What to Know
- Open Firefox. Type about:config in the search bar and press Enter. In the caution screen, select Accept the Risk and Continue.
- Select Show All to display a list of preferences. In the search bar, enter browser.download.folderList.
- Double-click on the entry to edit the value. Enter 0, 1, or 2 and press Enter. Close the Advanced Preferences window.
This article explains how to use the about:config option browser.download.folderList in Firefox. This information applies to the Mozilla Firefox web browser on macOS, Windows, and Linux systems.
How to Use browser.download.folderList
The Firefox web browser has a feature called about: config that houses preferences and settings. By accessing about:config, you can modify these settings. The browser.download.folderList preference lets users choose where their downloaded files are stored.
The value of browser.download.folderList can be set to 0, 1, or 2. When set to 0, Firefox saves all downloaded files to the user's desktop. When set to 1, these downloads go to the Downloads folder. When set to 2, the location specified for the most recent download is used again.
To modify the value of browser.download.folderList, follow these steps:
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Open your Firefox browser.
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Type about:config in the browser's search bar and hit Enter or Return.
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You'll see a Proceed With Caution message. To continue, select Accept the Risk and Continue.
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Select Show All on the next page, which warns again that changing these preferences can impact Firefox performance or security.
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You'll see a list of all Firefox preferences.
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In the search bar, type browser.download.folderList.
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Double-click on this entry to edit the value.
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Enter the desired value (0, 1, or 2), and press Return or Enter. In this example, we changed the value to 0 so all downloaded files will be saved to the desktop.
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Close out of the Advanced Preferences window. You've set your new download preference. When you download a file from a web page, it will save to the new location.
As Firefox evolved, many of the settings available from about:config were added to the main Preferences area. These days, an easier way to change your file-download location is to go to Menu > Preferences > Downloads and choose where to save your files.