Disable All Kind of Suggestions in Mozilla Firefox Address Bar

If you want to disable or remove all kind of suggestions, recommendations and promotional links from Mozilla Firefox address bar’s drop-down box, this article will help you.

Whenever you type something in the address bar or URL bar of Mozilla Firefox, the web browser automatically displays suggestions related to the search term in the drop-down list. Most of the times these suggestions are taken from the web to help the user in easily finding the desired information.

Sometimes these suggestions also include promotional offers or sponsored links provided by Mozilla partners. Starting from recently released Firefox 122.0 version, Mozilla has also started showing MDN Web Docs article suggestions in the address bar for users searching for web development-related information.

Following screenshot shows suggestions and recommendations shown by Mozilla Firefox in the address bar drop-down box:

Many Firefox users might not like these extra recommendations and might find them unnecessary or annoying. Also some privacy concerned users might not like this feature as the typed URL or search query might be sent to Mozilla server or partners to display the sponsored stuff in the address bar.

Mozilla team provides a few built-in options on Firefox Settings page to enable or disable a few suggestions types such as browsing history, bookmarks, search engines, etc. But many other suggestions such as clipboard data, MDN web docs, add-ons, top sites, weather, etc can’t be disabled direct from Settings page.

In this article, we’ll share simple steps to get rid of all tips, suggestions, recommendations and promotional offers from Firefox address bar. After following these steps, your web browser will stop suggesting searches or showing sponsored links in the address bar.

If you also want to turn off all kind of suggestions in Firefox address bar, check out following steps:

STEP 1: First of all, we’ll disable Firefox Suggest service or feature which is responsible behind showing many kind of suggestions in the URL bar taken from web and Mozilla’s partners or sponsors.

1. Open Mozilla Firefox and type about:config in the address bar and press Enter. It’ll show you a warning message, click on “Accept the Risk and Continue” button. It’ll open Firefox’s hidden secret advanced configuration page i.e. about:config page.

2. Now type quicksuggest.enabled in Search filter box and look for following preference in the window:

Make sure the value of the above mentioned preference is set to False which means the Firefox Suggest feature is disabled in Firefox. If it’s set to true, double-click on the preference and it’ll toggle the preference value to False.

STEP 2: Now we’ll disable all available suggestions and recommendations in Firefox by modifying a few hidden secret preferences/flags. Actually each type of suggestion in Firefox comes with a secret preference/flag associated with it. Firefox team provides these preferences to allow advanced users to activate or deactivate these suggestions according to their requirements.

By default, all preferences/flags associated with these address bar suggestions are enabled in Firefox. You can modify them to disable or remove desired suggestions in Firefox with the help of following steps:

1. Again open about:config page in Firefox.

2. Now type urlbar.suggest in Search filter box and you’ll see several preferences in the window as mentioned in following list:

Almost all preferences/flags are set to True which means the suggestions are enabled in Firefox. You just need to set all or desired preferences/flags to False and it’ll immediately disable the suggestion type in Firefox address bar. Just double-click on the desired preference and it’ll toggle the preference value to False.

All preferences/flag names are self-explanatory, and each preference/flag name will give you a clear idea about which type of address bar suggestion it controls in Firefox.

Once you set all above mentioned preferences/flags to False, Firefox will no longer display any promotional or unwanted suggestion in the address bar.

STEP 3: You might need to restart Firefox to apply the changes. If you have opened multiple tabs and you don’t want to lose them, you can restart Firefox without losing tabs using methods given in following tutorial:

[Tip] How to Restart Mozilla Firefox Without Losing Tabs

PS: In future, if you decide to restore suggestions in Firefox address bar drop-down list, set the above mentioned preferences to True again.

NOTE: New preferences/flags might be added in future versions of Firefox to turn on/off new types of suggestions. Whenever you update your web browser, make sure to check all available preferences/flags related to urlbar.suggest on Firefox about:config page. If you find any new preference set to True, you can change it to False to immediately disable the new suggestion type in your web browser.

Also Check:

How to Disable Firefox Suggest Sponsored Ads in the Address bar?

Disable Rich Search Suggestions with Thumbnails in Firefox Address bar

[Tip] Enable or Disable Search Terms Display in Firefox Address bar