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

easier file-driven method to set search engine preferences

  • 3 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by cor-el

more options

I would like to customize search engine preferences via config file; this is similar to what is doable with user.js for most other settings. Since search engine preferences are compressed as search.json.lz4, this become more challenging.

Is there any way to get "no Bing, yes Duck Duck Go" (for example) via a config file?

I would like to customize search engine preferences via config file; this is similar to what is doable with user.js for most other settings. Since search engine preferences are compressed as search.json.lz4, this become more challenging. Is there any way to get "no Bing, yes Duck Duck Go" (for example) via a config file?

All Replies (3)

more options

You can probably do that by using JavaScript in mozilla.cfg to directly use the SearchService (Services.search)

See also:

more options

The settings you are interested in are:


/*	comma seperated list of of engines to hide in the search panel.	*/
lockPref( 'browser.search.hiddenOneOffs', 'Google,Yahoo,Bing' )
/*
 *	Set the default search engine to DuckDuckGo
 */
unlockPref( 'browser.search.defaultenginename.US' )
defaultPref( 'browser.search.defaultenginename.US', 'data:text/plain,browser.search.defaultenginename.US=DuckDuckGo' )
clearPref( 'browser.search.defaultenginename.US' )
unlockPref( 'browser.search.order.US.1' )
defaultPref( 'browser.search.order.US.1', 'data:text/plain,browser.search.order.US.1=DuckDuckGo' )
clearPref( 'browser.search.order.US.1' )
unlockPref( 'browser.search.order.US.2' )
defaultPref( 'browser.search.order.US.2', 'data:text/plain,browser.search.order.US.2=DuckDuckGo' )
clearPref( 'browser.search.order.US.2' )
unlockPref( 'browser.search.order.US.3' )
defaultPref( 'browser.search.order.US.3', 'data:text/plain,browser.search.order.US.3=DuckDuckGo' )
clearPref( 'browser.search.order.US.3' )
lockPref( 'browser.search.defaultenginename',	 'DuckDuckGo' )
lockPref( 'browser.search.order.1', 'DuckDuckGo' )
lockPref( 'browser.search.order.2', 'DuckDuckGo' )
lockPref( 'browser.search.order.3', 'DuckDuckGo' )
lockPref( 'keyword.URL', 'https://duckduckgo.com/html/?q=!+' )
more options

Here is an older thread about search engines.

Maybe contact Mike Kaply to see if he has suggestions.