This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

"search Google for . . ." tab opens immediately, unlike previously

  • 3 replies
  • 19 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

more options

Starting this morning, I noticed that when I select text on a page and bring up the right-click menu so that I can click on "search Google for [ ]" it switches to the new tab with the Google search, something that has never happened before and I don't wish to have happen. I have not checked "When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately" in options, and in fact this problem does not occur with links, only with the Google search option. It's possible that this started three days ago, when FF automatically updated to 13.0, but I haven't used the Google search option in the last few days. Can someone please tell me how to fix this?

Thanks, Ellen

Starting this morning, I noticed that when I select text on a page and bring up the right-click menu so that I can click on "search Google for [ ]" it switches to the new tab with the Google search, something that has never happened before and I don't wish to have happen. I have not checked "When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately" in options, and in fact this problem does not occur with links, only with the Google search option. It's possible that this started three days ago, when FF automatically updated to 13.0, but I haven't used the Google search option in the last few days. Can someone please tell me how to fix this? Thanks, Ellen

Chosen solution

hey ellenelle, you can enter about:config into the location bar of firefox, confirm the info notification (in case it shows up), search for the preference named browser.search.context.loadInBackground & toggle it to true by double-clicking it. that should bring back the old behaviour...

Read this answer in context 👍 24

All Replies (3)

more options

Chosen Solution

hey ellenelle, you can enter about:config into the location bar of firefox, confirm the info notification (in case it shows up), search for the preference named browser.search.context.loadInBackground & toggle it to true by double-clicking it. that should bring back the old behaviour...

more options

Thanks!

But why, every time there is an update, can't they leave a person's settings alone? It seems there is always something like this that happens.

more options

It is change in version 13, so that pref didn't exist in previous Firefox versions.

In case like this you will have to toggle the pref if you want to revert to the previous behavior.