OK OK WE'RE STOPPING IT ASAP!!!bold text

I have used Firefox in all it's iterations including Netscape. I have ridden out all the ups and downs, mistakes and winners. This is my first public complaint. Stop the URL Bar (a.k.a. NOT Awesome bar) from being the default search bar. It is ridiculous and dangerous, and too small, and not helpful and u.s.w. The handoff from the center page to it is distracting and overall I dislike the heck out of it. Give us the Option. It is why we choose FF in the first place. I continue to use FF even though tons of companies want you to switch to use their sites. I refuse and continue to find tweaks and hacks to keep it working on FF. I believe in this browser and if I had a tree of money, I would shower it's leaves on FF and the community. Anyway, that's all. Fix it please. Thanks from an really really really old guy wanting a simple unbroken browser.

I've said above that we're bringing it back.

Mozilla will restore the browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.handoffToAwesomebar preference that can be set to "false" in abut:config in a future update. This will most likely happen in Firefox version 149 (currently in Beta) or possibly in a Firefox 148 dot release. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2017049 for more information.

How soon can get this new update? This is a total nightmare.

Hello

Take a look at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1562583#answer-1804082

Posted 03-04-2026 by Mozilla employee PaulFirefoxUX in Mozilla Connect: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/firefox-labs/please-bring-back-an-option-to-disable-new-tab-search-handoff/m-p/119276 (quote) As a result of seeing other threads on Connect and on Reddit about this, we've decided to revive this config setting asap. It's already back in the Nightly edition of Firefox (which gets updates every day) and will be back in the next dot-release of Firefox, 148.0.1 on March 10.

Looking forward to it being changed back. Having a fake Search bar is not the Firefox Way! IMHO

Drastic changes like this in the future should be Community driven, not developers choice.

Posted 03-04-2026 by Mozilla employee PaulFirefoxUX in Mozilla Connect: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/firefox-labs/please-bring-back-an-option-to-disable-new-tab-search-handoff/m-p/119276 (quote) As a result of seeing other threads on Connect and on Reddit about this, we've decided to revive this config setting asap. It's already back in the Nightly edition of Firefox (which gets updates every day) and will be back in the next dot-release of Firefox, 148.0.1 on March 10.