How to Disable New One-Click Search Bar and Restore Classic Search Box in Mozilla Firefox?

The new versions of Mozilla Firefox web browser come with many new features such as Firefox Hello, built-in themes to customize Firefox UI, etc.

Apart from these new features, there is another interesting change in the new Firefox version. It comes with a new and improved Search interface for the Search box (or Search Bar). We told you about it earlier in our exclusive Nightly Update article.

If you try to search for a term using Search box present in Firefox toolbar, you’ll notice the new Search UI which displays search suggestions along with one-click buttons for other search engines such as Yahoo!, Bing, Wikipedia, etc.

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Mozilla_Firefox_New_Search_UI.png

Its a good change and improvement in Firefox but some people are not liking the new Search interface. If you also don’t like the new One-Click Search UI in Firefox, you can disable it with the help of this tutorial.

Today in this tutorial, we are going to tell you ways to get rid of the new Search UI in Firefox and bring the old classic Search interface back.

So without wasting time lets start the tutorial:

METHOD 1: Using Classic Theme Restorer Extension

You can easily bring back the classic search box and other classic UI features in Mozilla Firefox newer versions with the help of Classic Theme Restorer extension.

First download the extension from following topic:

[Tip] Get Classic Theme, UI and Features Back in Mozilla Firefox

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And then you can enable “Old Search” option given in “General UI (1)” section of this extension options. It’ll restore classic search feature in Firefox.

Classic_Theme_Restorer_Addon_Options.png

METHOD 2: Using Mozilla Firefox Preferences

Mozilla has added a new Search tab in Firefox Preferences window. You can take help of the new tab to disable search suggestions or to remove one-click search buttons of other search providers.

Open Firefox Preferences window and go to Search tab.

Alternatively, you can directly access Search tab by clicking on “Change Search Settings” link given at the bottom of new Search interface.

Disable_Firefox_Search_Suggestions_One_Click_Buttons.png

Here you can uncheck any unwanted search engine and it’ll be immediately removed from the new Search interface.

You can remove all search engine buttons and search suggestions which will make the new Search interface look-like the old Search UI:

Mozilla_Firefox_Search_without_One_Click_UI.png

Related:

[Tip] Disable Search Suggestions in Addressbar Results of Mozilla Firefox

[Tip] Remove “Search With Google” and “Visit Website” Options from Firefox Addressbar

METHOD 3: Using about:config Page

If you are not satisfied with the result, you can permanently turn the new Search interface off using about:config window:

1. Open Firefox and type about:config in the addressbar and press Enter. It’ll confirm, click on I’ll be careful, I promise! button.

2. Now type oneoff in the Filter box and look for following boolean key:

browser.search.showOneOffButtons

3. The entry “browser.search.showOneOffButtons” would be set to true. Double-click on it or right-click on it and select “Toggle“. It’ll set its value to false.

Disable_Firefox_Search_Engine_One_Click_Buttons.png

4. Restart Firefox and it’ll disable the new one-click Search UI in Firefox and you’ll get the old classic Search interface back.

Published in: Mozilla Firefox, Troubleshooting Guides

About the author: Vishal Gupta (also known as VG) has been awarded with Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award. He holds Masters degree in Computer Applications (MCA). He has written several tech articles for popular newspapers and magazines and has also appeared in tech shows on various TV channels.

Comments

NOTE: Older comments have been removed to reduce database overhead.

  1. I am also writing to thank you for the 2nd solution. It was driving me absolutely insane to have to click TWICE in the search bar every time I needed to set the cursor for an edit. Thank goodness that although Firefox continues to degrade the default version like other browsers do, they also continue to enable helpful people to assist us in restoring the superior functionality of older versions (e.g. toggles for flash video and images, the status bar).

  2. On Linux the supid “Search With” thing break tripple-click to select all the text. Disabling in about:config fixed that. Thank you.

  3. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. A thousands thanks. Health, Prosperity and Love to you, your family and friends.

    I use various search engines myself, and I hated to be forced to accept that stupîd interface change.

    Oh, I used method #2.

  4. OK, I usually hate changes to my software, but I’m not having a problem with this new One-Click search bar at all. I did reset my default search engine to Google, but I find other than that it works the same as the old one did, it just looks different. In the “old days”, I typed a query into the search bar, then hit Enter and Google took it from there. It’s no different now. I type in a query, hit Enter and — with my default engine changed to Google — off it goes. Maybe I’m missing something?

  5. Thanks for this! I hate the new interface, as it makes it nearly impossible to triple-click:select all. Only changing the setting in about:config makes the box go away entirely, making triple click possible again.

  6. In what way can the change be described as “Its a good change and improvement in Firefox…”

    I live in Europe, here we have different countries most of which use their own language. This is reflected in the way search engines work : google.co.uk will return different results to google.de or google.nl when searching with the same search terms.

    Therefore I have six different versions of the Google search engine in my search field as sometimes I want to search for German sites, other times Danish, often UK sites etc.

    The new search UI makes it impossible to change the search engine on the fly for the rest of the session. I have to click on the google search engine I want each and every time I search. Annoying if I want to spend a half hour searching just for German language sites based in Germany.

    Clicking on the Google search engine I want is more difficult as all six Google search engines in the new search UI have the same icon and no text.

    I have used the about:config work around to work around these problems – however the change has partially broke the “Add to Searchbar” addon functionality. It is now no longer possible to customise the display text when adding a search engine in this way.

  7. Just to clarity, the problem with “Add to Searchbar” occurs when the new search UI is enabled.

  8. Setting browser.search.showOneOffButtons to false worked for me… When I wanted to edit my search I was having to click the search bar 6, 7 or 8 times to get the cursor where I wanted it or to click and select one or more words… it was very annoying

  9. Hooray!!!
    The new ‘improved’ search bar seriously angered me. Apart from the haywire functionality of it, I suspect that Mozilla has done a deal with all the big sites to make their buttons pop out at us. Utterly horrible. Shame on you Mozilla. Whoever thought this one up should be cleaning toilets.

  10. Thanks. I hated how the search bar in Linux would not select the entire text with double-clicking or triple-clicking, making it a pain to clear out the search results. Until this bug is fixed, I’m keeping the old-style search bar.

  11. FIVE STAR solution rating! Using both methods(1st method followed by the 2nd method), returned everything back to the search paradise that actually worked and worked VERY well. Thank you for this solution! Why Mozilla changed it to that horrible new barely working and awful text entry box that was beyond frustrating to use is beyond me. Sounds like I am definitely not alone on that either. Thank you again for this solution. I’m back to search list and search text entry box perfection. \m/ Search-A-Zen-Again! \m/

  12. Great help! Was unhappy with new search engines layout. Prefer alphabetical list order. Thanks for bringing it back to my FF!

  13. Thanks for the about:config entry to toggle off the new interface – I don’t quite understand the theory behind the change, but for me at least when I’m searching some specialized engine I’ll probably be doing it for a bit and while it doesn’t *seem* like just selecting wikipedia or tvtropes or whatever each time should be all that annoying it certainly is.

  14. I love you! This was one of the most annoying things to come with a new update. Would completely freeze all actions if dropped down.

  15. THANKS A LOT!!!!!
    Every time I pressed enter to search, sometimes my mouse was on “change search setting” and it sent me to the option page. HELL YEAH NOT ANYMORE ‘CAUSE ITS GONE MWHAHAHAHAHAH

  16. Neither methods work for me. After restarting the browser, the options in the performances, and the volue in about.config change back to the default settings. Any ideas?

  17. setting the about:config entry browser.search.showOneOffButtons to false doesn’t work any longer in firefox 43

  18. Same problem for me too. This fix is no longer working in Firefox 43. Any ideas how to restore the classic search box?

  19. You guys can use Classic Theme Restorer extension as mentioned in Method 3 to restore classic search UI.

  20. I cannot use the extension, at least not on all of my PCs… for example, on one of them it slows firefox down way too much, and on another (my work PC) I cant install extensions. I dont understand why they went messing with the search again even after the first time proved to be a failure (as evidenced my the vast majority reverting to the old system), and not only they messed it up again, this time they made it unable to revert? What?

    As I dont need any of the different search engines, is there perhaps a different fix for this? All I need is this: clicking the magnifiying glass (withouth entering a searchphrase) should open the google homepage. Currently it opens a “dropdown” menu with the search engines, but as I have disabled all the others, it only shows “google”. If I click that, it opens the google homepage, but I want it to open the google homepage directly, without the extra click on the dropdown menu item.

  21. Thank you soooo much for pointing me to the extension to un-f*ck my search bar. It’s bad enough that they changed it the first time, but to REMOVE the ability to change it back…..What!

    Now, to get rid of the stupid Win 10 upgrade nag that just reappeared….

  22. I’ve uninstalled Firefox – I can’t work with that stupid search box and Firefox have blocked all the fixes listed above now. So Firefox is history. I’ll use Chrome instead.

  23. Mozilla has changed browser.search.hiddenOneOffs to a string instead of a booline rendering the fix listed above useless please research how we can set this new setting to get the same result. Thank you!

  24. Thank you very much for this. Much appreciated.
    I used the Classic Theme Restorer as you mentioned and it was immediately back to how I prefer with my descriptive text next to each search engine’s icon on the drop-down menu when I CHOOSE to view it. Most of the time I’m happy with my default engine (DuckDuckGo) and I don’t necessarily remember Search Engines by their icons alone, (about a dozen or so), which is what the new One-Click system was showing. As a grumpy old fogie who wrote his first program in 1967 I wish these young whippersnappers wouldn’t assume we’ve all got to have someone’s latest idea by default :o)
    Thanks again!

  25. I’m using FF 43 in Linux Mint 17.2 and the about:config fix doesn’t work for me.
    It used to work (the browser.search.showOneOffButtons setting was already set to false when I checked).

  26. The ability to switch to the old interface with browser.search.showOneOffButtons was silently removed in Firefox 43 because the accessibility nightmare that is the new interface “was deemed finished”. bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1221866

  27. In the latest version on Linux mint they no longer have the browser.search.showOneOffButtons in the config to change. Method 2 doesn’t work either, at least one has to be in the list and whether it’s checked or not the damn thing still appears. Blocks what I’m typing, horrible.

    STOP ADDING STUPID FEATURES AND FIX WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE.

    TRY TO BE DIFFERENT THANT MICROSOFT.

  28. I’m afraid these solutions aren’t working for Firefox Quantum (current version today, Dec 11th, 2019: 71.0) any more 🙁
    1: Extension not available any more, and I guess the old XPI won’t be accepted :/
    2: Option no more available
    3: Configured correctly, but doesn’t have any effect

    Anybody have a clue??

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