check it out.

jlpY said

I am somewhat afraid to click on (the Dutch translation of) "verify integrity" as I have zero idea what that means and what it will do.... I tried to look it up but this only got more mystifying to me.

I don't know if the details are documented anywhere.

What do you think it will do? Seeing as you mentioned clicking on it, there must be some reason?

Hi jlpY, it checks the structure of the database and reports how much valid data it found. I think it also flushes corrupt records. However, when I've used it in the past it listed off about 8 different technical things that don't mean a lot to me.

Best is to first create a backup copy of the current places.sqlite because with such a large database things can easily go wrong.

How many history items is this about when you select this folder in the left pane in the History Manager (Library)?

• Expire history by days: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/expire-history-by-days/
• History Cleaner: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/history-cleaner/
• Historia: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/historia/

Hi, thanks. I used the add-on History Cleaner. I put in keep 180 days, so it would keep 6 months. I also deleted from history by having the search look for all the sites visited in history from hotmail and gmail and also all the facebook entries in history. On each one I selected all and deleted them.

I have a guest login on my computer, there I also added the history cleaner add-on and had the history only save 90 days, I might shorten it to 30 days.

To co-el: what do you mean by "in first create a backup copy of the current places.sqlite "? Do you mean before I click on the "verify integrity"? or before deleting history? There has been no problem in deleting history by the way.

I would like a button that says "partially solved problem" As I have been using the History Cleaner add on and it works perfectly. I have it now set to 90 days and will probably shorten it in the long run.

I am wondering if there is an add on that would remove specific sites from the history (like microsoft, hotmail, gmail and other mail sites where I do not need to keep history of each of the mails that I opened......)

Secondly co-el suggested two things which need more background for me to understand: 1. Maybe you can explain exactly what does the "verify integrity" link DO? (described above in one of co-els replies of jscher2000) and mentioned by you. 2. I do not know what co-el means by "create a backup copy of the current places.sqlite " in your reply. How and where do I do this and what does that do?

What is the file size of the places.sqlite file?

Firefox stores your personal data in a profile folder in a hidden location under "AppData\Roaming".

You can use the button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page.

• Help -> Troubleshooting Information -> Profile Directory:
  Windows: Show Folder; Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox

There is a button further down below the Preferences sections on the about:support page that you can use to check this file and perform a vacuum operation to reduce its file size.

• "Verify Integrity" on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page

This can be useful if you have removed a lot of history. Firefox does this automatically every now and then, but doing it manually will show some stats.

Note that we usually do not recommend to use external third-party software like CCleaner because it can lead to file corruption and data loss.

your question: What is the file size of the places.sqlite file? When I opened the page "about profiles" there were 2 named Main and Default. the one called Main had also the word roaming (and contained more folders and files) .. I looked at the Main profile and I found 3 sqlite files that came up: places.sqlite 30,720 kb places.sqlite-shm 32 kb places.sqlite-wal 2,434 kb

Why do you ask?

I am not looking for 3rd party cleaners, I tried one once in 2015 not on this computer and it didn't help and made some serious problems.

I did put the addon history cleaner in that I found in the Firefox addons.

I tried the integrity button and the process was very quick. there was a long list of things but interesting was: Task: vacuum + Initial database size is 30720 KiB + The database has been vacuumed + Final database size is 5120 KiB