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 box doesn't work like it should

  • 8 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 7 views
  • Last reply by Gnospen

more options

When I enter search terms into the Search Box, FF comes up with suggestions that don't work. Either they're wrong, or off-topic, or otherwise useless, and they're hard to delete or very difficult to change. FF wants to search only for what it wants to search for. How can I turn off the Search Suggestions? (The tick-box on setup has no effect). I just want to search on my terms, not Firefox's terms. Chrome's Search Box is excellent, but I don't like Chrome, so I've got to figure out how to get FF to search properly.

When I enter search terms into the Search Box, FF comes up with suggestions that don't work. Either they're wrong, or off-topic, or otherwise useless, and they're hard to delete or very difficult to change. FF wants to search only for what it wants to search for. How can I turn off the Search Suggestions? (The tick-box on setup has no effect). I just want to search on my terms, not Firefox's terms. Chrome's Search Box is excellent, but I don't like Chrome, so I've got to figure out how to get FF to search properly.

Modified by James Burke

All Replies (8)

more options

What search engine are you using? Most search engines have a "adult"-filter. You set them through their pages. and should be turned of tthat way. You could thou have been hijacked by some ad-ware

more options

Do a malware check with several malware scanning programs on the Windows computer. Please scan with all programs because each program detects different malware. All these programs have free versions.

Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.

You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.

See also:

more options

Thatnks, but these suggestions are sort of "off topic". The Search Box appears to be badly designed compared to the Chrome equivalent. I'd like to turn OFF the Search Box suggestions so I don't have to struggle with them. Let's say I type in two words in the Search Box. Firefox may add a suggested third word so there's now three words.

Example:

I type "expo world" into the Search Box. FF suggests "expo world tour". I DON'T WANT "expo world tour", but I can't remove the word "tour" from the Search Box. I can't back-space it out or delete it; if I do succeed in deleting "tour", FF puts it back.

It's very annoying!

more options

open about:config Make browser.search.suggest.enabled false

more options

"open about:config"

How do I do this?

more options

just write it in as an url about:config you get a warning, be careful continue search for "browser.search.suggest.enabled" (or part of it) doubleclick to change value. It takes effect immediately. Close About... tab try

more options

?? Thunderbird doesn't like "about:config". It says "No receipients were specified". I could be making some kind of mistake since I don't really understand what you're saying.

more options

Ain't we talking about FireFox ???????

And the solution is so simple and we couldn't find it.

Just right-click in the search bar and undo Show suggestions

Modified by Gnospen