Hi everyone,
We’re working on a small addition to Firefox Suggest, and would like your feedback on it before we finish the implementation.
The problems this helps fix
Our research shows that some people run into the following issues when they look at suggestions after typing in the address bar:
- It can be hard to tell a page you opened yesterday from a similar page you opened last week. Which is it that you need?
- Firefox sometimes suggests pages people don’t remember visiting, which makes them think Firefox is suggesting pages they haven’t visited before.
- Sometimes people don’t really understand what Firefox Suggest is, or why these suggestions are showing (example quote: “these are just pages Google wants me to look at” – in fact, most often they are pages from your history, bookmarks, or open tabs)
The feature
When you move your mouse over a page suggestion in the Firefox Suggest section, a date (for example, “Last viewed yesterday” or “Last viewed 24 Dec 2025” for more distant dates) appears at the right end of the suggestion. It shows when you last visited the page, or when you bookmarked it, so you can decide which suggestion to click.
How the design has evolved during testing
Our first design replaced the URL with the date on hover. In internal testing we quickly realised this hid the most important trust signal at the most critical moment – the URL, just as you’re about to click. With the next iteration, the date now appears on the right, and the URL remains visible.
Try it yourself
- In Nightly, go to about:config
- Click “Accept the Risk and Continue”
- Search for browser.urlbar.resultExplanations.featureGate
- Double-click it to set it to true (to turn it off, double-click it again)
What we’d like to hear
After using it for a few days, please tell us:
- Did the extra info help you find the suggestion you were looking for?
- Is it useful for suggestions from your history?
- What about suggestions from your bookmarks?
- Or did it get in the way? If so, how?
- Would this also be useful in other places, like autocompleted suggestions as you type?
- Would this bother you? Would you personally use a setting to turn it off?
What happens next
We plan to ship this on by default, because features that are off by default are rarely discovered by the people that need them. We have to be judicious about what we add settings for, so as not to overwhelm the settings screen with too many options.
This feature will likely be most useful to people who are less confident using technology, and I realise that I am asking for feedback from a likely very tech-savvy audience here on Connect.
Connect and Reddit won't be the only place we get feedback from, and feedback from all sources including research with less tech-savvy users will shape how this feature looks and behaves.
Thanks for helping us improve Firefox!
