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Why does Firefox auto-fill "newsweek.com" in the URL bar when I type the word "news"?

  • 4 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by mpls

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When Firefox Sync is turned on, Firefox auto-fills "newsweek.com" in the URL bar when I type the word "news". There seems to be no way to disable this annoying feature other than setting browser.urlbar.autoFill to false in about:config.

When Firefox Sync is turned on, Firefox auto-fills "newsweek.com" in the URL bar when I type the word "news". There seems to be no way to disable this annoying feature other than setting browser.urlbar.autoFill to false in about:config.

All Replies (4)

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That is exactly how you disable the in-URL-bar autofill feature.

It's actually quite difficult to clear one single autocomplete match, but sometimes you can get Firefox to use a different one by visiting it more.

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Thank you for the response jscher. I like the autofill feature, but I'm not sure where it learned about newsweek.

I first noticed this while visiting news.ycombinator.com. I tried going to that site several times in a row, and yet I still get the following pattern:

new -> newsweek.com/ news. -> news.com.au/ news.y -> news.yale.edu/ news.yc -> news.ycombinator.com/

Maybe its just me, but I find that fairly frustrating especially considering I never go to those first three sites.

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You can remove all data stored in Firefox for a specific domain via "Forget About This Site" in the right-click context menu of an history entry ("History -> Show All History" or "View -> Sidebar -> History").

Using "Forget About This Site" will remove all data stored in Firefox for this domain like history and cookies and passwords and exceptions and cache, so be cautious. If you have a password or other data for that domain that you do not want to lose then make sure to backup this data or make a note.

You can't recover from this 'forget' unless you have a backup of involved files.

If you revisit a 'forgotten' website then data for that website will be saved once again.

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Thank you for the response cor-el. I tried to remove/forget "news.com.au/" from my history; however, I have never actually visited the site. So, I was unable to implement your suggestion.

On a lark, I decided to visit the site, then remove it from my history using your method. However, it still shows up as an autofill in the urlBar.

Modified by mpls