Smarter suggestions

Mozilla will be rolling out a new offering for the Firefox Suggest experience — “Firefox Suggest with smarter contextual suggestions.” To deliver a personalized web experience with smarter results that requires less effort from you, Firefox will retrieve additional suggestions from a Mozilla service in real time, similar to the way suggestions are retrieved from your default search engine. To generate relevant suggestions, Firefox will send Mozilla search queries (what you are typing into the address bar), and city-level location (what's nearby and relevant, determined from your IP address). Firefox also informs the service if you click on a provided suggestion. This feature requires access to new data, so it will require you to affirmatively opt in before it is enabled. It will initially be offered only to a small number of users in the U.S.

To enable these enhanced suggestions, simply click on Allow suggestions when you receive our notification prompt or Customize in settings to choose the experience you want and the types of suggestions that will show in the address bar.

What data does Mozilla share with its partners if you allow smarter suggestions?

Smarter suggestions may include content from partners, including sponsored suggestions. Before Mozilla shares any data with its Contextual Suggestion partners about which suggestions have been displayed or clicked, all personally identifying information is removed, and the data is sent through a Mozilla-owned proxy service rather than directly from your computer. To learn more about how Mozilla handles data, see this blog post.

Why would you enable the Improved Firefox Suggest Experience?

Firefox is creating a trustworthy guide to the better web, surfacing relevant information to users as they navigate the web. We're doing so by only collecting the data that we need to operate and update the functionality of Firefox Suggest based on our Lean Data and Data Privacy Principles.

Enabling Firefox Suggest helps enable Firefox, the independent browser, to improve the overall search experience and suggest relevant information for users. To enable these suggestions, click Allow suggestions when you receive our notification prompt or go to the Address Bar - Firefox Suggest section in preferences to choose the types of suggestions that will show in the address bar.

What data does Mozilla share with its partners if you allow or enable “Improve the Firefox Suggest Experience”?

Before Mozilla shares any data with its partners about which suggestions have been displayed or clicked, all personally identifying information is removed, and the data is sent through a Mozilla-owned proxy service rather than directly from your computer. Learn more about how Mozilla handles data.

1. In the Menu bar at the top of the screen, click Firefox and then select Preferences or Settings, depending on your macOS version.Click the menu button and select Settings.
2. Select Privacy & Security on the left and go down to the Address Bar — Firefox Suggest section.

   
   

   Note: If you see the text, “Firefox will have access to your location, search queries, and visited sites” under Contextual suggestions, then Firefox Suggest with smarter suggestions is now available to you. This option is only enabled for users who have opted into it. If you don’t see this text, then ‘smarter contextual suggestions’ are not offered or enabled.

   • To enable or disable contextual suggestions, select or deselect the checkbox next to Contextual suggestions.
   • To enable or disable traditional address bar suggestions, such as Firefox Suggest results from browsing history and bookmarks, select or deselect the associated checkboxes.

1. In the Menu bar at the top of the screen, click Firefox and then select Preferences or Settings, depending on your macOS version.Click the menu button and select Settings.
2. Select Privacy & Security on the left and go down to the Address Bar — Firefox Suggest section.
3. To enable or disable any setting, click the toggle or checkbox.
4. For additional clarity, the grey info box will summarize your preference choice.