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Wannan tattunawa ta zama daɗaɗɗiya. Yi sabuwar tambaya idan ka na bukatar taimako.

Quickly search a highlighted text on a non-default search engine?

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Hi everybody

In previous Firefox versions, you could highlight a text, right-click and select "Search <search engine> for <text>". The search engine would be whichever was currently selected/active in the search bar. This was immensely useful, as it allowed to quickly switch between searching on Google, Wikipedia, IMDB etc.

In todays versions (I am on 58.0.2) it seems only the default search engine is available for quick searching. If my default search engine is Google and I desire to search on IMDB, it seems I must either copy paste the highlighted text or type in in manually and select the non-default search engine in the search bar.

Any hints on how to get the old behaviour back?

Thank you kindly.

Hi everybody In previous Firefox versions, you could highlight a text, right-click and select "Search <search engine> for <text>". The search engine would be whichever was currently selected/active in the search bar. This was immensely useful, as it allowed to quickly switch between searching on Google, Wikipedia, IMDB etc. In todays versions (I am on 58.0.2) it seems only the default search engine is available for quick searching. If my default search engine is Google and I desire to search on IMDB, it seems I must either copy paste the highlighted text or type in in manually and select the non-default search engine in the search bar. Any hints on how to get the old behaviour back? Thank you kindly.

All Replies (4)

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Hi, do you want to use Ctrl+F to do that and input what looking for on the page ?

Please let us know if this solved your issue or if need further assistance.

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Hi TobyWaterfield, the right-click context menu still uses the current default search engine, but the way you change your default search engine has changed.

Firefox 33 and earlier:

Drop down the list from the Search Bar and click the one you want to set as default. Then do your context search.

Firefox 34+ (if you did not use an add-on to roll it back):

Drop-down the list from the Search Bar and right-click the one you want to set as default, then click Set As Default Search Engine. Then do your context search.

So there's an extra click.

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Thank you kindly for the responsens. It seemed counterintuitive to change the default every time and the currently selected search engine is not visible without clicking again, but it's certainly better than my current workflow of copy/pasting.

Thank you very much for the provided solution.

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The old design changed the default on the first click. That wasn't obvious.

If you get bored or have trouble sleeping, I made a comparison video: https://vimeo.com/245639066