I noticed that Firefox seemed slow (hold the comments!) when downloading files. Not the downloads themselves, but the starting of the download. I would click on a link, and then wait like 10 seconds, and then the little download window would appear, and the download would start. I finally figured out the delay…
See that little button labeled “Clean Up”? Use it! Once I cleared out the list of files built up in there, it fixed the delay. I think I just let it build up for months without thinking about it, and it got gradually slower and slower.
Even though I’ve been using Mozilla since the early days, there is always something new to learn, or something old to not forget. Or something…
2 replies on “Firefox Download Clean Up”
Actually, my machine is chewing over the start of downloads too (10+ seconds each time), but I “clean up” my downloads window all the time. Baffling, frankly.
I just had the same ah-ha… My downloads were taking forever just to get going. I probably had never used that clean-up button. I really had never even noticed the button. I got suspicious about the delays, and after noticing the “clean up” button, I googled for “firefox download clean up”, and got this page. Sure enough, cleaning up the download queue totally eliminated the several second delay i was seeing.
MozillaZine.org even has a FAQ entry for this, “File downloading has been very slow lately, why?“. Somebody should probably submit a bug/enhancement… (wish I had the time…).