Firefox now allows you to add custom search engine manually by default

43 gslin 37 6/1/2025, 1:45:19 AM bugzilla.mozilla.org ↗

Comments (37)

Yeul · 18h ago

I was setting up a new PC yesterday. I did the "use edge to install Firefox" thing and my experience with the internet without ad blocking was traumatising.

But anyway it was nice to see that FF had added startengine to the choices for search engine.

msgodel · 1h ago

Kind of crazy to hear people conscious of these problems still run Windows.

nicbou · 7h ago

It's quite shocking, isn't it?

Only my iPad gives me the unfiltered web, to discourage me from using it as a browsing device. It's very effective.

doright · 22m ago

Orion Browser gives you the original uBO on iOS plus some other web extensions, depending on what APIs they use.

oktoberpaard · 4h ago

Safari on iOS does support adblockers, in case you didn’t know. And I’m not taking about DNS level blocking, I really mean browser extensions. I’m using AdGuard, but there are other popular options too.

nicbou · 2h ago

That's what I use on my iPhone, but my iPad is meant to be an offline, low-distraction device.

wkat4242 · 1d ago

Uhm what am I not getting? This has always been possible.

Edit: I think what's new is the UI to add the new engine by typing the URL by hand. Previously engines needed to support OpenSearch to auto-add them (but you could easily add custom ones this way). However pretty much all of them do (it's no trouble, just some XHTML in the page). I don't know why you would do it by hand.

ttctciyf · 1d ago

> This has always been possible.

No. Starting 2-3 years you had to go through about:config to do this, such as detailed at

https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/comments/qqkw5x/enabling...

and

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/custom-search-eng...

etc.

Heaven knows what they were thinking when they made this option only available by the user adding an undocumented preference!

I needed to do this on desktop linux a few months ago to use the AI-avoiding &udm=14 google tweak[0]

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43002403

wkat4242 · 8h ago

Well yes but the point was kinda moot because it was easily possible to add an opensearch provider and every self-respecting search engine supports that. Why wouldn't they? It makes it easy for users to adopt them and it's not hard, just some boilerplate code.

So the URL entry box wasn't really needed for the main purpose. It's nice to use the feature to use with things that aren't literally search engines though. Or to tweak the URL. I wonder, is the AI avoidance thing very effective? Not that I use Google directly but still.. (I use SearXNG as meta search)

ttctciyf · 4h ago

> is the AI avoidance thing very effective?

Yes, it's just a way of going directly to google's "web" search instead of "all" so you don't get the AI summary and half a screen of assorted guff before the search results themselves. In that sense it's 100% effective.

wkat4242 · 1h ago

Ahhh I see. I thought it was somehow trying to filter out AI generated sites in the web results. Which wouldn't be airtight of course. Now I understand, thanks!

altairprime · 20h ago

You probably want &udm=14 and &tbs=li:1 instead of udm alone.

ttctciyf · 18h ago

I see tbs=li:1 activates "verbatim". Duly applied, with thanks :)

altairprime · 17h ago

lxgr · 20h ago

Is (was) it possible to set an OpenSearch engine as the default search provider, though? At least I haven't been able to find a way to do that, so maybe that's what's different now.

xingped · 1d ago

The only way I could ever add custom search engines was through a separate extension. I have no idea how you've been doing this such that you think it's always been possible?

wildpeaks · 1d ago

All you need is a bookmark, no extension needed: the "keyword" value is how it's called and "%s" in the url is the placeholder for the query.

For example, create a bookmark with keyword "youtube" and url "https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s".

Then whenever you type "youtube something" in the address bar, it shows you the results directly.

The %s trick existed for so long, it even worked back in Internet Explorer.

xingped · 1d ago

That must be what the extension I use has been doing, but what a bizarre way to hide such a useful feature.

wkat4242 · 1d ago

Yes and you can even set it as default as I have done. So you don't need to type the 'youtube' or whatever. It works exactly like a builtin one.

lxgr · 20h ago

How can you set it as default?

wkat4242 · 12h ago

You just select it under settings. Every search engine you have visited that supports opensearch automatically shows up in the list.

lxgr · 11h ago

Interesting, for me they don't. I can only choose between Google, DuckDuckGo, and Wikipedia, even though I have more custom search engines available. They work via their configured shortcuts, but they don't appear in the search settings.

wkat4242 · 1d ago

Huh no? I've just added it in settings. No custom extension needed. I'm pretty extension-averse because I already need so many :) Ublock, Sponsorblock, Dark Reader, password manager, consent-o-matic, sideberry I really can't do without.

But I've always been able to do it. All I had to do was to simply visit my SearXNG instance once, then it would pick it up and put it in the list of search engines (OpenSearch API) and then I could just set it as default.

One thing I could not do was edit search engines (e.g. the URL they visit). I still can't do that in fact but maybe that's new?

DaSHacka · 1d ago

If you check the bugzilla thread in the OP, this is specifically about adding manual search engines outside of automatic OpenSearch support.

Theres a panel where you fill out the name, search URL, suggestion URL, and search keyword yourself, under settings. You can add whatever you like, even if its not OpenSearch compatible, just like you already could on Chrome (for the better part of a decade, mind you)

If a dev is lazy and doesnt incorporate OpenSearch functionality you can homebrew it easily this way.

I personally use it quite often to restrict searches for engines that otherwise only support OpenSearch for their entire catalog.

For example, I have seperate `@ma` for manga and `@an` for anime via MAL, where by default (IIRC) they only have the combined "search everything" advertised through OpenSearch.

I also use it to search individual boards on foolfuuka archive sites, as the default OpenSearch advertisement suffers the same issue as MAL where it's only for searching every board on the site at once.

I'm sure I have even more examples on my browser, I actually use it all the time so I'm glad this is getting mainlined rather than nixed. I use Librewolf, so they already had this enabled by tweaking the corresponding about:config setting themselves.

wkat4242 · 22h ago

Yeah to be honest I read the bugzilla thread but I didn't find it very clear. It's really meant for the in-crowd. Which makes sense for a bugtracker but not for a HN article.

And yes good point. I can also imagine using it for stuff that's not strictly a search engine as such.

nsonha · 1d ago

it was behind an about:config flag, which is why there are sily addons to add/customize search engines

wkat4242 · 1d ago

Edit: Actually, I don't have browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh configured at all (neither true nor false, just not configured).

But for me I've always been able to do it. All I had to do was to simply visit my SearXNG instance once, then it would pick it up (OpenSearch API) and then I could just set it as default.

In fact I remember setting up my new tablet a few months ago, and I didn't need to mess with about:config at all, it worked like I mentioned above. On firefox mobile they make it super hard editing about:config for some reason so I'm sure I didn't do that.

nsonha · 10h ago

Yes, it has alway been working like that, but you couldn't add a search engine that doesn't have an opensearch.xml published (eg chatgpt), make custom search egines such as only search github in your org, or mix and match them such as perplexity with google suggestions

baobun · 1d ago

I guess it's a regression fix (perhaps Windows-specific) where it used to work and broke at some recent version? Because the feature as described is indeed nothing new in Firefox.

From the linked bug:

> Firefox now supports adding your own custom search engines. Just right-click a search field of a supported website and select Add Search Engine, or go to Settings > Search > Add (below the search shortcuts table) to manually enter a search URL.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-or-remove-search-en...

Mozilla documentation of the feature (updated 2024): https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-or-remove-search-en...

tfehring · 18h ago

Not Windows-specific, I had to go through about:config to enable this on MacOS as of late last year.

wkat4242 · 1d ago

Ah I see yes, thank you! Must be a regression fix then indeed.

Edit: No, after reading it more deeply it seems to be some new UI to manually type the search URL instead of using OpenSearch for it.

Onavo · 1d ago

Well, it certainly makes it easier for them to sidestep political questions about why they stopped including Yandex as a search option.

metalman · 1d ago

"Firefox now allows" more than a side step or a two step it's going to be a whole dance where they remember that, oh ya hey!, look, users!.

Exactly where did all, ALL, the horking huge piles of money go?, which in the current political environment could be a question that not only get's asked, but answered

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Firefox now allows you to add custom search engine manually by default

Comments (37)