{"id":321,"date":"2012-02-09T20:59:47","date_gmt":"2012-02-09T20:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joelinoff.com\/blog\/?p=321"},"modified":"2026-06-28T17:38:47","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T00:38:47","slug":"how-to-change-the-firefox-10-address-line-urlbar-font-size","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joelinoff.com\/blog\/?p=321","title":{"rendered":"How to change the firefox address line (urlbar) font size"},"content":{"rendered":"I have always found the default font size for the address bar in firefox to be too small but, unlike almost all other aspects of firefox, it was a bit of a challenge to change. You had to manually edit a file called userChrome.css that lived under your home directory tree in a firefox configuration directory. That directory was named ~\/.mozilla\/firefox\/*.default\/chrome<\/code> under linux. On windows it was in the user AppData directory tree.\n\nEach time a new version of firefox was released I would go to that directory and edit the file to describe the font characteristics that I liked. \n\nUnfortunately, when I installed firefox 10, the chrome part of subdirectory was not present. \n\nMy first thought was that the paradigm had changed but figured that I would try the old method to see whether it would work and save some search time. It did! \n\nThe only differences between the current version and the older versions is that you have to create the chrome subdirectory and you no long have the userChrome-example.css template.\n\nIt is very simple to do. Here are the step by step instructions.\n\n

Step 1. Create the chrome directory<\/h1>\nFirst create the chrome subdirectory in your local firefox directory tree. The table below shows the location of the firefox directory tree on the platforms that I tested.\n\n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n
Platform<\/td>\n Directory Path<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n <\/thead>\n
LINUX<\/td>\n ~\/.mozilla\/firefox\/*.default\/chrome<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
MAC OS X<\/td>\n ~\/Library\/Application\\ Support\/Firefox\/Profiles\/*.default\/chrome\/<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n
WINDOWS<\/td>\n c:\\User\\<user>\\AppData\\Roaming\\Mozilla\\Firefox\\Profiles\\*.default\\chrome<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n <\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n

Step 2. Create userChrome.css<\/h1>\nNext you need to create the userChrome.css file in the chrome directory. The contents are the same on both platforms.\n\n\n
\/* set the URL bar font characteristics *\/\n#urlbar {\n    font-family: monospace !important;\n    font-size: 18pt !important;\n    color: #4665A2 !important;\n    \/*\n     * This has a very interesting effect on my linux hosts, \n     * it causes parts of the URL to be highlighted.\n     * I tested it on Ubuntu 11.04 and CentOS 5.5.\n     * Do NOT do this on windows. The effect is different.\n     *\/\n    background-color: red !important;\n    \/*\n     * You can change the width of your address bar using\n     * max-width. If this is not specified it uses up\n     * the maximum possible space.\n     *\/\n    \/* I prefer the default. *\/\n    \/* max-width: 1024px !important; \/* by pixels *\/\n    \/* max-width: 80em !important; \/* by characters *\/\n}<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n
Step 3. Restart Firefox<\/h1>\nFinally you need to restart firefox.\n\nHere is what the result looks like.\n\"\"<\/a>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have always found the default font size for the address bar in firefox to be too small but, unlike almost all other aspects of firefox, it was a bit of a challenge to change. You had to manually edit a file called userChrome.css that lived under your home directory tree in a firefox configuration … Continue reading How to change the firefox address line (urlbar) font size<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joelinoff.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joelinoff.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joelinoff.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joelinoff.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joelinoff.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/joelinoff.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1802,"href":"https:\/\/joelinoff.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions\/1802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joelinoff.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joelinoff.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joelinoff.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}