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

Cuireadh an snáithe seo sa chartlann. Cuir ceist nua má tá cabhair uait.

Modify the default selected bar when opening a new window/tab

more options

When opening a fresh window/tab on Mozilla Firefox, the address bar is selected by default so you can start typing a url, search, etc (first image).

I would like to change that, so everytime I open a new window/tab the "Search the Web" bar is already selected by default (second image).

All of that while keeping the "Web Search" feature from Options>Home as my homepage.

Any ideas?

Obs: I'm having problems with the "Add images" feature in this forum, so I used postimage.

https://postimg.cc/gallery/1rejmm354/

When opening a fresh window/tab on Mozilla Firefox, the address bar is selected by default so you can start typing a url, search, etc (first image). I would like to change that, so everytime I open a new window/tab the "Search the Web" bar is already selected by default (second image). All of that while keeping the "Web Search" feature from Options>Home as my homepage. Any ideas? Obs: I'm having problems with the "Add images" feature in this forum, so I used postimage. https://postimg.cc/gallery/1rejmm354/

All Replies (4)

more options

Hello brarababa,

Maybe you'd like to give this add-on a try :

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/new-tab-override/

See under "About this extension" and scroll down some.

Would that work for you  ?

more options

McCoy said

Hello brarababa, Maybe you'd like to give this add-on a try : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/new-tab-override/ See under "About this extension" and scroll down some. Would that work for you  ?

Hi.

This add-on indeed has a "Set focus to the web page instead of the address bar" feature, but it apparently only works with URLs that start with either "http://" or "https://" (unlike my current homepage/new tab).

...

I was thinking about creating a Greasemonkey script so everytime I access "about:home" or "about:newtab", it automatically focus on the search bar (like the 2nd image of my original post).

But I have no knowledge in that matter whatsoever, so I'm not sure if this is possible, and even if it is, I have no idea how to do that.

more options

brarababa said

But I have no knowledge in that matter whatsoever, so I'm not sure if this is possible, and even if it is, I have no idea how to do that.

Neither do I (know how to do that, if at all possible) ......  :(

But there are some contributors here who will know, but : it's 'that time of year' - I don't know when they'll be around .....

If it takes to long and your thread moves further down the queue : just post something like "Bump .... "

Good luck  !

more options

Unfortunately, extensions cannot touch about:home or about:config. That also means a *monkey extension can't inject a script into them either.

Since your search engine appears to be DuckDuckGo, you could use New Tab Override to show DDG's home page in a new tab.