How to disable Firefox's Tab to Search

Not to be confused with Search open Tabs in Firefox or chrome’s Tab Search feature, Mozilla has introduced tab-to-search with Firefox 83. When a user tries to visit a search engine website in the address bar, Firefox autocompletes it, users then will be allowed to select the search engine shortcut by using a tab or down arrow to perform searches.

[lwptoc]

What is Tab to Search in Firefox

Firefox already allows finding open tabs. You need to type % in the address bar to headstart the or else select the “Search tabs” option in the List all tabs icon in ta bar.

Contrary to the above, Tab to search is a new feature launched with version 83.

To say about it in Layman terms, type any address of the Firefox search engine in the address bar, press the tab to enter search mode.

The visual indicator informs the user to search with the search engine directly from the URL bar.

It also says to pick the shortcut to find what you are looking for much faster.

Firefox comes with these default search engines:

Google
Amazon
Bing
DuckDuckGo
Wikipedia

How Tab to Search Works

For instance, when you type G in the address bar,

Google.com will autocomplete, use the tab key or mouse to skip to the second position, and select the shortcut to quickly search on Google.

The interventions appear when you try to visit Bing, Amazon, and other search engine addresses from the address bar also.

How to disable Tab to Search in Firefox

Launch Firefox
Visit about: config
Click on “Accept the Risk and continue”
Search for update2 and change the following pref value to false
browser.urlbar.update2.tabToComplete
Restart the Firefox browser.

Note: If the Pref doesn’t exist, create it by following the steps given below.