How-To: Completely remove the Firefox menu while retaining functionality

Firefox users who find themselves on smaller screens will benefit from the following tutorial. Those who prefer minimal interfaces can follow along as well. Follow the steps below to remove any traces of the top toolbar from your Firefox window while retaining full functionality. The key extension required is menueditor. Menueditor providers Firefox users with complete flexibility over their browser menu items. Hide specific toolbar menu items, resort, or compile all the essential menu options into one single toolbar menu while hiding the rest.

My current setup is bare bones. Follow the steps below to achieve the same setup while retaining full functionality.

1. Install the menueditor extension from Mozdev. Restart your browser.
2. Go to Tools > Extensions and double-click the menueditor extension to open the options window.
3. Towards the bottom of the window, select the ‘Advanced mode’ option. You will now see a double column window. Customizing your menu is as easy as unchecking menu items to hide, drag n’ drop to resort, or selecting the ‘Visible’ check box to hide complete menus.
4. In the drop down menu, select each respective menu other than ‘Main context menu’ and uncheck the visible box for each. Click ‘Apply’ at the bottom of the window and your browser will now have each default toolbar menu item hidden from view.
5. If specific extensions you may have installed have corresponding menu items, make sure to add them as well. The following menu items are what I consider essential for Firefox users:
   • Open link in new window
   • Save link as…
   • Copy link location
   • View image
   • View background image
   • Save image as…
   • View page source
   • View page info
   • Properties
   • Extensions
   • Options
   • Clear private data…
6. After adding any additional menu items to your right-click menu, select ‘Apply’ and return to the main browser window. You can now relocate the navigation buttons, address bar, and search box to the top toolbar. Hide the navigation toolbar and bookmarks toolbar by right-clicking one of the navigation buttons and unchecking each.

Many menu items that newer Firefox users may rely on were removed from the above tutorial. I’ve left the basic menu items such as ‘Save page as…’, ‘Print’, and ‘Open new window’ out because each is still accessible via keyboard shortcuts. Reference the Firefox keyboards cheat sheet for more information.

Users who rely on the bookmarks toolbar can streamline the bookmarks toolbar as well. Make sure that you’ve added ‘Manage bookmarks…’ to your right-click menu. Open the bookmarks manager and create a new subfolder within the ‘Bookmarks toolbar folder’. I’ve titled mine ‘::’. Drag all your existing toolbar bookmarks into the folder and close the manager. Relocate your new folder titled ‘::’ to the left of the navigation buttons.