Ever have a Firefox add-on that just did not want to leave your PC?  Most of the extensions to Firefox are really easy to remove, however sometimes you run into a situation where one is so bad or tricky, it just doesn’t want to let go.  Here are some of the common ways to remove an add-on from Firefox.

The Traditional Way

The way you usually uninstall add-ons from Firefox is to go to Tools and then Add-ons from the menu bar.  In the next Window, you should see your extensions (if not, hit the “Extensions” tab at the top).  Now click on the one you wish to remove, and hit the button labeled “Uninstall”.  You can do this several times if you need to get rid of several add-ons.  Now, simply restart Firefox and your add-on in question should be removed.

Try Removing the Add-on via Safe Mode

Close out Firefox, and start up using Firefox’s safe mode.  Try to use the traditional steps above then to remove the addon that is bugging you.

Checkout Add/Remove Programs

This might change some (depending on what version of Windows you are using) but these general directions should get you to the right spot.  Click on the start menu (or windows globe) and go to the control panel.  From there, you want to go to the “Add/Remove Programs” settings.  Scroll down this list and see if you see the extension in question here that you can not remove via Firefox.  Some toolbars and add-ons install themselves here, rather than the traditional add-ons menu from inside of Firefox.

Last (but not least) Remove the Add-on Manually

You can also remove add-ons manually, but I would leave this as a last resort.  You will need to navigate to your Firefox profile folder.  Once you make it there, look for a folder called “extensions”.  Inside of that folder, you will see more folders with names that look like random ‘bit of text thrown together.  Each folder represents an extension that has been installed. Go through each folder, and look for install.rdf.  Open that up in your standard notepad program and it should tell you the name of the extension you are looking at.  If you can’t find it, search the install.rdf for the phrase “em:name”.  After that, the name of the extension should be given.  You may also find a few themes inside this folder too.  Once you find an install.rdf that matches that addon you want to remove, you can delete that extensions entire folder.

As you noticed, this pretty much covered things for the Windows people to some extent.  If any Apple or Linux fans want to let me know how they do things, please drop in a comment and share with the group!