arkenfox-override-recipes

A personalized user-overrides.js recipe that balances usability and privacy - and in some cases, even hardens settings further than the default arkenfox user.js.

This repository complements the arkenfox/user.js project by maintaining a curated set of overrides tailored to real-world usage scenarios. While the arkenfox user.js provides an excellent privacy-focused baseline, some of its hardened defaults may hinder functionality for specific workflows or websites. Conversely, in areas where usability degradation is acceptable, this override set further tightens security and privacy protections.

Purpose

• Restore expected functionality for essential web features, extensions, or UI behavior (e.g., container tabs, keyboard shortcut consistency)
• Refine DNS and WebRTC behavior with vetted third-party services and hardening tweaks
• Enforce stricter anti-fingerprinting settings when they show negligible breakage
• Provide reproducible, modular, and documented overrides for managing Firefox updates cleanly

Usage

1. Set up your Firefox profile using the latest arkenfox/user.js.
2. Copy this repo's user-overrides.js into your Firefox profile directory (same directory as prefs.js).
3. Run the arkenfox updater script - your overrides will be appended automatically.

🔒 Note: You are responsible for understanding the privacy/security/usability implications of each override. Review them carefully and adapt to your own threat model.

Highlights

• Usability restores:
  • homepage on startup
  • Firefox Home for new windows and tabs
  • enabling UNC(Uniform Naming Convention) paths
  • setting OCSP fetch failures to soft-fail to avoid breakage (removed in v144.0: arkenfox user.js upstream no longer enables security.OCSP.require)
• Selective hardening:
  • disabling recent searches
  • disabling visited link styling
  • setting external links to open in site-specific containers (depending on container extension(s) and their settings)
  • stricter WebRTC ICE candidate filtering (forcing exclusion of private IPs from ICE candidates, may results in breakage on video-conferencing platforms)
  • disabling websites overriding Firefox's keyboard shortcuts
  • disabling referrer and storage access for resources injected by content scripts (removed in v144.0: now arkenfox user.js upstream default)
  • enabling RFP
    • enabling letterboxing
    • forced English spoofing under RFP
  • disabling rememberSignons - use a password manager like Bitwarden or Psono instead
  • forcing any permission changes to be session-only
  • forcing all credentials to be session-only
  • disabling location bar history suggestion
  • disabling page thumbnail collection
• Enhanced control:
  • container tab usability: setting behavior on "+ Tab" button to display container menu on left click
  • enabling third-party DNS-over-HTTPS/3 provider(Control D) with [Ads & Trackers, Gambling, Malware, Phishing] filters

Disclaimer

This repository is maintained independently of the official arkenfox project. Use at your own discretion, and always test changes against your own browsing needs and threat model.