… the URL bar only showed my typed history as I type.
… there was a dropdown arrow on the URL bar that showed my typed history, in order of visit frequency.
I’ve disabled as much of the “new” garbage as I can via about:config, but some of those settings don’t even work anymore. It appears there’s just no disabling “Firefox Suggest,” even though it doesn’t reflect my history very accurately.
The usefulness of Firefox’s URL bar has been deteriorating since Firefox 2, as far as I’m concerned.
Currently, you can access that list by either:
By the way, the label “Firefox Suggest” just distinguishes the list of bookmark, history, and open tab matches from dynamic search engine suggestions. If you don’t need group labels, you can disable them:
(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 browser.urlbar.groupLabels.enabled and pause while the list is filtered
(3) Double-click the preference to switch the value from true to false
Yes, I’m aware of all that. But none of it is as convenient as the dropdown arrow in the urlbar. Far too many of Firefox’s changes over the years have decreased usability. They’ve packed too much junk into the “awful bar” and made it harder to get to the useful features that it had before.