The Places database is indeed where History (and Bookmarks) are stored.

Do you not want Firefox recording history as you browse? You should be able to turn that off using the following checkbox:

On the Settings page, Privacy & Security panel, scroll down to the History section

Change to "Firefox will: Use custom settings for history"

Uncheck the box for "Remember browsing and download history"

Database files may need to be "vacuumed" from time to time to flush out deleted records that are still in the database. To do that, you can use the "Verify Integrity" diagnosis and repair function. That's here:

Open Firefox's Troubleshooting Information page using any of these methods:

• "3-bar" menu button > Help > More Troubleshooting Information
• (menu bar) Help > More Troubleshooting Information
• type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

Near the bottom, there is a section titled Places Database. Click the button labeled Verify Integrity. There may be a 10-15 second delay before results appear.

If all is well, the report that appears below the button should start with:

> Task: checkIntegrity
+ The places.sqlite database is sane
+ The favicons.sqlite database is sane
> Task: invalidateCaches
+ The caches have been invalidated
> Task: checkCoherence
+ The database is coherent
 

Success?

It's okay to delete favicons.sqlite if you are clearing history anyway. Note that this will turn your bookmark icons into globes until you visit those pages again.

Thank you. I deleted the icons database. That slashed the size of a bookmarks.html backup file by over 90%. It apparently contained huge amounts of code for the completely unnecessary PNG icons. Even so, the HTML file still contains ADD_DATE and LAST_MODIFIED entries. I'd prefer that it didn't.

The Places Integrity report was ok. Is there any way to purge it entirely?

What is frustrating is that I unchecked the box for "Remember browsing and download history" a long time ago. Nevetheless, it seems FF records this data in the Places database. When I open a bookmarks JSON file, I see entries for "dateAdded" and "lastModified" for example.

I see no reason for FF to track visitcount, frecency [sic], or lastvisitdate. It raises privacy concerns. Here is an example of what I can see for a bookmark entry in the JSON file. I can't access the full table.

{"guid":"tHOnL7XHZcEP","title":"Hallmark - The Good Witch","index":12,"dateAdded":1733357958519000,"lastModified":1733358037403000,"id":2351,"typeCode":2,"type":"text/x-moz-place-container","children":[{"guid":"afLZamRkwjLU","title":" The Good Witch (2008) #1- Hallmark | Tubi","index":0,"dateAdded":1732849172377000,"lastModified":1733357995289000,"id":2324,"typeCode":1,"iconuri":"https://cdn.adrise.tv/web/apple-touch-icon.png","type":"text/x-moz-place","uri":"https://tubitv.com/movies/100015929/the-good-witch"},

Thank you.

I deleted the icons database. That slashed the size of my bookmarks.html backup file by over 90%. It apparently contained huge amounts of code for the completely unnecessary PNG icons. Even so, the HTML file still contains ADD_DATE and LAST_MODIFIED entries. I'd prefer that it didn't.

The Places Integrity report was ok. Is there any way to purge it entirely?

What is frustrating is that I unchecked the box for "Remember browsing and download history" a long time ago. Nevetheless, it seems FF records this data in the Places database. When I open a bookmarks JSON file, I see entries for "dateAdded" and "lastModified" for example.

I see no reason for FF to track visitcount, frecency [sic], or lastvisitdate. It raises privacy concerns. Here is an example of what I can see for a bookmark entry in the JSON file. I can't access the full table.

{"guid":"tHOnL7XHZcEP","title":"Hallmark - The Good Witch","index":12,"dateAdded":1733357958519000,"lastModified":1733358037403000,"id":2351,"typeCode":2,"type":"text/x-moz-place-container","children":[{"guid":"afLZamRkwjLU","title":" The Good Witch (2008) #1- Hallmark | Tubi","index":0,"dateAdded":1732849172377000,"lastModified":1733357995289000,"id":2324,"typeCode":1,"iconuri":"https://cdn.adrise.tv/web/apple-touch-icon.png","type":"text/x-moz-place","uri":"https://tubitv.com/movies/100015929/the-good-witch"},

The dateAdded and lastModified columns relate to when you originally created and last edited the bookmark. Your browsing history should not affect those at all. I guess the dateAdded nearly always indicates you browsed that site on that date, but there is no built-in feature to set this to the first day of the epoch or whatever is used to indicate a blank or null date.

The visitcount, frecency, and lastvisitdate columns are used for history. Are you saying that when Firefox is not set to save history, it still updates these columns? That sounds like a bug.

If you want a customized bookmark export, there may be an add-on that can do that.

If you want to propose changes to these features, Mozilla has a product suggestion site at https://connect.mozilla.org/. To get into the current feedback stream, use the "Ideas" section of the site (at https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/idb-p/ideas).