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Question about deleting history

  • 10 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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Firefox 65.0.2 (64 bit )

When you are using Firefox for windows and you click History and than show all history you have the ability to search for key words. Lets say you type cows and you have clicked on the History tab so it is searching all history . Lets say 4,000 results pop up in your results field. Well if you click on the first result and shift click the last all 4,000 results will be highlighted and if you right click and select delete it takes a very long time and usually the computer freezes and you get script error.... BUT

If you right click on the lets say the today tab or even the January tab ( which you might have 2,000 results for cow in plus thousands other hits ) and click delete it will delete the history for January with no problem. Why would it take so long and make your computer go nuts when you have 4,000 highlighted manually as compared to the ease of just deleting an entire month in 20 seconds ???

Firefox 65.0.2 (64 bit ) When you are using Firefox for windows and you click History and than show all history you have the ability to search for key words. Lets say you type cows and you have clicked on the History tab so it is searching all history . Lets say 4,000 results pop up in your results field. Well if you click on the first result and shift click the last all 4,000 results will be highlighted and if you right click and select delete it takes a very long time and usually the computer freezes and you get script error.... BUT If you right click on the lets say the today tab or even the January tab ( which you might have 2,000 results for cow in plus thousands other hits ) and click delete it will delete the history for January with no problem. Why would it take so long and make your computer go nuts when you have 4,000 highlighted manually as compared to the ease of just deleting an entire month in 20 seconds ???

All Replies (10)

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And yes I know about the clear history option under privacy and security

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I suspect it's the number of entries being removed that causes this issue. Many have had the same problem.

How about removing blocks at a time?

Afterward, [v57+] Places Maintenance is built into Firefox.

Type about:support<enter> in the address bar.

You will find Places Database near the bottom. Press the Verify Integrity button.

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FredMcD said

I suspect it's the number of entries being removed that causes this issue. Many have had the same problem. How about removing blocks at a time? Afterward, [v57+] Places Maintenance is built into Firefox. Type about:support<enter> in the address bar. You will find Places Database near the bottom. Press the Verify Integrity button.

but why does deleting an entire month take such little time and effort

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Likely because it is less work. Also, if you follow my Places Maintenance instruction afterward, the database would be 'vacuumed' meaning the file itself would shrink.

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I usually delete history in chunks of about 1000 items to make this finish rather quickly (5 to 10 seconds). I do this in the Library for this SUMO website regularly to avoid getting thousands of visits using Shift + PageUp starting at the bottom until I'm satisfied with the number of items left (I leave about 1000).

It is best not to remove a large amount of visits in one go to prevent freezes.

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FredMcD said

Places Maintenance is built into Firefox.

Type about:support<enter> in the address bar.

You will find Places Database near the bottom.

Press the Verify Integrity button.

Yeah, I can only delete small bits of History at a time. About 300 links at a time. Even so, my CPU spikes. I closed History to let the CPU settle down. It's not right away. It's delayed a bit.

Dare I trust when I right-click 'Older Than 6 Months' and select Delete, it'll only Delete Older Than 6 Months links? (When ya scroll the list from bottom to top, it does include current day links at the top.)

Here's my 'Integrity' List:


> 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 > Task: expire + Database cleaned up > Task: originFrecencyStats + Recalculated origin frecency stats > Task: vacuum + Initial database size is 46080KiB + The database has been vacuumed + Final database size is 40960KiB > Task: stats + Places.sqlite size is 40960KiB + Favicons.sqlite size is 21280KiB + pragma_user_version is 52 + pragma_page_size is 32768 + pragma_cache_size is -2048 + pragma_journal_mode is wal + pragma_synchronous is 1 + History can store a maximum of 123653 unique pages + Table moz_places has 68219 records + Table moz_historyvisits has 102161 records + Table moz_inputhistory has 16 records + Table moz_hosts has 0 records + Table moz_bookmarks has 15063 records + Table moz_keywords has 11 records + Table sqlite_sequence has 1 records + Table moz_anno_attributes has 7 records + Table moz_annos has 2357 records + Table moz_items_annos has 904 records + Table sqlite_stat1 has 20 records + Table moz_bookmarks_deleted has 5 records + Table moz_meta has 5 records + Table moz_origins has 3142 records + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_inputhistory_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_hosts_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_keywords_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_anno_attributes_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_bookmarks_deleted_1 + Index sqlite_autoindex_moz_origins_1 + Index moz_places_hostindex + Index moz_places_visitcount + Index moz_places_frecencyindex + Index moz_places_lastvisitdateindex + Index moz_historyvisits_placedateindex + Index moz_historyvisits_fromindex + Index moz_historyvisits_dateindex + Index moz_bookmarks_itemindex + Index moz_bookmarks_parentindex + Index moz_bookmarks_itemlastmodifiedindex + Index moz_places_url_hashindex + Index moz_places_guid_uniqueindex + Index moz_bookmarks_guid_uniqueindex + Index moz_annos_placeattributeindex + Index moz_items_annos_itemattributeindex + Index moz_keywords_placepostdata_uniqueindex + Index moz_bookmarks_dateaddedindex + Index moz_places_originidindex > Task: _refreshUI


~Pj

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Looks good. Many have reported issues when trying to remove history (too much at one time).

Once you have your history where you want it:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/expire-history-by-days/

Expire history by days by Mak Allows to expire history older than a fixed amount of days.

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FredMcD said

Looks good. Many have reported issues when trying to remove history (too much at one time).

Once you have your history where you want it:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/expire-history-by-days/

Expire History by Days, by Mak, allows to expire History older than a fixed amount of days.

Thanks. I'll look into that Extension.

However, do you or anyone know if I right-click 'Older Than 6 Months' and select Delete, will it only Delete Older Than 6 Months of links? I don't wanna try it until I know for sure it will do that.


~Pj

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First, mark what you want. Then press Delete. But not too many at one time.

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If you aren't sure then create a backup of places.sqlite, This is always a good idea if you want to make a lot of changes to bookmarks or history.