Browser Tip of the Day: How to delete individual URLs from Firefox's history

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux

Browser Tip of the Day: How to delete individual URLs from Firefox's history

by Jordan Running Jul 14th 2005

Firefox I rely on Firefox's History to keep my most frequently-accessed web sites available at a keypress. I can type any letter into the address bar and immediately choose among my favorite web sites whose URLs start with that letter. That's not the tip; read on. Unfortunately, the History gets polluted sometimes -- somehow a web site I have no interest in visiting frequently will find its way to the top of the list for some letter I use often, which really chafes me. For some reason I've ever been convinced that there's no way to delete individual URLs from the History without just clearing the whole thing. Turns out I was wrong. In Firefox, if you want to delete an individual entry from the History, just highlight it (either in the History sidebar or in the address bar drop-down) and press Shift+Delete. Gone, never to bother you again!

Maybe this is news to nobody but me (indeed, it's right there in Help), but I'm just thrilled about it.

Tags: delete, firefox, history, remove, tip, trick

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Timmah said 12:39PM on 7-14-2005

You just made my day man.... Keep 'em coming!
:o)

Bart said 1:18PM on 7-14-2005

Nice! I wish it was an option to display the main adress first, instead of others, eg. www.adress.com, but not www.adress.com/subsite

VVV said 2:15PM on 7-14-2005

no need to SHIFT + DELETE a right click is enoughor even just delete. That's the first thing I learned on Firefox.

Jordan Running said 2:18PM on 7-14-2005

VVV, though you can right-click on items in the History sidebar, right-clicking on a URL in the address bar drop-down will open the URL rather than popping up the context menu.

Will said 10:32PM on 7-14-2005

thats awesome, i've been trying to figure out how to do that for the last 2 weeks

yem said 8:15AM on 7-15-2005

Useful for getting all those pr0n URL's out of the URL history... :)

Someone had to say it.

Russell Limprecht said 9:14AM on 7-15-2005

Right shift delete works great.

Hector said 2:24PM on 7-15-2005

Thanks! Another annoyance to bite the dust...I guess we should all read the HELP files a little better. Stupid shift key!

Stephen M?r said 3:28AM on 7-17-2005

Wow amazing.
apparently this also works in type in fields.
At my gmail login screen i had a bunch of bad type-ins that stayd with me. again, just select one in the dropdown list and press shift+delete.
sweet.

Stephen M?r said 3:28AM on 7-17-2005

Scott Young said 6:59PM on 8-02-2005

This doesn't work with Firefox 1.06 on Macs. Any suggestions? I think I've tried every key combination with delete.

mark said 11:22AM on 8-25-2005

i cannot thank you enough for pointing this out. it was one of my least favorite parts of firefox.

foo.bar said 1:11AM on 8-26-2005

this tip doesn't work in the history sidebar for me (Firefox 1.0.6 on XP). left-clicking on an entry opens the page. you can just right-click on an entry and then select Delete from the contextual menu.

Øystein Bakke Larsen said 4:44PM on 11-23-2007

Today I figured out firefox is grouping elements in the history, but I don't know why it is done, as it is only on one computer. Grouping elements is a nice thing; deleting the entire "facebook.com" from history.

Anybody who know how to make firefox group elements?

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