Search Bar

This article applies to Firefox.

Firefox's Search Bar is a convenient way to search using your favorite search engines. The default is Google.

Using the Search Bar

To search, click in the Search Bar (or press "Ctrl+K") and start typing. Press the "Enter" key (or, starting in Firefox 2.0 use the "search" button) and your search will be run. You can use "Alt+Enter" to open search results in a new tab.

The Search Bar supports more than one search engine. To see the list of available engines click the icon at the left of the bar, and a list showing the available search engines will appear. You can also use "Ctrl+Up"/"Ctrl+Down" to cycle between the available choices. Starting in Firefox 2.0 you will be able to reorder or remove entries from the search engine list by selecting "Manage Search Engines...".

Installing search plugins

To add new search engines to the Search Bar, click the search icon and then click "Add Engines..." (or, starting in Firefox 2.0, after clicking the search icon, click "Manage Search Engines -> Get more search engines..."). You will be taken to the Search Engines page at Mozilla Add-ons where some of the more popular search plugins can be installed. (A more comprehensive collection of search plugins is available at mycroft.mozdev.org.) Click one of the search engine links to install the new search plugin. If you don't see an "Add Search Engine" dialog box, make sure that JavaScript is enabled.

You can always uninstall search plugins you don't want by removing the associated files or, starting in Firefox 2.0, via the search engine manager.

Note: The default set of search engines are stored as *.src and *.gif" or "*.png pairs of files in Firefox 1.5.x and earlier (for example, "google.src" and "google.gif") and as single "*.xml" files (for example, "google.xml") starting in Firefox 2.0, in the "seachplugins" subfolder of the Firefox installation directory. In previous versions of Firefox, when you installed a new search engine, the associated files are added there. Starting in Firefox 1.5, added search engines are placed in a new "searchplugins" subfolder of the profile folder so you may have searchplugin files in both locations.

Linux users

For Firefox versions earlier than 1.5, you will need write privileges to the "searchplugins" subdirectory under the installation directory to add additional search engines. If you've installed Firefox to a location where you do not have write privileges, you can either manually change permissions on the "searchplugins" folder or briefly run firefox as root. This is not necessary in Firefox 1.5 or later because newly installed search engines are stored in the user's profile. However, Firefox comes with a set of pre-installed search engines that are present in the installation directory, in the subdirectory "searchplugins". All users will see them. If you want to remove those searchplugins, simply delete the corresponding or all files from this directory (with the same privileges as were used for the orginal installation, usually root) and allow individual users to re-install what they personally prefer.

Clearing search history

You can clear the previous searches from the Search Bar. Just right-click the text area of the Search Bar to open the context menu and select "Clear Search History". If "Clear Search History" is grayed out then the search history is already empty.

You can delete individual elements by selecting them and pressing the "Delete" key (or "Shift+Delete" in Firefox 1.5). See article, Deleting autocomplete entries for more information.

Note that search "Suggestions" are not your search history but are loaded in real-time by querying the Google search engine site based on what you've typed so far in the Search Bar. If you don't want to see these suggested search terms, the last item in the Search Bar context menu is "Show Suggestions" and has a checkmark if that option is enabled. Select it to toggle that option. You can also click the Search Bar icon (Google by default) to open "Manage Search Engines". You will see a "Show search suggestions" checkbox at the bottom of that window.

Viewing filtered results from search engines

Google

There is a way to turn Safesearch off in the Google search plugin without setting preference cookies. Simply go to the Firefox installation directory, open up the "searchplugins" folder, open the "google.src" file in a text editor like Notepad and add <input name="safe" value="off"> between <input name="oe" value="utf-8"> and <interpret browserResultType="result">. Then save the file and restart Firefox.

Yahoo

To turn off filtering for Yahoo, go to the Firefox installation directory and open the "searchplugins" folder. Then open up the "yahoo.src" file in Notepad or a similar text editor. Add <input name="vm" value="i"> after <input name="ei" value="UTF-8">. Save and restart Firefox.

See also

• Using keyword searches from the Location Bar
• Resizing the search bar

External links

• Search Engine Ordering extension for Firefox 1.5.x and earlier
• Mycroft search plugin for MozillaZine Knowledge Base