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Tech Tip

Adding Menus and Buttons to Firefox

Q. When I use the Firefox browser on a Mac, I can see the File, Edit, History, Bookmarks and other menus at the top of the screen, but when I use the same browser on a Windows PC, those menus are not at the top of the window. Is there some secret to making them visible?

A. The Firefox browser can be customized in several ways, and it is possible the standard Menu Bar is turned off in the Windows program’s settings. To check, open Firefox on the PC and click the icon for the browser’s main menu of settings; the icon looks like three stacked lines in the top-right corner of the window.

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The Firefox window can be customized with buttons for favorite functions, and the Menu Bar can be turned on or off from view.

When the main menu opens, click the Customize button at the bottom of the box. Click the Show/Hide Toolbars button at the bottom of the window and turn on Menu Bar. You should now see the standard File-Edit-View-History-Bookmarks-Tools-Help menus along the top of the program’s window.

In the Show/Hide Toolbars area, you can also choose to display or turn off the Bookmarks Toolbar of favorite sites. Other buttons along the bottom edge of the Customize Firefox box turn the browser’s title bar on or off, or point to different visual themes you can use for your browser window.

The center of the Customize Firefox window displays icons for other one-click commands you can use with the browser. For example, if you never use the Pocket button to save pages for later reading, you can drag it off your Firefox toolbar and into the center of the page to remove it. You can also add buttons by dragging them up to the toolbar area. When you are done finessing your Firefox, click the Exit Customize button to close the box and get back to browsing.

Personal Tech invites questions about computer-based technology to techtip@nytimes.com. This column will answer questions of general interest, but letters cannot be answered individually.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 7 of the New York edition with the headline: Menus and Buttons for Firefox. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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