The Firefox address bar displays the URL (web address) for the page that you are visiting. When you type into this field to enter a URL or search term, Firefox remembers the pages that you have visited and shows page suggestions in the address bar drop-down, such as sites you've bookmarked, tagged, visited before or have open in tabs. This article explains how the address bar autocomplete feature works.
How do I use the autocomplete list?Just start typing in the address bar. Suggestions from your browsing history, bookmarks, and tabs will be listed, underneath what you've typed. (If you click on the address bar without typing into it, a drop-down list of your most visited or pinned sites will be displayed instead.)
The autocomplete drop-down when you type into the address bar may include the following. These will be listed under a Firefox Suggest label (see Firefox Suggest FAQ).
A blue star icon will indicate that a matching result is a bookmark; the text Switch to Tab will indicate an open tab. When you see the page you want, just click on it or use the up and down arrows on your keyboard to highlight it and then press EnterReturn.
Note:Popular search suggestions from your default search engine may also be listed, either before or after suggestions from browsing history, bookmarks and tabs, depending on your
search settings. If search suggestions are enabled, those will be marked with a magnifying glass
icon. Suggestions from search history will be marked with a clock
icon. To learn more, see
Search suggestions in Firefox.
The address bar suggestions adjust based on your browsing behavior, such as how frequently and recently you visited a web page and what result you chose based on what was typed. This way, pages you visit all the time will show up at the top of the list, often after typing only one character.
URL autocompleteIn addition to the autocomplete drop-down list, Firefox will also complete the URL in the address bar. For example, if you type "suppo", Firefox may fill in "rt.mozilla.org/" to complete the address "support.mozilla.org" if you've visited that site before. Pressing EnterReturn in this case would take you directly to that address.
The address bar also searches through your open tabs, displaying results with the text Switch to Tab. Selecting these results will switch you to the already open tab instead of creating a duplicate.
To turn off the Switch to tab option temporarily, press the Alt key or Ctrl key while clicking on the page in the autocomplete list that appears below your address bar. Instead of switching to an existing one, with Alt your page will open in the current tab, with Ctrl in a new tab.
What can I do to get the best results?To turn off the address bar autocomplete feature or restrict it to exclude certain results:
Change preferences for search engine suggestions: Click this link to open to the Search settings panel, where you can change your settings for search engine suggestions, including suggestions from your Search history. To learn more, see Change your default search settings in Firefox.
Removing autocomplete resultsTo remove a result from the autocomplete list, click the three-dot button next to the entry and select from the menu.
You can also clear a single item from the autocomplete list using your keyboard. This works for both browsing history and search history entries.
By default, when you type search terms in the address bar, the list under it shows search suggestions from the default search engine, and pages (bookmarks, history, open tabs) where every search term is part of the title, part of a tag or part of the web address (URL).
If you are looking for a specific type of result, like a bookmark or open tab, you can speed up the process of finding it by typing in special characters in the address bar separated by spaces:
For example, if you're looking for a page you bookmarked called Mozilla Firefox Support, you might type mozilla. The autocomplete results appear, but might not show the page you want.
You can narrow your results down to bookmarks only by making your search string mozilla * or * mozilla.
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