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In the past week or so SpeedyFox has been featured in articles by many popular and respected tech websites which I read (occasionally). Until now I just gave it a short glance and passed over it. I say “until now” because I finally decided to give it a go; and now I can vouch for all the other websites which wrote about SpeedyFox because SpeedyFox really does speed up Firefox.
What SpeedyFox does is actually quite elementary if you stop and think about it. You see Firefox uses SQLITE databases to store its settings and other important stuff (one database per “profile”). The longer you use Firefox, the more that database grows. SpeedyFox simply compacts that database. Smaller database = faster Firefox = happy Ashraf.
That being said, obviously the speed increase you experience after using SpeedyFox will vary depending on how long you have used the specific Firefox profile you speed up with SpeedyFox. For most of us we have never created custom Firefox profiles so we only have one profile (“default”). In that case the speed increase you experience after using SpeedyFox will depend on how long you have been using Firefox (i.e. when was the last time you formatted or uninstalled/reinstalled Firefox and deleted the settings).
Using SpeedyFox is (almost) as easy as eating pie:
- You download SpeedyFox.
- You close Firefox if you have it open.
- You run SpeedyFox (no installation required):
- You select the profile you want to speed up (most of us will only have one profile; in that case leave it at “default”).
- You click “Speed Up My Firefox!”.
- You wait:
The compacting of the database will depend on how large your database is. According to the developer, it can vary from 5 minutes to an hour.
- You enjoy.
While it is hard for me to quantify in numbers the speed increase I am now enjoying, as I said the reason I am writing about SpeedyFox is because it does work.
You can download SpeedyFox from the following link:
Version Reviewed: v1.2
Supported OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7
@gates13: I’ve got the latest version of Firefox for Windows and it runs fine for me.
Hi,
I’ve launched SpeedyFox today and window appeared with the information: “This version of the program is expired. You will be refirected (original spelling) to our web site now.” I’m interested how SpeedyFox did connect to his web site (SpeedyFox never asked my firewall for internet connection) and found out that the present version was out-of-date. Has Crystalidea (thanks to SpeedyFox) a possibility for spying people?
It’s me again. Reply from crystalidea.com: “SpeedyFox does not connect do any web sites, the expire dialog appeared because that version had a time limit period. Please download the latest.”
I am running the Pale Moon Browser. I installed Speedy Fox and was very surprised with just short of 20 second increase. More importantly is that my CPU is no longer running Maxed-out. Now it is mid to low.
Even my Menus are opening more rapidly.
What a neto’ little application.
TIP: BleachBit (open source) does exactly what SpeedyFox does, next to cleaning my entire PC.
I’ll give Speedyfox a trial because the manual method for speeding Firefox up is a PITA. for those who Spedyfox either does not work, or want to give it a try I’ll explain the manual method though.
#1 This is the obvious steps, included for any non-techies who read this. In Firefox Select Tools>>Options and on the box select Advanced Panel>>General Tab. If you have “Use Hardware Acceleration” selected, de-select it. Save, exit and restart Firefox if not go to the next step.
If you added any new Extensions or Add-ons before this happened, try disabling them to see if that helps, or updating them. You might try disabling them all and then re-enabling them one at a time to see if one of them is the problem. If that doesn’t help proceed to step #2
#2 This will clear your browsing history and your record of open tabs so back them up first if that’s a consideration. Next thing to try go to Help>>Troubleshooting Information and a troubleshooting information tab will open. Under the Application Basics section, click on Open Containing Folder. A window with your profile files will open. There are alternate ways to find this folder but it varies by OS and version of the OS. Be sure to exit Firefox at this point so the changes you are about to make will work!
Now this first step will delete your places database in case you have a corrupted one. That means your browsing history will be gone but your bookmarks will be OK. Find the file places.sqlite and if it exists places.sqlite-journal and rename them by adding .old to the end. The second step is to delete the old session restore files. The can slow down and hang up your browsing and cause a lot of problems. Find and delete any file named sessionstore.js, sessionstore-1.js, sessionstore-2.js, etc. in the same folder. You can close the containing folder and re-open Firefox to see if that helps. This is actually the step which Speedyfox replaces, minus deleting the sessionstore files, if it works.
#3 If the above does NOT speed up Firefox then your problem is a corrupt profile. DO NOT DELETE your profile until you have backed up all your favorites, add-ons, etc. You will loose them. The only solution at this point is to delete your profile and create a new one.
All this information is straight from Mozilla’s tech support database. I had to wade through it recently to help a friend who lives on the other side of the US that is having problems. I’ve elaborated on it a little for non-techies though.
@Anyone who tried Speedyfox w/o it working. Try just deleting the sessionstore files next. Be sure to backup/bookmark your open tabs first since that’s where your browsing history is stored. That’s the second half of step #2 that Speedyfox doesn’t replace. Per Mozilla they can be a source of trouble too so it’s worth a shot.
@twospirit:
Can you run (have both installed) Pale Moon and FF ?
Does Pale Moon mess with FF ?
EG do they both recall last sessions Tabs, and they do not interfere with each other (they maintain different sets of Tabs)
Will essential Extensions like NoScript and unMHT run in Pale Moon ?
Are you concerned that most recent updates (particularly security ones) are not in Pale Moon (I am assuming Pale Moon does not update that often) ?
Ccleaner compacts Firefox databases.
Pale Moon doesn’t mess with FF. All the extensions work (it is the same code).
@Ozzie: HereHere my good man! I can’t agree with you more dear fellow. I enjoy the variety of the comments meself.
I have two instances of Pale Moon Portable, in two folders.
Running well, and not interfering with FF or each other.
I should be able to have even more folders, to give me multiple Pale Moons, which I will use for different categories of browsing. Each will retain their own open Tabs (which I do habitually)
I have reported in more detail in Ashraf’s other page -
[How To] Tip: Install multiple versions of Firefox to test before upgrading to latest release
Ccleaner can also compact the Firefox database. Look under the Cleaner tab, then Applications, then find Firefox/Mozilla (at the top of the list I see). Last option in that section is Compact Database. Check and you’re done, you can shrink the database to it’s minimum size each time you run CCleaner.
I’ve tried CCleaner and other compactors but none gave me a significant speedup. I think I have WAY too many bookmarks!