Tag: #settings

Firefox Browser Cache

#off-topic

For web development you will want the cache in the Mozilla Firefox browser to be disabled. Otherwise you will see not immediately see your changes properly. It’s easy to change the cache behavior as you can see in the following:

  1. Open Firefox.
  2. Open the address about:config instead of a website’s URL and confirm the warning.
  3. In the search field that appears (“Search preference name”) enter “cache” or another part of “browser.cache.check_doc_frequency“.
  4. Find the line that reads “browser.cache.check_doc_frequency“, click on the value or the pen icon, and enter “1” as a value. The value will be save as soon as you hit “Enter” or click the “✓“ icon.
  5. That’s it. Enjoy browsing without any cache obstruction by Firefox.

You can read up on all cache settings in the Mozilla’s Knowledge Base.

Preventing Chrome, Firefox and Edge to react to media keys

#off-topic

Are you getting annoyed by the fact that the music and videos are controlled by the media keys of your keyboard or mouse as well? I am often listening to the music streaming service of my choice and want only that to react to the media keys; not some random website embed. And apparently there is a solution that you can find in various places on the Internet.

Careful! This feature is actually labelled “experimental” for the browsers listed. In my experience it is safe to use though.

For Firefox: Open about:config and set media.hardwaremediakeys.enabled to false. This works as of version 81.0.1.

For Chrome/Chromium/Vivaldi (Chromium-based): Open chrome://flags/#global-media-controls and set #hardware-media-key-handling to disabled. Please note that this feature is experimental and some report that it has even been removed in Chrome 85, though it is still there in Vivaldi as of version 85.0.4183.123.

For Edge: Open edge://flags/#global-media-controls and set #global-media-controls to disabled. Then restart Edge. This is for the newish Chromium-based version of Edge (85.0.564.70)., which is why it is so similar to the Chromium-type browsers above.

Disable web access for Windows Search

#off-topic

Microsoft knows what you search for now. Okay, that is not entirely true. They knew in the past too, if you did not disable web results for the Windows Search box on Windows 10 (the little search field you get from the task bar or the start menu depending on your settings).

But here is what’s new: There is no setting in Windows 10 anymore that lets you decide whether you would like to share your search with Bing aka Microsoft or not. Whatever sensitive data you search for on your PC drive, that search request will also be sent to Microsoft.

However, there are smart people out there who find ways to prevent this. And the remaining one (if your are not a Windows 10 Enterprise user) is: Use the Windows firewall to prevent this. GHacks describes the firewall solution to this Windows Search privacy breach in a long-standing, but now updated post with screenshots. It is really simple! Even for those who think that they are not Windows experts :-)