[how to] remove home button from toolbar in Firefox, Waterfox, *fox-based browsers

rado84

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Some of you will probably think such a topic is ridiculous and normally you would be right. But there's a whole ancient story (a bug) with the home button in Firefox, as well as all *fox-based browsers. In the old days that bug didn't show up as often as it does now. Nowadays there are many addons that make this button useless and I for one stopped using it over 10 years ago.
If you Google for ways to remove the button, you'll find at least one "topic" on GitHub, asking how to remove it or reporting that as a bug. In most cases the suggested way is the wrong way - to delete this file and let browser recreate it. Which means deleting all of your personal settings to that part of the browser's interface. Some also suggest Mozilla's favorite fix for everything which IMO is dumb and unnecessary: remove the entire profile directory, thus rendering the browser to its default settings which means you'll have to do ALL of your personal settings all over again which could take a long time. But I don't like dancing on Mozilla's song, so I found a better way that preserves ALL of my browser settings and if that bug one day resurfaces (returning the home button to its position), I could easily get rid of it again without losing any of my personal settings.
The paths of the following instruction can and are different for each *fox-based browser, so I'm gonna omit that and you'll have to find the directories on your own.

Navigate to your profile directory and find the file xulstore.json. Open that file with any text editor, press Ctrl+H and in the first box type
Code:
home-button,
along with the comma you see in the code above. Don't forget the comma!!!
In the second box DON'T TYPE ANYTHING!!! and simply press the button "Replace all" then use Ctrl+S to save the file. This will effectively remove the string "home-button" from the contents of the file along with the comma that separates this particular string from the other strings.
Then restart the browser and the home button won't be there anymore.

Code:
The settings (profile) directory for Firefox is located in /home: ~/.mozilla
The settings (profile) directory for Waterox is located in /home: ~/.waterfox

From these locations you'll have to find the folder for your profile. The easiest way to do that, especially if you can see more than one folder, is right click on each folder, click "Properties" and check the folder size - the largest one would be the one you need.

If you also have a dual boot with Windows, for Firefox that's easy to find - Mozilla's settings directory is located in C:\Users\[your-username]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla.
For Waterfox in Windows - I have absolutely no idea where it might be, so if someone here knows, they can feel free to say it.
 


That makes me wonder...

Do people really use the home button?

I have no use for it. I'm sure someone does. They must. Maybe they have a home page that offers them a variety of tools or something? I'd just use the default new tab page for that. Someone must still use it, otherwise telemetry would have let the developers know it's no longer in use? I think? Maybe?
 
I have used it from to time. I suppose more importantly, it has never failed to bring up my defined "home" page. So, I guess, I don't get the point
 
I use the Home button with all my Browsers and I'll add one if it's not there, wouldn't be without it.
 

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