How to Change the Homepage in Mozilla Firefox

Customising Your Browser’s Starting Point

When you open Mozilla Firefox, the first thing you see is the default homepage. By default, Mozilla sets this to a standard “Firefox Home” screen, which features a Google search bar, a list of your most recently visited websites, and occasionally some recommended articles curated by Pocket.

While this is functional, many users prefer a more streamlined or personalised experience. You might want your browser to immediately load your company’s internal intranet, your favourite daily news website, your email inbox, or simply a completely blank page to eliminate all distractions.

Firefox makes it incredibly easy to change your homepage, allowing you to set a custom URL or configure the browser to automatically restore all the tabs you had open during your previous session.

How to Set a Custom Website as Your Homepage

If you want Firefox to load a specific website (like BBC News or Gmail) every single time you open the application, follow these steps:

1. Open Mozilla Firefox.
2. Look in the extreme top right corner of the window and click the three horizontal lines (the application menu).
3. Select Settings from the drop-down list (this may be called “Preferences” on older versions of macOS).
4. A new settings tab will open. Look at the left-hand sidebar menu and click on Home.
5. Find the section labelled New Windows and Tabs.
6. Look at the first drop-down menu next to “Homepage and new windows”. By default, it will say “Firefox Home (Default)”.
7. Click the drop-down and change it to Custom URLs…
8. A text box will appear directly below it. Carefully type (or paste) the exact web address of your desired homepage (e.g., https://www.bbc.co.uk/news).

You do not need to click a “Save” button. Firefox automatically saves your changes the moment you type the URL. You can close the settings tab, and the next time you open a new Firefox window, your chosen website will load instantly.

How to Set Multiple Pages as Your Homepage

One of Firefox’s most powerful features is the ability to load several different websites simultaneously when you launch the browser. If you start every morning by checking your email, your calendar, and a financial dashboard, you can force Firefox to open all three of them in separate tabs automatically.

1. Navigate back to Settings > Home.
2. Ensure the “Homepage and new windows” drop-down is set to Custom URLs…
3. In the text box, type your first website (e.g., https://mail.google.com).
4. Do not press the spacebar. Instead, type the pipe symbol (|). You can type this symbol on a UK keyboard by pressing Shift + \.
5. Immediately after the pipe symbol, type your second website.
6. The final text box should look like this: https://siteone.com|https://sitetwo.com|https://sitethree.com

Now, whenever you click the Firefox icon to start browsing, it will instantly generate three separate tabs, loading all your essential websites simultaneously.

How to Restore Your Previous Session

If you do deep research and often leave dozens of tabs open when you shut down your computer for the night, a static homepage is not very useful. Instead, you can configure Firefox to remember exactly what you were doing.

1. Open Settings and look at the left-hand sidebar.
2. This time, stay on the General tab (do not click Home).
3. Look at the very first section at the top of the page, labelled Startup.
4. Check the box next to Open previous windows and tabs.

With this setting enabled, your homepage essentially becomes a snapshot of your past work. If you close Firefox with seven tabs open, those exact same seven tabs will automatically reload the next time you launch the browser, allowing you to pick up exactly where you left off.