Uninstall search plugins

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Revision as of 00:07, 1 December 2005 by Hao2lian (talk | contribs) (Link to profile folder instead of installation directory for Firefox versions before 1.5)
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This article applies to Firefox and Mozilla Suite.

After installing plugins from Mycroft you might want to get rid of those you don't use.

  1. Go to the profile folder (installation directory for Firefox versions before 1.5) of the application (Firefox or Mozilla Suite) and locate the subfolder "searchplugins".
  2. Delete both SRC and GIF/PNG files for each search plugin. For example, if you want to get rid of the default Google search plugin, you will delete "google.src" and "google.png".
  3. Restart the application and deleted plugins will disappear.
  4. If you uninstalled a search plugin because it was broken, please go to the Mycroft Homepage and "judge" this plugin. Thank you!

Notes

  • Linux users: On Linux, you will need root privileges, unless you've installed the program somewhere the user has access to. To obtain root privileges, fire up the console and type su (followed by the root password). Then type firefox.
  • Linux, continued: For removing plugins, there is no need to fire up firefox. Just delete the files. And lest the above give you the idea that you must be root to install as well as uninstall if firefox is installed systemwide, you needn't be and shouldn't be. You may install firefox to a directory you do have write privileges for or you may (thanks yyz) create a restricted privilege group, make your user account a part of that group, and chown and chmod the searchplugins directory appropriately.
  • FreeBSD users: On FreeBSD, this is usually /usr/X11R6/lib/firefox/searchplugins/. Root privileges will be required to remove the two files associated with each plugin.
  • Mac OS X users: On Mac OS X, it is usually under your "Applications" folder, but the "searchplugins" subfolder is in the actual contents of Firefox.app or Mozilla.app. To access these, Ctrl-click the .app file and select "Show Package Contents". See Installation directory.

SearchPluginHacks Extension

Alex Sirota had made a Firefox extension to delete unwanted search plugins. This extension adds a context menu to the search plugins drop-down list, which allows quickly deleting unneeded plugins.

See also