I'll probably post more details later, but it seems infuriatingly difficult to persuade Firefox (desktop edition) to add a user-specified URL as a custom search engine to the browser, without installing Yet Another F😖cking Extension for this. If you know a simple way, please tell! - ThreadSky

gro-tsen.bsky.social • 10 days ago

I'll probably post more details later, but it seems infuriatingly difficult to persuade Firefox (desktop edition) to add a user-specified URL as a custom search engine to the browser, without installing Yet Another F😖cking Extension for this.

If you know a simple way, please tell!

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gro-tsen.bsky.social•10 days ago

Update: it's possible to add a custom search engine to Firefox by adding the (hidden! 😤) `browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh` preference to true, then going to about:preferences#search and clicking on “Add” below the “Search Shorcuts” list.

But why hide it like that? Like, WTF, Mozilla? 🤦

guiloooo.bsky.social•9 days ago

*Thank you* for that tip! I've been frustrated by this problem for a while (but not enough to investigate).
I'm pretty sure it was trivial to add a custom search engine url, like, 10 or 15 years ago. Mozilla just hid a perfectly fine feature. What the hell.

gro-tsen.bsky.social•9 days ago

Yes, it was trivial at some point (and somehow still is so on Firefox Mobile, which is generally less configurable), and it's incomprehensible that they decided to hide this. (And also the name of the pref itself is incomprehensible.)

jrmyd.bsky.social•10 days ago

If I remember well, it used to be that simple. But I don't know why in the recent years we started to need extensions...

thoasm.bsky.social•10 days ago

This question on askubuntu seems to do the trick from the bookmark library for example, it should be that a about:preferences change is necessary.

gro-tsen.bsky.social•10 days ago

I think you forgot a link.

thoasm.bsky.social•10 days ago

Indeed : https://askubuntu.com/questions/1413466/how-to-add-keyword-search-shortcuts-with-firefox

gro-tsen.bsky.social•10 days ago

Thanks! I had found https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1dhcp8v/add_my_own_url_as_default_search_engine/ which mentions this preference, but I thought it didn't work anymore because I was looking for the “Add” button in the wrong place, and I couldn't see it.

Still, hiding something so basic behind a secret pref makes no sense whatsoever. 😠

brunogrenet.bsky.social•10 days ago

Peut-être que je comprends ta question de travers, mais j'utilise pour cela les marque-pages et les mots-clés : par exemple, j'ai un marque-page "https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=%s" avec mot-clé "osm", ce qui me permet de taper "osm Montcuq" dans la barre de recherche/adresse.

gro-tsen.bsky.social•10 days ago

Oui, c'est ce que je fais aussi, mais ça ce sont des bookmarklets, pas des moteurs de recherche. La question est en gros: si je veux changer l'URL que Firefox utilise pour faire des recherches par défaut (donc, sans mots-clé), ou en ajouter une, comment faire?

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