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How can I turn off the single click search

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The new search interface drives me insane. Now there's no easy way to switch from the default search engine to a different one and use it multiple times. To do that i have to click on that particular search engine icon every single time after I typed my query. So before I had to click on a particular search engine one time and then use my keyboard to search stuff. Now i have to switch between my keyboard and mouse all the time to search for things. Is that supposed to be more convenient? Well, it's not. Previously I managed to revert to the old search interface by turning off browser.search.showOneOffButtons parameter in about:config dialog, but now even that doesn't work. So my question is: how to turn off that mess of a search interface and get the normal one back?

The new search interface drives me insane. Now there's no easy way to switch from the default search engine to a different one and use it multiple times. To do that i have to click on that particular search engine icon every single time after I typed my query. So before I had to click on a particular search engine one time and then use my keyboard to search stuff. Now i have to switch between my keyboard and mouse all the time to search for things. Is that supposed to be more convenient? Well, it's not. Previously I managed to revert to the old search interface by turning off browser.search.showOneOffButtons parameter in about:config dialog, but now even that doesn't work. So my question is: how to turn off that mess of a search interface and get the normal one back?

All Replies (2)

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The old "browser.search.showOneOffButtons" preference was only intended to be available for a few versions, a temporary preference; it lasted a lot longer than many of us thought it would.

Try using the Old Search extension. That is the closest I have seen to the old search scheme. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-search1/

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The new bar does work quite differently. To select a new default search engine on the new search bar, you can either:

  • right-click its icon and choose Set As Default Search Engine
  • hold down the Ctrl key and press the down arrow or up arrow to cycle through the list

About the old bar: the actual computer code to generate the old search bar is no longer present in Firefox 43 or newer, so that's why the old transitional preference no longer does anything.

The code has been transplanted into an extension if you really want to use the bar. The Classic Theme Restorer extension is something of a Swiss Army Knife/time machine of old Firefox interface elements, and you'll probably need to spend 20 minutes with it tweaking the settings if you choose to use it.