Speed up Firefox Quantum by Disabling Telemetry and Data Collection

Firefox Quantum Developer Edition features the latest changes and development tools you need to build for the web, but it can be slow thanks to telemetry and data collection. Here's how you can disable them and speed Quantum up.


Go to the menu by clicking on the three small lines in the top right corner. Then go to Options > Privacy & Security. Finally, we can scroll down to "Firefox Developer Editions Data Collection and Use." But, before we do, there are a few other tweaks you might want to look at if your Firefox Quantum is running slowly.

Look for Cached Web Content and Site Data and choose Clear Now or Clear All Data. Under this, you will see Tracking Protection. Here you can select "Never" and manage site exceptions if needed.

Data Collection:

Now we can go to "Firefox Developer Editions Data Collection and Use" and uncheck both "Allow Firefox Developer Edition to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla" and "Allow Firefox to install and run studies."



Telemetry:

Disabling telemetry takes a little more work but can be accomplished in about five minutes. Type "about:config" in the address bar, and you will be notified that you could void your warranty (Firefox has a warranty?). Click on "I accept the risk." Type in "telemetry" in the search bar to see the results. Only some can be changed, and according to Mozilla, they are:

browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.telemetry
browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.telemetry
browser.ping-centre.telemetry
toolkit.telemetry.archive.enabled
toolkit.telemetry.bhrPing.enabled
toolkit.telemetry.enabled
toolkit.telemetry.firstShutdownPing.enabled
toolkit.telemetry.hybridContent.enabled
toolkit.telemetry.newProfilePing.enabled
toolkit.telemetry.reportingpolicy.firstRun
toolkit.telemetry.shutdownPingSender.enabled
toolkit.telemetry.unified
toolkit.telemetry.updatePing.enabled



You need to double-click on each, and that changes the value to false. Next, click on "toolkit.telemetry.server" and empty the string value which should be "https://incoming.telemetry.mozilla.org."

Finally, search again for "experiments" and look for the following four entries and double-click them to change their Value to False:

experiments.activeExperiment
experiments.enabled
experiments.supported
network.allow-experiments

That's it! Telemetry and data collection are now disabled, and Firefox Quantum should be faster, and your privacy improved.