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I don't want to wade through 100 billion wonk articles. I want a real live person to tell me, in plain English, how to add shortcuts to my homepage.

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I want to add a simple short cut to my homepage. Your instructions say yo click on menu, click on page, add shortcut. No 'page' option appears when I click on menu. So now what? And how do I make the worthless and annoying Search disappear when I open a new tab. I have REPEATEDLY unclicked it, and chosen only Bing. Still, it comes back. I hate it. I don't want it. Please advise, in plain English, how to simply resolve these problems.

I want to add a simple short cut to my homepage. Your instructions say yo click on menu, click on page, add shortcut. No 'page' option appears when I click on menu. So now what? And how do I make the worthless and annoying Search disappear when I open a new tab. I have REPEATEDLY unclicked it, and chosen only Bing. Still, it comes back. I hate it. I don't want it. Please advise, in plain English, how to simply resolve these problems.

Chosen solution

Hi weejindy, those are the steps to add a shortcut to a home screen on Android, and not the instructions for Windows. For Windows, please see my reply in your earlier thread: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1062509

weejindy said

And how do I make the worthless and annoying Search disappear when I open a new tab. I have REPEATEDLY unclicked it, and chosen only Bing. Still, it comes back. I hate it. I don't want it. Please advise, in plain English, how to simply resolve these problems.

Firefox's built-in new tab page has a search box set to your default search engine above a number of thumbnail images of pages you have visited. Does that sound like the page showing when you open a new tab?

Here's how you can change your new tab page:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste newtab and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.newtab.url preference and enter your preferred page:

  • Page thumbnails (default) => about:newtab
  • Blank tab => about:blank
  • Built-in Firefox home page => about:home
  • Any other page => full URL to the page

Press Ctrl+t to open a new tab and verify that it worked. Fixed?

If problems persist, some potential diagnoses and remedies:

If Firefox won't let you edit this setting: you may have something called SearchProtect on your system. This needs to be removed from the Windows Control Panel.

If Firefox lets you save your change but ignores it: one of your extensions may be overriding it. You can review, disable, and/or remove extensions on the add-ons page. Either:

  • Ctrl+Shift+a
  • "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons

In the left column, click Extensions. Then cast a critical eye over the list on the right and disable (or remove) anything unknown.

If the change works during your session, but at the next startup is back to the unwanted page: you might have a user.js file in your personal Firefox settings folder (your Firefox profile folder). This article describes how to track down and remove the file: How to fix preferences that won't save.

Any luck?

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Chosen Solution

Hi weejindy, those are the steps to add a shortcut to a home screen on Android, and not the instructions for Windows. For Windows, please see my reply in your earlier thread: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1062509

weejindy said

And how do I make the worthless and annoying Search disappear when I open a new tab. I have REPEATEDLY unclicked it, and chosen only Bing. Still, it comes back. I hate it. I don't want it. Please advise, in plain English, how to simply resolve these problems.

Firefox's built-in new tab page has a search box set to your default search engine above a number of thumbnail images of pages you have visited. Does that sound like the page showing when you open a new tab?

Here's how you can change your new tab page:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste newtab and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.newtab.url preference and enter your preferred page:

  • Page thumbnails (default) => about:newtab
  • Blank tab => about:blank
  • Built-in Firefox home page => about:home
  • Any other page => full URL to the page

Press Ctrl+t to open a new tab and verify that it worked. Fixed?

If problems persist, some potential diagnoses and remedies:

If Firefox won't let you edit this setting: you may have something called SearchProtect on your system. This needs to be removed from the Windows Control Panel.

If Firefox lets you save your change but ignores it: one of your extensions may be overriding it. You can review, disable, and/or remove extensions on the add-ons page. Either:

  • Ctrl+Shift+a
  • "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons

In the left column, click Extensions. Then cast a critical eye over the list on the right and disable (or remove) anything unknown.

If the change works during your session, but at the next startup is back to the unwanted page: you might have a user.js file in your personal Firefox settings folder (your Firefox profile folder). This article describes how to track down and remove the file: How to fix preferences that won't save.

Any luck?