Last Updated on April 13, 2017 by Dave Farquhar
It’s frustrating when Firefox won’t let you cancel a download. It took me a while to find a solution, but I found one.
Here’s some background. I started downloading this monster file the other day, not realizing I didn’t have enough disk space to store the blasted thing. So I went to cancel it. The problem was, it wouldn’t completely cancel. It would keep trying to download until it filled up my disk, at which point other terrible things would happen. I couldn’t cancel the download, I couldn’t pause it, and I couldn’t delete it.
The solution, as it turns out, is to close Firefox. Next, go into your profile. To find it quickly in Windows, you can hit the Windows key + R, type %appdata% and hit OK, then navigate to Mozilla, then Firefox, then profiles. My profile was in a directory named wtkz7xzy.default. Yours will be similar. On a Mac or Linux box, your profile is probably in your home directory.
One you’re looking at your profile, locate the file called downloads.sqlite, and delete it. When you launch Firefox again, the list of downloads will be blank, and the download that wouldn’t go away will be among the casualties. And that will stop the endless loop like I had, or other bad Firefox behavior.
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David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.