Customizing Epiphany

10.1. Setting Your Preferences

You can customize Epiphany to suit your personal needs by using the Preferences dialog which can be accessed by selecting Edit ▸ Preferences.

10.1.1. General Preferences

  • Choose the page displayed when the Home button on the toolbar is pressed, and also when Epiphany is launched, by entering an address in the Home page section.
  • Choose the folder for downloaded files by pressing the Download folder button and selecting a folder. If you select Automatically download and open files you will not be prompted before files are download or opened.

10.1.2. Fonts and Style Preferences

This section allows you to configure the style of text and the colors used on web pages.

You can set a minimum size for web page fonts by using the Minimum size spin box. Fonts smaller than this value will be increased to this size.

You can also choose different font styles and sizes depending on the language that a page is written using the Detailed Font Settings button. First select the language you want to configure from the For language drop-down list. To set the font for standard text, where the width of characters varies, use the Variable width drop down list and spin box. To set the font for fixed width text, where the width of characters is always the same, use the Fixed width drop down list and spin box. To set the minimum font size, use the Minimum size spin box.

Web pages often specify their own font styles and sizes. You can make Epiphany only use the fonts that you have chosen by deselecting the Let web pages specify their own fonts option.

Web pages may also specify their own colors for the background and fonts. You can make Epiphany always use the colors specified by your current desktop theme by deselecting the Let web pages specify their own colors option.

You can make Epiphany use styles defined in your own stylesheet by selecting the Use custom stylesheet option. The Edit Stylesheet button will open your default text editor so that you can edit the stylesheet.

You can make Epiphany use a smooth scrolling effect by selecting the Use smooth scrolling option.

10.1.3. Privacy Preferences

Epiphany allows you to configure a number of features which allow you to restrict what web pages can do:

  • Select Allow popup windows if you want web pages to be able to launch content in new windows automatically.
  • Select Enable Java to allow pages to load Java applets - programs which run inside web pages.
  • Select Enable JavaScript to give web pages the capability to use the more advanced programming techniques of the JavaScript language.

Disabling these features may cause some pages to display incorrectly or cause some loss of functionility. For Java to work, you need to install the Java plugin.

You can also configure how cookies are handled:

  • Select Always accept to allow any site to set cookies.
  • Select Only from sites you visit to only allow cookies to be set for sites which you have navigated to.
  • Select Never accept to prevent sites from setting cookies.

Disabling or restricting cookies may disable access to parts of some sites or disable some of their features.

Epiphany stores some of the content of web pages in temporary files to allow faster loading of the content when you next view them. The Disk space spin box allows you to specify the maximum amount of space Epiphany can use for these files. Setting this value to zero will cause Epiphany to never store temporary files. These temporary files can be removed by pressing the Clear button.

Select the Remember passwords if you want Epiphany to offer to remember passwords when you log in to websites.

10.1.4. Language Preferences

The encoding of a page specifies the set of characters that are used in it. The Encodings section configures how Epiphany identifies this set. The Default drop-down list allows you to set an encoding to fall back to when the page doesn't specify one.

The Autodetect drop-down list allows you to select a group of encodings from which Epiphany will try to select to right encoding for the page if one is not specified. For example, if you normally visit Chinese pages, for which these may be several different encodings, you might set this to Chinese. To stop Epiphany from trying to guess an encoding, select Off.

Some web sites have pages which are available in a number of different languages. You can set your preferred languages by adding entries from the Language list using the Add button. Entries are listed in the order they will be checked, with your preferred language at the top. You can reorder entries by dragging them or using the Up and Down buttons.

10.2. To Show and Hide Browser Window Components

You can show and hide browser window components as follows:

  • To hide the toolbars, choose View ▸ Toolbars  ▸ Hide Toolbars . To display the toolbars again, choose View ▸ Toolbars ▸ Hide Toolbars again.
  • To hide a particular toolbar, choose View ▸ Toolbars  ▸ Show , followed by the name of the toolbar. To display the toolbar again, choose View ▸ Toolbars ▸ Show , followed by the name of the toolbar.
  • To hide the statusbar, choose View ▸ Statusbar. To display the statusbar again, choose View ▸ Statusbar again.

You can use fullscreen mode to make Epiphany hide most of the window components. For details, see Odsek 4.3 ― Using Fullscreen Mode.

10.3. To Edit Your Toolbars

You can customize the items which appear in your toolbars:

  • To add or remove buttons from your toolbar, select View ▸ Toolbars ▸ Customize Toolbars. Drag icons to and from the editor to add or remove them from your toolbar.
  • To add a new toolbar, press Add a New Toolbar in the toolbar editor.
  • To remove a toolbar, remove all items from it. The toolbar will then automatically be removed.
  • Drag buttons, including bookmarks, to rearrange them either on the same toolbar or between different toolbars.

10.4. Extending Epiphany

Additional features can be added to Epiphany by installing Extensions. Examples of Extensions include Mouse Gestures which allows page navigation using cursor movements and Error Viewer and Validator which can check web pages for coding errors.

Please consult your system administrator to find out whether the extensions you require are installed, or see the Epiphany Web page for installation instructions.