LinkSidebar for Firefox: Best Settings for Developers and Power UsersLinkSidebar is a Firefox extension that collects and displays all links from a webpage in a compact, searchable sidebar. For developers and power users who inspect, audit, or extract links frequently, LinkSidebar can save time and streamline workflows. This article covers installation, core features, advanced settings, developer-focused tips, keyboard shortcuts, privacy considerations, and troubleshooting.
Why developers and power users should care
- Quick link discovery: see every link on the page without scanning HTML or using the inspector.
- Filtering & searching: easily find links by text, URL pattern, or domain.
- Batch actions: open multiple links, copy lists, or export for automated processing.
- Performance-friendly: designed to avoid slowing down page rendering on large sites.
Installation and first-run setup
- Install LinkSidebar from the Firefox Add-ons store.
- Open the sidebar via View > Sidebar or the sidebar icon (or press Ctrl+B / Cmd+B if configured).
- On first run, allow the extension to access the current tab so it can read links. This permission is limited to reading page content; LinkSidebar does not modify page data.
Core features overview
- Link list pane with link text, URL, and icons for type (internal, external, anchor, mailto).
- Search bar with regex and substring matching options.
- Domain filtering and quick domain counts.
- Multi-select and context menu to open/copy/export selected links.
- Auto-refresh on navigation or manual refresh button.
- Per-site settings (enable/disable on specific domains).
Best settings for developers
Use these settings to maximize efficiency when auditing, scraping, or testing links.
- Enable “Show href only” for a compact list when link text is noisy.
- Turn on “Detect rel=nofollow” to flag nofollow links visually—useful for SEO audits.
- Enable “Show link type icons” to quickly distinguish external/internal/mailto links.
- Set “Auto-refresh on navigation” to ON so the sidebar updates when you click through pages during testing.
- Increase the “Max links to display” only if you need exhaustive lists; very high values can slow the UI on massive pages.
- Enable “Copy as CSV” in the context menu for easy export to spreadsheets or scripts.
- Turn on “Include hidden elements” if you’re testing for cloaked links or SEO cloaking issues.
Example workflow: open the sidebar, filter by domain with the domain-filter button, switch on regex search and enter “^/blog” to list only blog links, multi-select and copy as CSV for downstream processing.
Best settings for power users
Power users who browse, research, or manage many links will appreciate these tweaks.
- Enable “Open links in new background tabs” to maintain current context while loading multiple results.
- Turn on “Preserve selection between pages” if you collect links from several pages sequentially.
- Use “Group by domain” to collapse links into domains — handy for link curation.
- Configure keyboard shortcuts for “Focus sidebar”, “Search”, and “Open selected” to speed up actions.
- Enable clipboard previews when copying to avoid mistakes copying long lists.
Example workflow: use the sidebar to gather all references on a research page, group by domain to prioritize sources, then open top results in background tabs for later reading.
Developer-focused tips and integrations
- Use Regex search to extract only links matching API endpoints (e.g., “/api/v[0-9]+/”).
- Export links as CSV and pipe into command-line tools (curl, grep, jq) for automated validation.
- Combine with the Network panel: filter sidebar results to focus on links that trigger network requests.
- Use per-site settings to enable LinkSidebar only on staging and dev environments to avoid clutter on social sites.
- For extension developers: inspect LinkSidebar’s DOM snapshot to ensure your own page components produce expected link attributes.
Command-line example (after copying CSV of links):
# check HTTP status codes for copied links cat links.csv | cut -d, -f2 | xargs -n1 -P8 curl -I -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code} %{url_effective} " Keyboard shortcuts (recommended mapping)
- Focus sidebar: Ctrl+Shift+L
- Search input focus: Ctrl+F (when sidebar focused)
- Open selected in background: Ctrl+Enter
- Copy selected URLs: Ctrl+Shift+C
- Toggle domain grouping: Ctrl+G
(Configure these via Firefox Add-ons → LinkSidebar → Shortcuts.)
Privacy and security considerations
- LinkSidebar reads page content (links) to function; it does not alter page data.
- Disable the extension on sensitive websites (banking, health portals) if you prefer zero extension access.
- Avoid copying private or tokenized URLs into shared files; review before exporting.
Troubleshooting common issues
- Sidebar not showing: ensure it’s enabled in View → Sidebar and extension has permission for tabs.
- Missing links: enable “Include hidden elements” or ensure the page has fully loaded (auto-refresh helps).
- Performance lag on huge pages: lower “Max links to display” and disable icons.
- Shortcuts not working: check for conflicts in about:addons → Manage Extension Shortcuts.
Extensions and alternative tools
- Built-in Inspector (Ctrl+Shift+C) — deep DOM inspection, but requires more manual work.
- Link Grabber extensions — similar function; compare via grouping and export options.
- Automated crawlers (Screaming Frog, wget, Sitebulb) — better for large-scale site audits.
| Tool | Best for | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|
| LinkSidebar | Quick in-browser link lists | Fast, interactive, exportable | Less suited to whole-site crawls |
| Built-in Inspector | DOM debugging | Precise element-level detail | Manual, slower for link lists |
| Screaming Frog | Site-wide audits | Comprehensive reports | External app, steeper setup |
Final checklist for optimal setup
- Enable auto-refresh and regex search.
- Configure keyboard shortcuts.
- Set sensible “Max links” to balance completeness and performance.
- Use domain grouping and CSV export for workflows.
- Keep extension disabled on sensitive sites.
If you want, I can: provide a ready-to-use list of recommended keyboard shortcuts, write short regex examples for common cases (APIs, asset links, anchors), or create a step-by-step exporter script for CSV → curl link-checks.
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