Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

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

How to turn off the name of the search engine in a blue box in the address bar instead of the search shortcut as typed?

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 7 views
  • Last reply by hysknrs

more options

When I typed any search shortcut (let's say "w" for Wikipedia) and then Space in the address bar, the bar would have just shown "w ".

After an update to 86, now typing "w " shows "Wikipedia" in a blue box instead of "w ". This is extremely irritating because I now can't just press Alt+D and enter a new search shortcut from scratch when I mistyped.

I have both browser.urlbar.update1 and browser.urlbar.update2 set to false.

When I typed any search shortcut (let's say "w" for Wikipedia) and then Space in the address bar, the bar would have just shown "w ". After an update to 86, now typing "w " shows "Wikipedia" in a blue box instead of "w ". This is extremely irritating because I now can't just press Alt+D and enter a new search shortcut from scratch when I mistyped. I have both browser.urlbar.update1 and browser.urlbar.update2 set to false.

All Replies (2)

more options

Instead of doing Alt-D you should just be able to press backspace, you only need to press it once unlike twice previously.

I understand this is a change of method and may take some getting used to, but hopefully it won't be too hard.

more options

I'm specifically asking the way to turn it off. The new interface is extremely half-baked.

Since you've brought it up, the behavior of Backspace is also user-hostile. If you press W, Space, and then Backspace, it should bring it back to "w". But it removes the whole shortcut.

Ctrl+A also doesn't work as expected, which should select the entire query including the shortcut, not excluding it.

The most egregious thing is when you enter a shortcut at the beginning of an already-inserted query. Now the cursor is at the end of the entire query, not where it was at, i.e. the beginning of the query sans the shortcut.

This shouldn't have been rolled out so half-baked, let alone force everyone into it. "Get used to it" is an insulting thing to say when that new thing is clearly worse than what was already there.