Improving Firefox start times by indexing SQLite Databases

Firefox was slow to load…

My desktop should be able to load Firefox up in under a few seconds, even if the hard drives are spinning rust rather than SSDs.

Upon searching, I read that indexing the SQLite databases might help improve load times if you’re lucky and the stars are aligned just right.

In Linux / BSD / (some other Unix-like OS) command line, navigate to your profile directory. It will be something like ~/.mozilla/firefox/8oo813s.default, then (after making sure Firefox is closed) run the following:

ls *.sqlite | xargs -I {} -n1 sh -c "echo \"REINDEX;\" | sqlite3 {}"

My Firefox startup time went from 10~15 seconds to about two seconds, and the command itself took only about 10 seconds to run the first time, so I can say I am pleased :).