Search Engine Returning to Google

[wallin]

Well, I use DuckDuckGo as my main search engine and even remove Google from the options, however, periodically Firefox automatically adds Google and pins it as the main engine. It really is something very annoying and I would like to know how to solve it, or is it some partnership between Mozilla and Google?

[Boobieta]

Is this on desktop?

you can use a file named: user.js

in your profile folder, where the file prefs.js is and use a line like:

user_pref("browser.urlbar.placeholderName", "Bing");
user_pref("browser.urlbar.placeholderName.private", "Bing");

user_pref("browser.search.hiddenOneOffs", "Amazon.com,eBay,Twitter,Google");

Just search in prefs.js the lines you want to override in user.js, those will be set and should not change anymore out of the blue.

[Standard8]

These preferences are nothing to do with the actual setting of the search engine.

The placeholder preferences are as a cache to avoid delaying startup waiting for things to initialise.

The hiddenOneOffs preference is no longer a preference, it has been changed to save the details to a the search settings file alongside the other search engines, as that fixed some issues with it.

[Standard8]

In the past we have generally seen this to be a result of adware on user's computers. Typically it has been installed with another program, and periodically sets your search engine in Firefox to something else.

Maybe use something like Malwarebytes to check your computer for adware.