If Firefox's new feature is giving you trouble

Jun 10, 2015 14:37 GMT  ·  By

Outside a few bug fixes, Firefox 38.0.5 didn't bring too much to Firefox's core except Pocket integration. But if you're an ardent Firefox user, this has surely rubbed you the wrong way in one form or another.

There are many arguments why Firefox, an already over-bloated browser, should not be integrating third-party plugins in its basic package, but this article is not the place for that.

If you're one of those users who are not very fond of the new Pocket (former Read It Later) utilities, below is a summary of methods to disable this nuisance from your browser.

Included are instructions on how to remove the Pocket icon from your toolbar and the "Save Link to Pocket" option from your right-click menu.

Method 1: Remove the toolbar icon, the easy way

Step 1: Right click on the "Pocket" icon in your browser toolbar.

Step 2: Choose the "Remove from Toolbar" option.

Pros: Dumb-proof solution to remove Pocket from your sight.

Cons: Sometimes when we restarted the browser, the Pocket icon auto-magically reappeared in our toolbar.

Method 2: Remove the toolbar icon, the hard way

Step 1: Right-click on the Pocket icon or on any other icon.

Step 2: Select the "Customize" option.

Step 3: In the Firefox customizer, grab and drag the Pocket icon to the left panel to hide it completely, or to the right panel which shows it when pressing the Firefox "hamburger" icon for extra tools.

Pros: It seems to work fine between browser restarts.

Cons: None yet.

Method 2, using the Firefox customizer
Method 2, using the Firefox customizer

Method 3: Remove the toolbar icon, the complicated way

Step 1: Open a new tab, or write in the current tab the following text: "about:config" and press Enter.

Step 2: In the Search field, write: "browser.pocket.enabled"

Step 3: Click on the "browser.pocket.enabled" until it says "false"

Step 4: Restart your browser.

Pros: This permanently turns the Pocket icon off. 100% sure!

Cons: The right-click option will still show up in context menus.

Method 4: Remove the right-click menu option, the developer's way

Credit for this one go to mad9scientist, for a fix back when Firefox Nightly tested Pocket integration for the first time. His method is still working, but some changes need to be made, which we'll detail below.

Step 1: Open your Firefox's AppData folder. For Windows, this should be something like "%APPDATA%/Mozilla/Profiles/.default/"

Step 2: If you have a "/chrome" folder, go ahead and open it up.

Step 3: If you have a user.Chrome.css file, open it in a code editor. If you don't, create one and place it here.

Step 4: Add the following to your userChrome.css file:

code
menuitem[label="Save Link to Pocket"] {
  display:none !important;
}
Step 5: Restart your browser.

Pros: Works like a charm if you can find the appropriate files and folders. You can also use it to remove other menu options as well.

Cons: It will break if Firefox changes the menu item's label like it broke the original Gist when Firefox went from Nightly to Beta and then 38.0.5. It also works only for Windows PCs.

If Pocket is annoying you, here's how to remove it (4 Images)

Method 1
Method 2, using the Firefox customizerMethod 3
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