Forum der Gemeinschaft Firefox

"You can turn it off by entering about:config in the URL bar and switching browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.handoffToAwesomebar to false."

That doesn't work anymore. Since the last update, the search went back to the adress bar, doesn't matter if that option is mark as true or false.

Please stop making that the searches go to the adress bar. Nobody likes it.

It appears thousands of others have the same issue with NOTHING affecting the search bar handoff to the address bar (changing true/false in about:config does NOTHING, v148.xx). Why not just do away with any search bar and do everything from the address bar? That way enough will be annoyed they'll find an operational browser. Like too many "upgrades," this one went seriously backwards.

It's frustrating, no matter what you set, the search always jumps to the address field. I enter known addresses in the address field. I SEARCH in the SEARCH FIELD. And I want that in the future too. How do I make it possible, permanently, to be able to search in the search field??? The following doesn't work (anymore).

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

(2) In the search box in the page, type or paste handoff and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.handoffToAwesomebar preference to switch the value from true to false

I set my search engine as DuckDuckgo for privacy some time ago. I deleted Bing and others from the list of browsers as well. I made some effort to set up Firefox and my computer in general as privately oriented as possible without breaking things. I come on Firefox today and see Google has been set as me default search engine again, the other search engines are back in my list and Duckduckgo sitting on the back bench. I seem to be in the battle with Windows as well. I shut off unnecessary data transfer like customer satisfaction BS and they return like a bad rash. I am no tech whiz but I put a lot of work into my privacy only to have it reversed. What do I do?

Each time I open Firefox and type in a search I get a message like something went wrong and I need to verify that I am human. Then I have to go through the pictures and identify the ones with bicycles or motorcycles or Buses. Aggravation which I've never experienced before . I've made Firefox my default browser and I'd like to get rid of the problem. Thank you, any suggestions.

Just wanted to ask about the potential for other Ai providers - Duck.ai being the key one missing.

Is there a possibility of local instances being a feature? Whether it's just hosted locally (not a function or component of Firefox itself) or a Mozilla specific model that's locally run?

Moderator note: This question has been edited to correct the link.

First, please explain the relationship among Firefox, Mozilla and DuckDuckGo. Second, how to make Firefox open when compuetr starts. Third, how to make DDGo the search engine. Finally, how to delete email contacts. I have been doing some, but others show a red triangle and say "cannot delete this". Thank you for helping me, someday,soon, I hope , to escape the greedy clutches of MS. Gail

2026-02-17

for about 8 years now, on and off, on hundreds of OS-es, clean installs of firefox etc. sometimes - not always - typing into the firefox search bar and pressing enter does nothing

i have bit-warden, u-block-origin and stylus installed (but they shouldn't be running on the 'new-tab-page' - is my firefox sync-profile containing some firefox-breaking-errors? (latest Win-11)

I need to fix my issue with search, not sure if it is because of VPN or smth. I use Browsec as VPN, just recognized Firefox has its own VPN. Did anyone had same issue? I saw there was an update on July 1, 2026, Until yesterday everything worked fine.

I need to stop google from automatically searching in the address bar so I can use about.config.

No help has worked from the web. Commands suggested by users don't exist or they use circular logic. In other words I can't go to about.config and make changes because I can't get to about.config because google searches it. I have turned off everything and nothing gets rid of the google search. I can go to other searches but that doesn't help.