How To Stop Firefox Automatically Adding Shortcuts to my New Tabs

[strifemit]

How do I stop Firefox adding to my shortcuts. I want to control what is on new tabs. All suggestions so far do not work.

[HughH]

Go to Firefox settings, on the left hand panel click on home, then scroll down until you come to Firefox Home Content. You should see shortcuts and under that Sponsored Links. Untick the blue box next to that and you should be all set.

[ArtinTP]

It does NOT work and yes I unticked the "Sponsored Links" box and virtually every freakin site I visit ends up adding yet another unwanted shortcut I then have to tediously delete. Like a fool I support Mozilla financially both for Firefox and Thunderbird and yet they have not addressed this awful invasive/intrusive fault in their browser.

What I want is the choice to put only those shortcuts that I choose on my home page and not to have any automatically added - Period!!!!!!!!!

So, Mozilla are you listening, make it happen or I go back to Brave.

[HughH]

Another way of doing it is to set all the four lines to show on your home page. Pin every box of the four lines, then set the first lines with the sites you want. Then reset how many lines you want shown according to the sites you want shortcuts to. It worked for me.

[frostcalibr]

that does not work if you have sooo much search history that you cant even see the add button(yes evn if you enable 4 rows)

[maureenocal]

Been searching for this fix, too. I migrated from Safari and Chrome, and both browsers make this type of customized bookmarking on the new tab page simple and straightforward.

[IPlayStuff]

I just want to stop it from adding stuff from my history, I already have sponsors off. I guess I'll just turn off shortcuts for now until I find a fix.

[JustMy2Cents]

Go to firefox (settings) go to (home) under the part where says (firefox home page) uncheck box that says (web).

[sethwilpan]

Me too.

[MS3]

I find this extremely annoying as well. The thing that worked for me was to untoggle "Shortcuts". Unchecking the "Sponsored Links" box alone did not work. This is the solution if like me, you don't need the shortcuts anyway. The sites I visit most are already on the Bookmark Bar.

[Applejuiceman]

Think I figured it out:

Go to Firefox settings

In the search bar at the top, type ‘about:config’

In the search preference name section, search for ‘browser:newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.smartshortcutsfeed’

Set this to false

This should get rid of the smart shortcuts and stop new ones from appearing

[Applejuiceman]

In the same config section, also search for ‘browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improve search.topSiteSearchShortcuts’ and set that to false as well.

[Applejuiceman]

// ignore this, accidentally replied to my comment twice, this website is horribly designed 

[ArtinTP]

Every time I type about:config into the search bar, I get the message saying "Sorry! There are no results in Settings for "about:config". Need help? Visit Firefox Support.

What am I doing wrong?

[Applejuiceman]

Uhh maybe try typing it in the regular search bar (on Firefox ofc). If it’s still not working then this might be a fix that only works for Linux/ubuntu, which is what I’m on. Although this doesn’t feel like the type of thing that’d be Linux specific since I’m doing it inside the browser.

Once I get back home I’ll try it on my windows laptop and report back. In the meantime, maybe try asking ChatGPT or something how to get to Firefox’s about:config section on windows

[Applejuiceman]

Update: I tried it at home on my windows pc and it worked for me! I just got on Firefox, went to the search bar, and typed “about:config” and Firefox came up with it as a search result