Forum der Gemeinschaft Firefox

Suddenly I cannot search from the search bar. It defaults to the address bar. why "fix" something that was not broken. Being forced to use the address bar is frustrating. If you go directly to the address bar, it tells you it cannot find that site.

How do I get searches (my default is Google) to STOP going to the address bar? This started out of the blue and it is making me crazy. I don't want to be asked which search to use, and I don't want it to search in the address bar. I want it in the search box. Thanks.

This is the 3rd time I have had to post this. I am getting very frustrated. I DO NOT want the search engine within my address bar. Nothing anyone from you "community" helped to disable the search engine in my address bar. Opera, Edge, Chrome, the user can disable the search engine in the address bar. Why is Firefox so different? And difficult?

not really a request for help since release 147.0.3 searches handoff to awesome and can't be changed by using about:config dropping back to 145.0.2 allows prevention

Previous solution: switch browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.handoffToAwesomebar to false does not work anymore.

Please help.

Regards, Victor

Hello,

I have a situation - which I had previously researched and resolved - that has come back to haunt me.

I use an ultra-widescreen monitor and searching/browsing obviously necessitates a center-screen search box which, up until now, Firefox has provided cleanly and with simplicity. However, I see that (once again) despite cursor placement in the center-screen box the search text is being entered in the address bar which is wholly impractical for me since I have to look about 60 degrees left and upwards to see what I am typing.

I say "again" because when this happened previously I was able to make a config change and resolve it but despite that still being in effect - the ".handoffToAwesomebar" is still set to FALSE - search text now has moved back to the address bar.

A brief search of this community yielded no answers. Is there any other known fix or has this now be thrust upon us permanently and thou shalt adapt?

Thanks in advance....

I am reopening the question from 2020 as the solution described no longer seems to apply. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1284577

I am running Windows 11. Firefox 144.0 (64-bit)

When entering search terms into the search bar in the centre of the page, the information typed appears in the address bar, even after following the fix described in 1284577.

Treating the address bar as the search bar appears to be the default. While the user can additionally deselect the search engine in the address bar, that is an unnecessary and undesired additional step for every search (the primary reason I am using Firefox)

Is there a way to permanently set the default for what I enter into the search bar to remain in the search bar and not to be managed by the address bar? Thanks, Rich

I set the about:config settings when I got the new computer early last year. It's been working fine. Suddenly, searches are popping up again to the urlbar.

browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.handoffToAwesomebar is still set to false. Keyword.enabled is still set to false.

I see a couple of site references to browser.fixup.alternate.enabled, but it doesn't exist.

How do I get FF back to proper search in the search bar?

hi i am unable to use the middle search bar on the firefox screen , i understand that this search bar is a dummy bar, i have been told that to make this bar work you have to alter the settings using about:config process, and changing the handoff from ture to false , to which I have done in the past and it has worked , but for a reason I cannot understand this seems not to work now , i am completely lost now and i am reaching out to the community for help and advise thank you . K.

All of a sudden (after a recent update I suppose) every time I start to type anything in the "search" in the middle of my "home" screen, the curser jumps to the address space in the toolbar. I hate that! I want to continue to use search in the middle of the screen as I have for years since I started using browsers. I've tried looking at the setting for "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.handoffToAwesomebar" and it is set to "false" as was recommended in another post some years ago. What do I have to do to revert back to the way it was before this change was forced on me?

There is a perfectly functional search bar in the middle of my homepage. why do I have to search with the anything but "awesomebar"? I have made so many changes to about:config true to false false to true firefox will probably never work again properly. There should be a check box somewhere in settings to toggle this on and off. Newer is not always better

I don't like to use the address bar to type searches. I like using the SEARCH BOX in Firefox's New Tab instead. But, with each update, I once again have to try to figure out how to set Firefox searches to be typed in the search box. Is there any way to set this so it doesn't get changed with every update?

I would like to remove the search options from the address bar because I preferred the old setup with a separate search window (and the address bar was just unable to perform searches). How can I set this up?