Change your default search settings in Firefox

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  • Revision id: 148645
  • Created:
  • Creator: Underpass
  • Comment: ebay is again among the available search providers
  • Reviewed: No
  • Ready for localization: No
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The Search panel in the Firefox Settings page lets you customize your search options. From here, you can add or remove search engines, change your default search engine, turn the search bar on or off or choose whether or not to display search suggestions.

Options Search 52Options Search 49 win10Options Search 52Options Search 55Fx56SearchPanelsearch panel 57

To open the Search panel, click the menu button New Fx Menu, choose OptionsPreferences and select Search in the left pane.

Default search engine

You can choose a default search engine from the drop-down menu.

choose default search 38default search 49Fx56DefaultSearchEnginedefault search 57
Windows 10 users: If you'd like to use the same search engine for Cortana searches, put a check mark next to Use this search engine for searches from Windows.

Available search engines

Firefox comes with the following search engines:

  • Yahoo for searching the web via Yahoo
  • Google for searching the web via Google
  • Bing for searching the web via Microsoft Bing
  • Amazon.com for searching for products on the Amazon.com retail website
  • DuckDuckGo as a search engine for users who don't want to be tracked when they search
  • eBay for looking up items for sale or auction at eBay
  • Twitter for searching people on Twitter
  • Wikipedia (en) for searching the English Wikipedia free online encyclopedia
  • Yahoo for searching the web via Yahoo
  • Google for searching the web via Google
  • Bing for searching the web via Microsoft Bing
  • Amazon.com for searching for products on the Amazon.com retail website
  • DuckDuckGo as a search engine for users who don't want to be tracked when they search
  • Twitter for searching people on Twitter
  • Wikipedia (en) for searching the English Wikipedia free online encyclopedia

Provide search suggestions

As you type into the Search bar or the address bar, your default search engine shows you suggestions based on popular searches or on your previous searches. See Search suggestions in Firefox for more information. To turn search suggestions on or off, add or remove the check mark next to Provide search suggestions.

search sug settings
  • Show search suggestions in locationaddress bar results. When search suggestions are turned on, select this setting to also include search suggestions in the results that are listed when you search from the Firefox address bar.

One-click search engines

When you start typing in the Search bar or address bar, you'll see icons for other search engines you can search with:

AlternateSearchEnginesone click search 57

You can choose an alternate search engine and use it for your search with one click, if you don't want to use the current default. To remove alternate search engines you don't want to be displayed in the Search bar, remove the check mark next to the search engine listed in the Search panel. This will not remove the search engines themselves.

Remove search engines

To remove a search engine, follow these steps:

  1. Click on the search engine you don't want to highlight it.
  2. Click the Remove button to take it off your list.
remove search engine 49remove search engines 57

If you remove a search engine that you added yourself and you change your mind, you'll have to add it back again (see below). If you remove any of the search engines that come with Firefox by default, click Restore Default Search Engines to bring them back.

Add more search engines

Many providers also offer add-ons that let you add even more search engines:

  1. Click Add more search engines.
  2. Hover over the add-ons you want to add and click Add to Firefox.

See Add or remove a search engine in Firefox to learn more about adding search engines.