[Fix] Restore Real Working Search Box on New Tab Page in Firefox 89 and Later

Comments

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1. Thank you very much Vishal Gupta and Robert Snyder for sharing this solution! Firefox 89, which I had no advance notification of, or choice whether it would be installed or not, has been annoying me so much for the last couple of days! I tried yesterday to find a solution to this problem, without success. Today I found your solution at the top of the search results (in DuckDuckGo), followed your instructions and it is working perfectly now! No more annoying address bar searches or having to click to select a search engine just to get another ridiculously small search box (& I’ve had all search engines other than DuckDuckGo disabled for a very long time)! I will check your website again when I need help for any other problems & will recommend you to other people. Thanks again for sharing the information! 🙂

2. THANK YOU SO MUCH! all I could find was people telling me to disable searching via the address bar, which just meant that I couldn’t even search from the new tab at all

3. Perfect, Thanks Much

4. I can’t thank you both enough.

5. Thank god… First those irritating mobile app styled non-tabs and then this.. This was very irritating.

6. Now open new tab page in Firefox and click inside the search box and type any search term and it’ll start working again. It’ll no longer shift or transfer the focus to address bar.

   How do I get the cursor to default to the search box and not the address bar……. I have completed your fix above and it works great, but the cursor still defaults to the address bar

7. Thank you. I was trying to fix this annoying change for two frustrating hours before I stumbled upon this article.

8. It seems that the fix no longer works. I have checked the “awesomebar” setting in configuration settings and it was set to False, yet the cursor always jumps to the URL bar when I try to use the Search box on a new page in Firefox.

9. The fix worked for me on June 26 at 8pm, EST.

   Thanks!

10. Sadly, frustratingly, it no longer seems to work (even though I restarted FF). It is so annoying I am thinking of changing browsers after all these years!

11. Thank you, this was far from “awesome” but a real pain because I already disabled search on the URL bar (keyword.enabled=false) – since I was fed up of having my internal work hostnames sent out as searches. The new behaviour simply doesn’t work when keyword.enabled=false. They need to take this into account when making these changes, and stop making disruptive behavioural tweaks that people didn’t ask for, they interrupt workflow.

12. Awesome! (And I don’t mean that bar!) This is exactly what I needed. I could find everywhere how to make the Address Bar quit searching, but not how to bring back the real search on the New Tab page. This is exactly what I was looking for and could not find anywhere.

    Thanks!

13. It fixed it the normal Firefox, but not for private tabs. The search bar is still broken with this fix in the private windows… Who thought that this unintuitive nonsense was a good idea?! It’s annoying.

14. THANK YOU!! this was driving me mad. so freaking annoying!

15. Thank you for the help! The awesome bar is anything except awesome. There is nothing so irritating as a touch typist than having an edit box change focus making the text entry disappear. Is the keyboard disconnected?

16. This solution doesn’t seem to be working for me, and I’m not sure if the problem is with Firefox or the search engine I’m using, Startpage.

    Everything was fine last time I went to the search box to look for something a day or so ago. Now, all of the sudden, putting something in the Search box just brings up the Startpage search page. So if I want to use the search box, I either have to open a new tab (bringing up a blank page – which is my preference for the default tab) put in the Startpage url, and THEN do my search, OR I have to add the Startpage extension to my browser. Which I DO NOT want to do for a couple of reasons:

    A) If it’s Startpage, not Firefox, disabling the search box, why are they doing this? Why aren’t they making it as convenient as possible to use Start Page? Instead, they force users like myself to add an extension to use the search box on my own damn computer browser. Why would I reward this behavior? I refuse on general principal alone (I may be hopelessly naive though, as this may be the way things are done now. Everything has to be an add-on, including what search engine you use).

    B) Privacy concerns. Some bad reviews of Startpage mentioned they’d been bought out by an ad company. Odd for a search engine that supposedly prides itself on providing privacy (the buyout actually happened two years ago, though I never knew about until now. Conversely, I’d still use their website if I don’t have to add the extension).

    So, is there a way to make my browser just search via the search box with this search engine (which I already have as my default under Settings)? Pardon my long-winded ramble.

17. ^^ Enabling the above mentioned preference should fix the issue. If it didn’t, it means the issue is occurring from search engine side. You can try to switch to other search engines to test the output.

18. Brilliant. Thanks a lot.

19. Endless thanks Mr Vishal Gupta and Mr Robert Snyder for providing this solution to such an unnecessary annoyance! You guys are welcome to supper at my house anytime!

    I’ve noticed this for months and wouldn’t you know it? The first time I searched for a solution this was the most prominent in the first page of results and obviously I find myself thinking I should have looked for this sooner.

    I can’t help but wonder what Mozilla thought this was a good idea and if they thought it was so wonderful, why the half implementation? You’d think if they were that committed to doing something so short-sighted they’d go whole hog and just remove the search box on the FF home page instead of mocking us with a vestigial stump.

    To think of all the times I took back half the bad things I’ve said about them! I just noticed the bright and shiny new fancy feedback system in FF earlier today.

    wonder how long THAT’S gonna last, LOL

20. Thank you for this – But now how do I start a new tab with the cursor in the said box without clicking into it as I have to move the cursor every time – how can this be done from clicking the tab and automatically get the cursor into the box.

21. Works!

    thank you

22. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

    This is day three of me installing and uninstalling my OS, the browser and a number of other things I suspected of causing the issue. I was convinced something was broken, until finally finding the .fake-editable with the inspector.

    This is so irritating that if not for the fix, I would have had to use an extension to customise new tab page.

    This is yet another fix I have to do for new installs, as I also dislike getting sent to search results when typing incorrect URL in the bar.

    What’s it to them where I want to type? Why can’t they just leave it well alone and go fix things that need fixing instead?

    I’ve been using this browser for 15+ years, but if they keep removing useful features I’ll have to find a different one.

23. I am afraid, it didn’t work on my system!
    But I did find another way of achieving it:
    Type about:preferences#search in the address bar.
    Under ‘Search bar’, highlight “Add search bar in toolbar”, and the beloved old search box will appear again.

24. Thank you for a helpful, concise, and informative set of instructions. Also, thanks for not making me watch an instructional video for the solution. I’m sick of video-only answers.

25. I am using your tips and hints for some years, thank you for all that. This tip to getting back the old middle-screen Firefox search bar only worked till my last system crash, few day ago. Now, after a new setup, your proposal won’t work anymore. The search bar does not show middle-screen, but on top instead. I double-checked for any mistake but the middle-screened search box doesn’t show at the place as it has been before. Did Firefox change your workaround with last update and is there anything else to solve this?

26. THANK YOU!!!!!