I was once a dedicated Firefox user, but for some time now, I have moved on to Brave as my default browser. However, I wrote an article recently about Perplexity search in Firefox, and while revisiting Firefox, I discovered that the search bar was not working.
When I tried to type a search term into the search bar, what I was typing automatically and constantly popped into the address bar instead. So frustrating.
Initially, I looked through Firefox’s settings to see if there was a way to alter that behavior. After finding nothing of the sort and in the belief that this could not be right, I searched online for a possible solution, only to discover dozens, if not hundreds of users posting the exact same complaint.
I, as is apparently the case with many others, prefer to use a search bar rather than the address bar for searching, and after much searching online, I finally came across a solution that worked for me:
Fix Firefox Search Bar Not Working
- Open Firefox, type about:config into the address bar, and hit Enter
- In the warning, click the Accept the Risk and Continue button
- Copy and paste the following into the Taskbar and toggle it to false
browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.handoffToAwesomebar
NOTE: You can toggle between True and False either by double-clicking the item or via the toggle switch:
(click image to enlarge)
BOTTOM LINE:
As I mentioned earlier, there are heaps of complaints across forums about this same issue, and this was in the latest Firefox version (149). Honestly, in today’s ultra-competitive browser market, Mozilla isn’t doing its reputation any favours by requiring this type of workaround for something that should just work out of the box; it is simply unacceptable.
- For all Firefox-related articles, please visit: Firefox On DCT
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