One of the most useful but also very annoying feature in Firefox 3 is their new location bar. It’s useful because you can bookmark and tag websites from the address bar itself. It’s annoying because it pulls down site suggestions from your bookmarks.
If you like to stop Firefox 3 from displaying bookmarks in the address bar alongside search history, here are the possible options:
Option A: Disable autocomplete drop-down entirely
Use this if you don’t want Firefox to display any kind of suggestions in the Address Bar be they from your browsing history or from saved bookmarks.
Open the about:config page and set the value of browser.urlbar.maxRichResults as –1. Restart Firefox and your Firefox 3 address bar will behave just like that of Firefox 2.
Option B: See web addresses that you have typed
In this option, the drop-drop remains enabled but it will only suggest website addresses / URLs that you have previously typed in the location bar.
Open about:config and set the value of browser.urlbar.matchonlytyped to False. Now none of the entries from your browser history or bookmarks will appear in the ‘awesome’ address bar.
Option C: Remove Bookmarks Completely from Address Bar
This is probably the option you are looking for. Firefox 3 uses the Frecency score to determine sites that should appear in the drop-down. We can set frecency value for bookmarks to zero and thus they won’t appear in the location bar.
Open the about:config page, and set value of places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus and places.frecency.bookmarkVisitBonus to zero.
Setting places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus to 0 will prevent bookmarks from appearing that you have never visited while places.frecency.bookmarkVisitBonus will prevent display of bookmarks that you have visited since the last time you cleared private data in Firefox.
Restart Firefox. Anything that has a frecency value of zero doesn not show up in autocomplete results and thus your bookmarks won’t turn in the suggestions anymore.
Firefox 3 Tip: How to Select Multiple Lines of Text
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/software/browsers/prevent-firefox-showing-bookmarks-address-location-bar/3636/
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
This is what I was searching for. It was too irritating for me.
Thanks a lot.
Written by Manoj on 06.19.08
thanks for the above post
Written by Deepak Jain on 06.19.08
Another option is the Hide Unvisited add-on for FF:
link
Written by Dave Dugal on 06.19.08
Thank you, thank you, thank you! This Firefox feature (the first one of the sort I discover ona Mozilla product) is not helpful, it is only excessively in between assistance and intrusion! — Not to say that, this apart, Firefox 3 is amazing, in speed, in mow memory footprint, in velocity and lightness as a whole : it’s like flying over Webland! — Thanks again!
Written by Transcontinental on 06.19.08
Very helpful. Thanks dear.
Written by Thirasara on 06.19.08
Personally, I really love this feature. I’ve found that it can save me a lot of time, and it helps me find the site I’m looking for a lot more easily. I don’t see why it’s irritating.
Written by Joshua Jabin on 06.19.08
>set the value of browser.urlbar.matchonlytyped to False
Shouldn’t this be set to ‘true’?
Written by no.good.at.coding on 06.19.08
Option C didn’t work for me, don’t know why. But the Hide Unvisited add-on (tinyurl.com/5rsqca) DID work. I don’t have time to look at the differences between the add-on and the fix above, so I’m just giving you the update. :)
Written by JM on 06.20.08
Julie - When you set the frecency of bookmarks to zero, Firefox may take some time to recalculate the values. So the bookmarks may not disappear immediately from the address bar but they will as you use Firefox.
Written by Amit Agarwal on 06.20.08
Nice tip…! though FF 3 is still lag beforeits finally ready for full release …I hav install it but revert back to previuous version as its lack some punch and do have some annoying features…that wud be fixed when all the bugs are fixed finally…as it seems FF is busy in making world record more than end user concerns
Written by Vardaan on 06.20.08
Helpful post,thanks Amit
Written by Saroj on 06.21.08
Could someone please show me how to get to this: ”
Open the about:config page, and set value of places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus and places.frecency.bookmarkVisitBonus to zero. ”
I could not find where to get to ” Open the about:config pape… ”
Thanks a lot in advance
Keith
Written by Keith Smith on 06.21.08
All you need to do is type about:config in the Firefox address bar ;-)
Written by Rob D on 06.21.08
Great Tip! Keith, just type about:config in the address bar of the browser.
Written by James on 06.21.08
I almost uninstalled Firefox 3 because of this stupid feature. Thanks!
Written by Isak on 06.23.08
Very helpful! Thank you!
Written by Raj from BlogHash.com on 06.23.08
I was actually looking for this one. Thanks a lot!
Written by Ilia Boyko on 06.23.08
Lovely! Now we can hide those bookmarks we REALLY don’t want anyone to come by mistake.:D
Written by V on 06.24.08
thanks so much! showing bookmarks is complety stupid, if i wanted go to one of my favorite sites, i wold go to the bookmarks tab. i was getting annoyed ever time i was typing in the location bar with these stupid suggestions of firefox
Written by ice tea on 06.24.08
the browser.urlbar.matchonlytyped should be set to True. Thank you for this, it was really starting to get annoying.
Written by cupcakes on 06.26.08
I’m looking for a possibility to exclude certain subfolders of my bookmarks from beeing used in auto-completition. in general I like this feature. does anybody know an extension that could do that?
Written by Sinon on 06.29.08
Couldn’t get Option C to work at all. Finally resorted to Option A. Thanks for putting up these tips.
Written by Pete on 06.30.08
I tried the three options and compared… It worked yesterday, but not today. The address bar is still annoyingly showing the bookmarks. Firefox should provide an opt-out choice for this feature.
Written by leo on 07.02.08
Thanks for this. This is the first time that Firefox has really annoyed me with a default option.
Written by Drew on 07.02.08
Thanks Just what I was looking for.
Written by Martin on 08.17.08
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Written by loghousesent on 09.04.08
Thank you! Such an annoying default feature.
Written by WanKhairil on 09.05.08
Thank you Amit! Worked great! Awesome job for helping all of us out with that problem. You’re great!
Written by Nathan on 09.11.08
All three options are not working for me. The annoying suggested bookmark items still appear :(
Written by charnchon on 09.12.08
I wish there was a way to fine tune bookmark autocompletion in the location bar. For example: tag it OK by default except for those under this well hidden pr0n subfolder…
Written by Taro on 09.17.08
thanks for the tip. I see lots of bad comments about this feature and it’s True i hate this silly feature. this is very imporatnt for Mozilla NOT TO follow up Microsoft. Firefox is for people who know what is address bar and can type www
Written by Salmon on 10.06.08
umm, this may seem like a stupid question, but i was just wondering.. how do you properly restart the browser? because i normally just close it with the red x in the corner, but that doesnt seem to help with the bookmark problem =/
thanks in advance if you can help me. <3
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Written by alyssa on 10.16.08
where is the option - Open the about:config page, cant find it?
Written by unknown on 11.27.08