[Tip] Disable Quick Find Feature (‘ and / Hotkeys) in Mozilla Firefox

“Quick Find” is an exclusive feature present in Mozilla Firefox web browser. It allows users to search for a text string on a web page quickly and easily. You just need to press ‘ (single quote or apostrophe) or / (forward slash) keys on your keyboard and it’ll launch the Quick Find toolbar at the bottom in Firefox.

‘ key activates the Quick Find for hyperlinks only. If you type any text string in Quick Find box, it’ll search for that string among all hyperlinks present on the current web page.

/ activates the Quick Find for full web page. It’ll search for typed text string in full web page whether its text, hyperlink, etc.

You can press F3 or Shift+F3 keys to navigate between the phrase occurrences on web page. To quit from Quick Find feature, click on Close button given at the end of the Quick Find toolbar or press Esc key or simply click on anywhere on the web page.

We have posted about Quick Find feature long time back in following tutorial:

How To Enable “Search For Text When I Start Typing” Feature in Mozilla Firefox?

Many times users accidentally press the ‘ or / key and it launches the Quick Find bar on screen which may annoy the users. When it happens quite frequently, it becomes irritating.

In previous versions, Mozilla Firefox didn’t allow users to disable or turn off the Quick Find feature or ‘ and / hotkeys. So users were unable to get rid of the Quick Find feature.

Fortunately newer versions of Mozilla Firefox come with a hidden preference in advanced configuration “about:config” page which can be used to disable/enable Quick Find feature.

If you also want to disable Quick Find feature (‘ and /) hotkeys, following steps will help you:

1. Open Mozilla Firefox and type about:config in the addressbar and press Enter. It’ll show you a warning message, click on “I accept the risk!” button.

2. Now type typeaheadfind in Search filter box and it’ll show following preference in the window:

3. This preference is set to true by default i.e. enabled. To disable the feature, double-click on accessibility.typeaheadfind.manual preference and change its value to false. Alternatively, you can right-click on the preference and select Toggle option.

That’s it. Now try to press ‘ or / key on any web page and Mozilla Firefox will no longer launch Quick Find toolbar.

BONUS TIP:

There are many other preferences available in about:config page to customize Quick Find functionality. Some of them are as following:

• accessibility.typeaheadfind
• accessibility.typeaheadfind.autostart
• accessibility.typeaheadfind.casesensitive
• accessibility.typeaheadfind.enablesound
• accessibility.typeaheadfind.flashBar
• accessibility.typeaheadfind.linksonly
• accessibility.typeaheadfind.matchesCountLimit
• accessibility.typeaheadfind.prefillwithselection
• accessibility.typeaheadfind.soundURL
• accessibility.typeaheadfind.startlinksonly
• accessibility.typeaheadfind.timeout

You can change their values to modify Quick Find functionality.