topic Re: FF v148/ Win11 - Please restore New Tab Search Field ASAP in Discussions

FF v148/ Win11 - Please restore New Tab Search Field ASAP

scol56 — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 17:02:33 GMT

In common with many others, I utterly DETEST using the address bar as a search field. I cannot understand the rationale of REMOVING a feature "to make space for" a future redesign and then foist it upon your users??! Sounds very "made up" - would seem more logical to only remove the feature when you are ready to replace it with the new?

Re: FF v148/ Win11 - Please restore New Tab Search Field ASAP

PaulFirefoxUX — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 12:08:02 GMT

Hello!

Firefox search UX designer here.

It sounds like you have been using the unsupported config setting that allowed the search bar in the middle of the homepage screen to work instead of jumping you up to the address bar.

As a result of seeing other threads on Connect and on Reddit about this, we've decided to revive this config setting asap. You can track this from comment 7 here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2017049#c7

For context: we're working on an improved search experience for the homepage so that everybody can have a much better search without being bounced to the address bar. (we call this bounce the 'handoff', and we know it's not a good user experience).

The first part of prepping for that work was to change the code for the existing homepage search bar – but we hadn't ancitipated that some people were using the unsupported 'disable the handoff' config setting as an accessibility workaround.

Since we saw that that was happening, we're reinstating it until the longer term improvements are ready.

Re: FF v148/ Win11 - Please restore New Tab Search Field ASAP

PaulFirefoxUX — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:41:28 GMT

The fix is in Firefox Nightly now, so if you download that then you can use it today, and it should be in Release at the next dot-release of the main browser on March 10. That's the earliest opportunity.

Re: FF v148/ Win11 - Please restore New Tab Search Field ASAP

scol56 — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 18:01:50 GMT

Thanks for the reply. However, please don't keep referring to the removed feature as "unsupported"... Nobody was doing anything wrong - the feature was as implemented by Mozilla/Firefox, available, and being correctly used. Hopefully all the user feedback on the matter has been informative to developers. That being said, I do appreciate the commitment to restore the feature behaviour soon and I hope the future redesign will not stray so far again!

Re: FF v148/ Win11 - Please restore New Tab Search Field ASAP

PaulFirefoxUX — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 16:21:26 GMT

This config setting has now been reinstated 🙂 (in 148.0.2 – released today, March 10)

And more good news: we hear what people are saying in this thread and others like it, and we agree! We're moving towards making the search bar on the Firefox homepage work for everybody, without needing a hidden config setting.