Talk:Changing autocomplete behavior - Firefox

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Does this technique actually remove the autocomplete history (which, as I understand it, is a subset of the browser history) or does it just remove the display of the autocomplete history? --Mozcerize 03:07, 7 November 2005 (PST)

The latter, I believe. --Unarmed 07:26, 7 November 2005 (PST)
Ok, cheers. --Mozcerize 10:00, 7 November 2005 (PST)

MatchOnlyTyped

About:config setting "browser.urlbar.matchonlytyped = true (http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config_entries#Browser..2A)

This setting will prevent the drop-down autocomplete from displaying entries from your bookmarks/history (unless they have been specifically typed into the location/url bar).

This would be VERY useful to put on the main page of this article, I feel. <--- 2 April 2007 Rickythakrar

That preference also works (as far as I can tell) in Firefox 3. Alice 23:46, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Firefox 3 autocomplete

I found that the UserChrome.css solution also works in Firefox 3 to disable autocomplete in the Search Bar. I added an additional Firefox 3 tweak using about:config to set browser.urlbar.maxRichResults to 0 (zero) and included a forum reference for other "Smart Location Bar" tweaks for Firefox 3, which should probably be included in a separate "Disabling the Smart Location Bar" article, based on http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=3463085#p3463085 "Get old location bar behavior back?"


Quote: (post by Euchre - 18 Jun 2008)

  • browser.urlbar.maxRichResults This setting is only really useful if you either want to remove the autocomplete function entirely, or limit the list to a shorter length on your screen real estate, now that titles are a part of the result. Setting to 0 (zero) will just stop all autocomplete results.
  • browser.urlbar.matchBehavior A setting of 0 (zero) should give you a result of finding your URLs based on what you type being anywhere in the URL or page title. A setting of 1 should result in placing of what you type anywhere in the title or URL being first, followed by the URL or title beginning with what you type. A setting of 2 should result in only showing results based on what you type being at the beginning of the URL or page title.
  • places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus This preference set to 0 (zero) will remove the bookmarks you haven't visited from your results.
  • places.frecency.bookmarkVisitBonus This preference set to 0 (zero) will remove the bookmarks you have visited from your results.
  • places.frecency.unvisitedTypedBonus This preference set to 0 (zero) will remove URLs that you haven't visited from your results.

You will still have the appearance issue of the page titles, but the Oldbar extension for now appears to be the only solution for that.


Alice 22:51, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Request for addition to article

The following request is copied from a recent MozillaZine Site Discussion forum topic. Alice 01:47, 2 March 2010 (UTC)


[KB request] Changing autocomplete behavior: bookmarks http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1761495
Posted 20 Feb 2010 by Nemo_bis
This page should be expanded to document this bug/issue. Can someone with an account add the following, please?

In the default behaviour, the dropdown suggests both bookmarks and entries from the history, but the latter are given a bigger "score", so if you search a bookmark in the location bar it may be hidden by other visited pages. You can't make Awesome bar autocomplete always show bookmarks on top, but you can give more weight to the bookmark status (higher places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus) and to the bookmark visits (higher places.frecency.bookmarkVisitBonus).

Also, this link may be useful (shouldn't those preferences be always in this category?) and this page is outdated: places.frecency.bookmarkVisitBonus current default value is 75.


There is also browser.urlbar.restrict.bookmark : * Returns only results that are from the bookmarks (Location_Bar_search).
^ Dickvl 3 March 2010