Title. Just switched from Opera GX after getting the equivalent of a counterstrike flashbang in my ears from the new splash startup screen. They won’t even let you disable it, you have to manually delete the file from the install location. Still, rant over, I would love to hear your suggestions for extensions.
Wow, the flashbang update is indeed pissing users lol.
Anyway, welcome to Firefox! Here are my recommendations:
uBlock Origin
Dark Reader (night mode on websites)
Youtube-shorts block (option to hide shorts tab, and treats shorts as a regular video, not as vertical tiktok style video)
Auto tab discard (put unused tabs to sleep)
I still don’t care about cookies (block cookie pop-ups)
You can customize the appearance of your browser as well, I believe there’s one here where you can make it look like Opera GX, just follow the instructions after finding the one you like to use: https://firefoxcss-store.github.io/
Also, Mozilla is working to support 200 more add-ons on Firefox Android soon, if you are using an Android phone.
I wouldn’t get too crazy with extensions but must haves for me
Dark reader (not a way in about:config that I know of to force dark mode)
UBlock Origin (must have ad/tracker blocker)
Multi account containers (if you like to have separate containers for your browsing categories)
Tree Style Tabs allows you to display your tabs as a sidebar with nesting – so, if you open a link in a new tab, that tab is indented under the tab you opened the link from. Very good for keeping track of things, when you’re opening tons of tabs when researching a handful of related topics.
Stylus allows you to customize websites’ appearance using CSS, while Greasemonkey, Tampermonkey, and similar allow you to run custom JavaScript code on websites. Folks share userstyles and userscripts for these to help customize sites they use often. (Just be sure not to confuse Stylus with Stylish, which… has a well-deserved bad rep.)
uBlock Origin is probably one of the best ad and content blockers out there, and works best on Firefox. Don’t confuse it with uBlock, an older extension that came under some dodgy ownership a while back.
ublock origin, dark reader, multi accounts container, translate web pages, web archives.
Hoooo an Opera leaver like me recently 
On my side those i recommand i’ve installed directly are:
- ublock Orign for ads
- Bitwarder as password manager
- Tree Style tab
- ImTranslator (need it for my work on my side)
- Firelux for my eyes (i pref instead Dark Reader because sometimes some websites aren’t built for a dark mode switching)
I use a bunch:
- 1Password because it’s my password manager of choice.
- Bypass Paywalls Clean is pretty self-explanatory, though not available on the add-ons store if I remember correctly.
- ClearURLs removes all the tracking garbage on most URLs.
- DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials. Really only use this to manage my duck.com forwarding email address, but it can do a lot of other stuff as well.
- Enhancer for YouTube allows you to customize the YT interface and playback, but it looks like it’s no longer available, so not sure where you’d install it from these days. There’s some info on the dev’s site about it: Enhancer for YouTube™
- Facebook Container and Firefox Multi-Account Containers. The first I basically use to block Facebook trackers across the web and the second to compartmentalize other aggressive trackers as much as I can (so, for instance, all Amazon properties open in an Amazon container; all Google properties in a Google container, etc.).
- Pushbullet. Don’t use this one as much anymore but still useful for sending stuff directly to my browser from other devices.
- Recipe Filter gets rid of the pages and pages of crap I don’t want to read when I’m on various recipe sites.
- Reddit Enhancement Suite. Again, pretty self-explanatory.
- uBlock Origin is the best adblocker.
- User-Agent Switcher and Manager for those sites that don’t let you do anything unless you’re running a different browser. Pretty much all of them still work in Firefox, so I use this to tell that site that I’m not using Firefox.
- Wayback Machine. To archive sites that I come across with one click. I think you can also do this with a bookmark that has some code in it, but I’m lazy.
CRITICAL (for me):
- uBlock Origin - Block ads, malware, and malware-ads.
- Sidebery - Vertical tree tabs. The main reason some people use Firefox over other browsers. Newer and better than TST.
- Dark Reader - Dark theme web pages.
Useful:
- Imagus - Hover to zoom into images. Clicking on images is so '90s.
- Violentmonkey - User scripts (i.e., JavaScript utilities/helpers that you can execute on webpages; there are many useful ones already made by the community).
- Stylus - User styles (i.e., customizable CSS on webpages).
- Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES) - Upgrade for “old” (i.e. functional) reddit.
- Bitwarden - Portable password management.
Rare gems:
- Tab ReTitle - Automatically renames tabs based on regex. Alternatively, you could do this with a simple userscript instead, though.
Sidebery. I much prefer it to tree style tabs. Better interface, more customizable, in general far perferable. It’s the ideal way to manage a shit load of tabs
If you do work that involves lots of research/opening tabs, having a tree style vertical view for them is absolutely incredible.
Sidebery is the best for that imo, it’s ridiculously customisable.
- You can have multiple panels for different types of things you might be doing
- You can even hide the tabs not in the current panel you’re using so it’s like having multiple firefox windows in one
- You can control everything with mouse or keyboard, whichever is more comfortable.
- You can tell it to take snapshots of what you have open at regular intervals so even if you close stuff you can find it again.
- Manages tab container stuff for you too so no need for a separate extension
- Sync all your settings between browsers so you only need to get everything working just right once.
Stuff like uBlock Origin and cookies stuff are all great, but this is the extension I get downloaded and sorted first every time due to how useful it is!
(I will say, it can take some time to get used to vertical tabs after horizontal, give it a week and see how you get on if you decide to use it!)
Apart from others mentioned, youtube nonstop for youtube music. And leechblock to stop reddit and other things from taking too much time.
Oh boy, I’m like a kid in a candy store right now!!!
-
Lizard: Lets you remove annoying elements on a web page, including annoying banners, floating menus, ads, etc.
-
SingleFileZ: Lets you save a complete webpage in a single .html file. The file compresses the saved web page contents so your saved file isn’t super big.
-
LeechBlock NG: Automatically closes web pages that you don’t want to ever see. You enter the websites in LeechBlock NG - the next time any page within a domain you’ve blacklisted tries to open, LeechBlock NG instantly closes it.
-
ScrollAnywhere: Enables you to scroll through a webpage using your mouse cursor, emulating the scroll behavior of a cell phone or tablet. No need to use the scrollbars!
-
Imagus: Shows you preview popups of images and even videos. Just hover the mouse cursor over an image or video to see what they are, without having to actually click on the link. Works well with Reddit’s videos, too.
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Distill Web Monitor: Monitors your favorite web pages and lets you know when something new happens, like software updates.
The extensions I have installed into Waterfox are:
- uBlock Origin (GOATed extension ever installed)
- CanvasBlocker
- Control Panel for Twitter
- Minimal Twitter (these two customize the look of Twitter)
- Return YouTube Dislike
- SponsorBlock (I hate ad-reads)
- LanguageTool
- User Agent Switcher
- DeArrow (I hate clickbait titles and thumbnails)
- Sip Redirect
- CustomTube (to restore the old YouTube UI of yesteryear)
- Enhancer for YouTube
- New Tab Tools (to give your new tab page a fresh coat of paint)
- Image Search Options
- Web Archives
- Consent-o-matic
I have a lot of extensions.
- uBlock Origin
- Private Bookmarks
- Firefox multi-account containers
- Bitwarden
I simply have uBlock Origin and then a User-Agent spoofer since the Windows ISO can only be downloaded from Microsoft’s website if your device is not running Windows (the website gives you a download link for a USB creator utility instead).
My must-have add-ons are:
- uBlock Origin (A powerful ad-blocking add-on)
- TWP - Translate Web Pages
- SponsorBlock for YouTube - Skip Sponsorships (Skip YouTube sponsor segments)
- Dark Reader (makes the website darker for night browsing)
And optionally:
- Violentmonkey (A script manager add-on that can help you improves your browsing experience)
Just for reference, the image below are my installed scripts in Violentmonkey:
Get the one for YouTube called sponsor block. Community policed plugin that will automatically skip segments in videos for product sponsorship, unnecessary long intros, etc. it’s awesome and for remotely popular channels, the community works at a breakneck pace.
I also like the one that removes clickbait thumbnails.
Those, ublock, ghostery and Bitwarden for my passwords are the only ones I really use.
Run pretty minimum, but other than the manditory uBlock Origin.
- Return Youtube Dislike
- Feedbro