Have you noticed that lately your Firefox browser seems slow, buggy, and some sites won’t even load?

In our fast-paced, technology-driven world, slow Internet is the bane of many people’s existence, whether you’re casually browsing at home, or trying to get a project completed on time for work or school.

Calling technical support or the IT department can be a major hassle and can completely stop your work or browsing while you suffer through automated phone menus trying to get to a human who may or may not be helpful.

Before you commit to spending hours of your day on hold with tech support or waiting for IT to respond to your support ticket, you may want to consider using the Firefox “clear cache” tool.

When your cache has not been cleared for a while, there is usually just not enough memory available for the browser to perform as well as you want it to.

This is a simple fix that anyone can easily do in less than a minute. Adding it to your regular computer routine can help your browser work quickly, smoothly, and efficiently.

Why suffer through slow speeds and interrupted browsing when clearing your Firefox cache can fix many, if not all of those pesky problems?

The Firefox clear cache function is very user-friendly and you’ll be able to perform the operation in just a minute by following the quick and easy steps below.

Step One: Open the Mozilla Firefox browser and click the menu button, which should be located in the top right-hand of your screen, to the right of the address bar.

Step Two: In the menu, locate “Settings” and click on it. This will take you to the page where you can control your browser settings.

Step Three: Locate the panel that says “Privacy and Security” and click on it. This will bring you to a page that allows you to manage your Internet history, including cache.

Step Four: Scroll down to locate the “Cookies and Site Data” entry on the Settings page. Once you’ve found it, go ahead and click “Clear Data.” This will open a dialog box with two options inside. The top option will say “Cookies and Site Data,” and the bottom option will say “Cached Web-Content.” The second box is the one you’re looking for.

Step Five: If you want to only clear your cache, check the box that says “Cached Web Content” and uncheck the box that says “Cookies and Site Data.” Then click “Clear” at the bottom of the dialog box. This will clear your cache.

Step Six: After you’ve cleared your cache, close your browser and reopen it. Then try browsing some of your favorite sites. You’ll notice that they load much more quickly, without freezing up.

While it isn’t absolutely necessary, you may want to clear your cookies and site data too. The downside of this is that it logs you out of any websites you were logged into, but it can free up even more space, allowing Mozilla Firefox to operate even more quickly and efficiently than if you only cleared the cache.

If you’d like to clear the cookies and site data along with the cache, follow steps one through four above. When you get to step five, just check both boxes and then click “Clear.”

If you’d like to clear only cookies and site data without clearing the cache, make sure that only the box marked “Cookies and Site Data” is checked, while the box marked “Cached Web Content” is not checked, then click “Clear.”

After you’ve done one or both of these, go to step six and see how much faster your websites load.

Whether you choose to clear Firefox cache, your cookies and site data, or both, you can expect this quick-and-easy process to improve your browsing speed, and allow the more memory-heavy websites to load without worrying about them freezing up your computer.

Next time you’re sitting, waiting for a website to load, and thinking about calling tech support or tossing your computer in the dumpster out of frustration, give this a try first. Odds are, it’ll instantly speed up your browser.