How can I increase the number of downloads shown in the download panel?

Firefox 20 has a new downloads panel feature. But it only shows the three most recently downloaded files.

How can I increase that number?

Solution 1:

^{This answer does not work in newer Firefox versions anymore, but it's still valid for Firefox 20, so I'm keeping this around.}

Currently there is no setting in about:config to customize this value. It is hard-coded in the Firefox UI scripts.

1. Right-click Firefox.app, and select Show Content. Navigate to Contents/MacOS and copy the omni.ja file to your Desktop. Rename the copied file to omni.zip and extract it.

2. Change the file omni/chrome/browser/content/browser/downloads/downloads.js. Look for the following lines:

     /**
      * Maximum number of items shown by the list at any given time.
      */
     kItemCountLimit: 3,
   

   Replace that value with e.g. 10.

3. Change the file omni/modules/DownloadsCommon.jsm. Look for the following lines:

   if (PrivateBrowsingUtils.isWindowPrivate(aWindow)) {
     if (this._privateSummary) {
       return this._privateSummary;
     }
     return this._privateSummary = new DownloadsSummaryData(true, aNumToExclude);
   } else {
     if (this._summary) {
       return this._summary;
     }
     return this._summary = new DownloadsSummaryData(false, aNumToExclude);
   

   Replace occurrences of aNumToExclude with 10.

4. Save both files, and compress the contents of the omni directory (so that the resulting archive does not contain a top-level folder named omni). Rename the resulting file to omni.ja (via the file's Get Info dialog -- .ja isn't a known file extension and Finder will probably interpret it as omni.ja.zip otherwise).

5. Replace the original omni.ja file with your modified one.

6. Restart Firefox once in safe mode by holding down Option while starting to apply the changes.

Result:

Remember that changes like described above need to be reapplied every time Firefox is updated.