Mozilla all of a sudden wants to improve their search bar UI to support one-off searches or one-click searches. They’re rushed to apply a patch to Firefox 34 beta 11 instead of following the regular Nightly >Aurora and Beta > stable pattern.
Use of one-click Searches: With this, you can able to search the query with other search engine immediately without needing to change the default one. To get started, type the query, search suggestions appear, click on one of the search engine below them, search results will appear, done.
UPDATE: Mozilla has removed the Old Search UI from Firefox
Fix: You can restore that through Classic Theme Restorer add-on: How to Restore Firefox’s Old Search UI and Preferences Window
You can find newly added ‘Search’ tab in the Options, it lets you manage or choose the default search engine, and you can have control in displaying which search engines to display for one-click searches.
Reasons to hate the new feature:
The default search engine icon doesn’t appear in the search bar, it has been replaced by magnifying glass search icon.
Fix: No Hello button in Firefox 34?
Unless you type something, you don’t see or know which is the default search engine. We’re expecting this feature to appear in Firefox 34. You can read this Mozilla blog post for more information.
Disabling or removing One-click Searches UI in the Search bar in Firefox 34
1. Visit about:config
2. Find the preference browser.search.showOneOffButtons and turn its value to false.
3. Restart the browser for the changes to apply.
OneLiner for Firefox Combines Navigation and Tab Bars into One Line With a Search Button
New one-click searches UI gone.
Do you like it? Let us know in the comments.
Thank you very, very, VERY much. I freakin hated that feature.
You’re welcome Lembach, I too don’t like that feature. Thanks for your comment.
Thank you very,VERY much,hated that feature.Wanted to uninstall firefox then found this article.
Dee, so I’ve retained a user for Firefox. You can use Firefox now. Thanks for your comment.
Yep, ugly, clunky and redundant. Cheers.
Thank you! Thing broke my loved “Quick search bar” add-on.
Yep, it has broken many themes and add-ons, reason for introducing this new search UI is because of new contrat with Yahoo. @Bishop isn’t the add-on working after disabling the new UI?
Phew, thanks for the instructions. I too hated the one click bs.
Drop-down like it was before.
Thank you!
Couldn’t stand the One Click Search bar. This worked a charm, thanks!
It’s hard to remain calm with firefox’ constant change of the UI.
Thanks for bringing back a bit of my sanity.
It rocks! Thank you so much.
Ha! Seems like I am the only commenter here who (mainly) likes the new feature ;)
1) It’s true that it was for a minute slightly irritating that the favicon of the default engine is gone, but as I know that I’ve set it to duckduckgo.com, I don’t really need to see it all the time (anymore).
2) I do like that my search engine for the “New tab” page and the “Awesome” bar doesn’t change anymore when I am using the search bar with e.g. Wikipedia, but that they still use DDG instead.
That’s just my 2 cents, in the end it’s always nice to have an alternative via about:config.
Thanks for sharing your opinion, but in reality, who uses one-click searches regularly or daily? I doubt that? That’s why most may unlike the feature.
Maybe some day the script kiddie “developers” from Mozilla will learn that a good UI is a stable and consistent UI. Not one that changes every with release.
Instead of focusing on real issues, such as stability, memory leaks, multi-threading, they keep “improving” the UI. Any unskilled blogger can block your PC with an infinite loop or hundreds of videos on one page, but this is a minor issue. Changing UI is the priority.
Thank you! :-D
Unlike some of the other commentators here I do not see the new feature as a catastrophe or being a total waste of energy. Developers have to make decisions, have to try to improve things and they of all users have the biggest right to their own opinion, because they do the work we profit from.
For me however the old solution is better and I am glad to have it back. Many of my search engines are in reality just differently customized versions of one and the same engine – the main search engine for me being startpage.com. Five times the startpage icon tells me nothing, I have to hover to find the right engine. But a simple description in the old dropdown tells me on the first glance where the picture search is, where the video search and where the general web search in Italian, in German and in English. I don’t have to try to make out the tiny details in the LEO dictionary icons that would indicate, whether I am about to look up a word in the English-German, German-Polish or German-French branch of the dictionary – and you can trust me: it makes a difference! ;-)
So I am glad that for now I do not have to deal with the new searchbar interface but can try to discover its advantages perhaps in some distant future, free of any anger that my beloved dropdown searchbar interface would have been robbed from me.
So according to me the developers have done everything right, they have made their choice – which is not mine – but at the same time they have not shut the door but
have provided an option for us users to stay with the well-proven dropdown interface. Moreover: by making their new idea the default they will generate a ton of feedback, which might help to find corrections or optimizations.
Thank you! I was SO pi..d by this newest uncalled-for ui-atrocity that broke my workflow. No thanks to Mozilla for implementing it without warning or transparent opt-in.
I hate this feature because I use to change frequently suggestion engine and I use keyboard and not much mouse …
Thank you
You’re welcome sizvix and thanks for sharing your opinion on the new feature.
By the way, is there a hotkey to open the list of search engines from inside the query field? I didn’t find one and I would like to avoid having to use the mouse for this.
Not that I aware of, currently, you can open options and click on Search tab to manage one-click search engines. Expect Mozilla to add support for keyboard shortcuts for new search UI in the future.
Thanks for the quick answer, but I meant the old search ui (the one your howto restores).
Use Ctrl+E or Ctrl + K to focus on the search bar, and use Alt+↓ to get to list of search engines, to select next search engine on the search bar you can use Ctrl+↓.
Only reason I will disable it is the hotkey issue. Ctrl+K and Ctrl+Up/Down is so much muscle memory, grabbing the mouse after typing my keyword and then clicking the search engine icons is completely out of the question.
Max, thanks for sharing your opinion on the new feature. Mozilla hurried a bit here by forcing the UI on users, luckily we’ve a about:config hack available, lets hope they’ll keep this option and improve the new UI according to the user feedback.
I love Foxy, but you gotta stop, or Im going to leave you for someone with less baggage… seriously half my add-ons are to fix things you have added or taken away!
whew, thanks for the info; not like I couldn’t scroll through search engines with ctrl+ up|down before anyway. And they really shouldn’t have disabled search keyword options without having to disable the one click anyway.
New Firefox version == yet new hoops to jump through to try and restore a working browser. Please Mozilla, you are seriously stretching everybody’s patience… I’m assuming this is some “clever” scheme by some Yahoo! to try and get people to at least try and do a few “one-off” searches with their useless search algo, before going back to Google.
Why don’t you just ask us nicely to use your new sponsor? It is really our sponsor, anyway. I’d have no problems switching to Yahoo! just to support Mozilla. But I’m considering jumping ship entirely because you keep screwing up Firefox.
Here’s a tip for you: why don’t you guys put your effort into fixing the bloody memory leaks that has been constantly crashing Firefox since version ~25.
I’d feel a whole lot more generous when donating if I didn’t know I was just paying for some idiot designer to mess up my browser for no apparent reason.
I’ve been using Firefox since before it was even called Firefox. But the last few years, every day I’m telling myself I should switch. Once a few more of my favorite addons stop being developed, I’m outta here.
To be honest, Firefox has improved a lot and it is now more stable, speedier and responsive when compared to Chrome.
Thank you!
Thank you for this. I was not happy with the change, but changing the preference worked immediately (upon restarting).
Rob, you’re welcome, most users aren’t happy with this. And I mentioned that in the article -3rd step-, you need to restart the browser for the changes to apply.Thanks for your comment.
I didn’t care for this feature. Thanks for giving me the chance to turn it off!
Thank you very much for the post! It was helpful.
Thank you a MILLION!!
I needed that badly.
You’re welcome Moe.
Oh thank god. I’m getting really tired of firefox pulling the rug out from under me. I guess the best way to get the most out of FF is to never use anything so you won’t notice when they “fix” it up.
I was trying for the life of me to figure out why one of my wife’s pogo games wouldn’t load and even updated firefox. Ugh. Turns out the click to play rule was running amok again. Which brings me to my point; Even though I had disabled the rule in about config, firefox randomly started ignoring the setting. Every update I have to venture into about:config and fix something they broke but since I don’t have any control or choice in the matter it doesn’t stay fixed. You know how much of a pain it was when the status bar disappeared?
One thing I just found is the open search results in new tab is now broken. THANKS MOZILLA! I think Chrome should be thankful to for the improved market share. I actually opened internet explorer today… Need a page to load. That’s the reason I ditched it for firefox, pages didn’t work. Now it’s the other way around.
I thought it would be convenient to restore so that I tried that feature.
After using for weeks, I hate this feature.
Thanks for the solution!
You’re welcome Vialli, infact, most commented here also dislike the feature.
Finally! I have been annoyed with that for some time now and finally found your article. Many Thanks!
Welcome Doug, thanks for standing by.
I had to open a new Firefox profile after some script slowdown BS that appeared from nowhere, tediously reinstall all the add-ons, lost bookmarks and of course, have the good ol’ dropdown search. I’ve been here before for the same problem maybe one year ago and trust me, this page is now BOOKMARKED! :) Thx!
Thanks for bookmarking my site DNA.
I hate this feature and hate that it gets re-enabled with every update. It is ugly, intrusive, clearly not liked and offers no benefit from the old drop down list of search engines which was liked and was not intrusive. Although I have used Firefox from day 1 it does annoy me that they continue to interfere with their users use of the software and do not react to the responses.
THANK YOU! I just recently updated from maybe FF31 or 32, and HATED the one-click search. I do multiple searches on the same site, and having to click on that search icon added an extra step and took my fingers off the keyboard. This (old) way is SO much better!
You’re welcome Tricia, let us hope Mozilla keeps the preference in about:config for a long time for us.
I cannot disable it with the new firefox update!!
43.0b1
https://techdows.com/2015/09/mozilla-removes-the-old-search-ui-from-firefox.html
https://techdows.com/2015/10/how-to-restore-firefoxs-old-search-ui-and-preferences-window.html