Recall or check what happens when you start to type on the search bar in New Tab Page in Chrome browser, the focus shifts to omnibox, this is what Mozilla wants in Firefox browser in version 66 as they’re testing Search hand-off in Activity Stream. The feature or change is enabled by default in Nightly and the focus now shifts to the awesome bar when you input something in the Search box on the New Tab Page.
Instead of using unified address bar and search bar, if you use the search box on New Tab Page in Firefox to do the searches, you can disable the new behavior by changing the below-mentioned preference value to ‘false’in the about:config.
browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.handoffToAwesomebar
See thew new feature in action in below gif.
Mozilla is also planning to add a search box to Private browsing (check this bug) and test the search hand-off feature.
Have you ever used the search box on New Tab Page in Firefox to do the searches? Let us know your opinions in the comments below.
Related articles:
Firefox 66 adds ‘search tabs’ option to All Tabs Menu
Chrome New Tab Page Adds Search by Default, do you Like it?
Firefox 57: Search bar no longer displayed by default
Combine Firefox Home Page and New Tab Page into a Single Page
