How can I disable search engines in address bar?

Firefox Development
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#1

I deliberately set Firefox to provide a separate search input box to the right of the address bar. This way I can simply disambiguate between performing a search and typing an address manually.

When I enter an address into the address bar and hit the [ARROW DOWN] key, sometimes FF enters one of the search engine icons below the bar instead entering the list of bookmarks (that’s perhaps because the list of bookmarks is getting populated asynchronously). This is very disturbing and unwanted, particularly as I enabled the search engine input box to the right, so I can use that when I want to perform a search.

How can I disable search engines from being provided in the address bar?

1 Like
#2

Do you want to turn off searching from the address bar entirely? There is a preference for that:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

(2) In the search box in the page, type or paste keyword.enabled and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the preference to switch the value from true to false

But if you only want to turn off search engine suggestions, you can manage that on the Options/Preferences page, Search panel.

1 Like
#3

Thank you, J, for taking the time.

In the following screenshot I’d like the area highlighted in red to disappear:

Firefox
Firefox930×387 16.2 KB


In *Tools > Options > Privacy Settings* I selected to only use history and bookmarks, nothing more:

Firefox2
Firefox2930×871 31.1 KB


When the separate search input field is enabled, I don't believe it makes sense to also provide a one-time exception feature to the address bar. It's faster to just type CTRL+E on the keyboard to enter the Search input field.

So, I just tried your suggestion. Unfortunately, the setting you suggested doesn’t disable, or hide, the above mentioned area (see screenshot).

I’m a fast typer who learned to professionally type without reading for verification, I require deterministic results, independent from asynchronous fetch results. (In a worst case scenario, typed text input should be buffered and be evaluated only after all bookmarks are available.)

Do you think this is possible?

#4

I see, you do not want to disabling searching, you want to hide the search engine icons bar at the bottom of the address bar drop-down.

Currently, the only way to remove that would be to uncheck them in the Search Shortcuts / One-click Search Engines box on the Search tab of the Options page. But this will interfere with using them on the Search bar, so that isn’t a solution for you.

This bar should only becomes a factor if you press the up arrow key while your cursor is in the address bar, or press the down arrow key enough times to reach the bar. Otherwise, it should not be interfering.

#5

I run into what the original post is talking about all the time and it’s very irritating. There’s no use or utility to those search buttons in the address bar for many of us, especially when the search bar is separate (as the poster showed).

#6

I think this issue is reproducible. Well, sort of …

The reproducible situation depends of whether Firefox can load the bookmarks list fast enough before I start typing into the address bar.

For instance, having started my Windows machine, then starting Firefox immediately after signing-in to Windows, then hitting the first few letters of my bookmarks immediately when the Firefox application window appears, it regularly happens that the blue “Google” bubble appears in the address bar instead of Firefox listing my filtered bookmarks to select from.

So, I believe this is a race-condition bug.

Either acting on keyboard input in the address bar should be deferred until the bookmarks list has been read (this is preferred), or there should be an option to hide the bar below the bookmarks list.

#7

Did work, doesn’t now.
I’ve tried all the above using Bing, DuckDuck and Google, all of them still jump to the address bar as soon as you try to use the normal search box.
About time Mozilla began to listen to what people want rather than following the example of MS and Google.
Mozilla has become a little too dictatorial.
Maybe it’s time for a change.