Is there a way to search the text of my browsing history in Firefox?

I often find myself in the situation where I know I saw something in a web page recently, but don't remember where. I would therefore like to be able to do a full-text search of the contents of my web history in Firefox. Is there an extension that will do this?

I am aware of this question. However, I am only interested in Firefox solutions, and the only Firefox option in that question seems to no longer be relevant (add-on has changed).

My requirements for a solution to this problem:

  • Must work in Firefox.
  • Must work locally - I do not want to send my history or bookmarks to a 3rd-party service to get this functionality (so InfoAxe is out as near as I can tell).
  • Must be a high-quality, reputable extension (fuzzy, I know, but many extensions smell sketchy).
  • Must work in Linux (so Google Desktop is out so far as I know).
  • Strongly prefer open source solution.

Does anyone know of such an extension?


Solution 1:

Mozilla Labs has something called RecallNonkey that's being developed for this purpose. http://mozillalabs.com/prospector/2011/06/20/recallmonkey-finds-what-you-forget/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/prospector-recall-monkey/

This is a local search against the history entries in the places database and I don't believe it sends any information out there - it's still pretty new/experimental but I've been using it for a little while and it seems to work well.

Solution 2:

Use recoll desktop search along with the recollweb firefox extension. This copies visited pages to local cache that recoll indexes.

Recoll desktop search: http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/

Firefox extension: http://recollfirefox.sourceforge.net/