topic Re: Improved history in Discussions

Improved history

00FF00 — Tue, 20 May 2025 13:26:00 GMT

Two related suggestions:

1. Add an about:config setting to extend the saved browsing history "indefinitely"

2. Add some way to enable the other columns in the separate history/library window

The closest thing I found for the first example is possibly this setting in about:config ( browser.history.maxStateObjectSize ) but I don't think it works as expected? Though maybe I shouldn't have set it to 2147483647 lol. Either way, as of now my history is not being saved indefinitely.

It is probably for good reason this is not a default setting since plenty of people have limited storage space.

So maybe something that allows a max time period or max file size, and a popup when that limit is reached?

For the second, what I mean is in the library window there are columns you can enable for 'added' and 'last modified' which as of now do not function as expected (unless there is something in about:config I've missed).

The other columns work as expected but it would be nice if each visit to the same site had its own entry.

I assume the reason it doesn't work this way is also because of limited storage space.

I see a few other suggestions about history that are sorta similar, but personally I prefer the "old" style, closer to a "manual" view, rather than an algorithmically organized view.

For example when trying to find a website again it is useful to find websites visited before or afterwards, something lost with how history currently works, and that is also lost when organized via algorithm (aka AI).

I think the best approach is probably... both!

Since they are actually both useful for slightly different things 😁

Re: Improved history

Yump — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 15:43:39 GMT

@00FF00 wrote:
Two related suggestions:

1. Add an about:config setting to extend the saved browsing history "indefinitely"

I think the setting you are looking for may be places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages.

However, I must warn you that Firefox doesn't actually have a UI that presents browsing history. It has a few views that are labeled "history", but they really show a list of unique URLs in order of most recent visit. This is easily confused for history if you never visit the same page twice, or are a designer from 20 years ago. See bug 604295.

Re: Improved history

Agentvirtuel — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 17:03:51 GMT

Hello

An subject
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1lvg8ip/why_do_browsers_not_keep_the_history_forever_isnt
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1lvg8ip/comment/n273kat
About, MzHistoryView https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/mozilla_history_view.html, this utility works on any version of Windows, From Windows 98 to Windows 11.

For information purposes, https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1521409, SQLiteStudio https://sqlitestudio.pl, runs on Windows, Linux and MacOS X.

Re: Improved history

00FF00 — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 03:03:43 GMT

I thought this post disappeared tbh lol

>I think the setting you are looking for may be places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages.
>See bug 604295.

I don't see that as an option in about:config, all I see is:

* places.history.enabled

* places.history.floodingPrevention.enabled

* places.history.floodingPrevention.maxSecondsFromLastUserInteraction

* places.history.floodingPrevention.restrictionCount

* places.history.floodingPrevention.restrictionExpireSeconds

And a few others that look related but not quite the thing, unfortunately.

Thanks for the suggestion though! Hopefully they can look at working on this sometime

Re: Improved history

00FF00 — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 03:05:15 GMT

Awesome info thanks for the links! Unfortunately it seems the answer is it's not possible at this time

Really great link though - jscher knows his stuff as always lol

Re: Improved history

00FF00 — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 03:10:30 GMT

TIL this is a duplicate suggestion