Adding custom search engines

[maria2101]

I still miss the ability to add a custom search engine in Firefox Desktop, which has been there in Firefox for Android for years. Kinda weird that Android has an option the desktop version lacks of. Or do I need to enable dev mode or something in the config?

Clicking "find more search engines" only leads to the addons page. On android however, you can add your own site and you can then directly search it from the address bar, for example I added https://www.m.dict.cc/?s=%s to quickly lookup dict.cc for translations, it directly searches for the word I type in.

[loadaverage]

Is this for real?
Firefox is now less functional than Chrome!
What is going all? I believe this is the time to drop Firefox and migrate..
Very very disappointing

[Agentvirtuel]

Hello

Is it this subject
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/custom-search-engines-like-chrome/m-p/23892

An illustration

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/forums/searchpage/tab/message?q=%s

https://www.youtube.com/embed/j8K1w99QLTw

[Agentvirtuel]

Hello

Take a look at https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/add-search-engines-via-search-string/idc-p/80290/highlight/true... and by way of illustration
You can also ask https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/home
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1195005#c22 ?

[tussockadored]

So they didn't remove it, they just hid it.  I'm sure at some point they will kill this workaround since the option has been removed from the default config, but this still works as of Dec. 2024.  Please Mozilla, just revert to shipping with this as the default config.  It is crazy that this is buried behind such an arcane procedure!

• Go to about:config in the address bar.
• In the search bar, enter browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh
• Create the option as a boolean parameter with value true
• No got to settings/search.  Scroll all the way down to Search Shortcuts.  There will now be an Add... button at the bottom.  This will let you add a custom search engine URL. Use %s in the URL as a place holder for your query string. 

Credit: https://superuser.com/a/1756774/204761

[tussockadored]

So they didn't remove it, they just hid it.  I'm sure at some point they will kill this workaround since the option has been removed from the default config, but this still works as of Dec. 2024.  Please Mozilla, just revert to shipping with this as the default config.  It is crazy that this is buried behind such an arcane procedure!

• Go to about:config in the address bar.
• In the search bar, enter browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh
• Create the option as a boolean parameter with value true
• Now go to settings/search.  Scroll all the way down to Search Shortcuts.  There will now be an Add... button at the bottom.  This will let you add a custom search engine URL. Use %s in the URL as a place holder for your query string. 

Credit: https://superuser.com/a/1756774/204761

[LGM159]

The method tussockadored recommended does work! One caveat, though: if you're used to using a var placeholder like the following url that works in chrome-based browsers:
{google:baseURL}search?q=%s+-site%3Ayoutube.com&hl=en
you must replace {google:baseURL} with Google's actual base URL.

In my case, searching Google but omitting any results reference Youtube, the following just worked:
Search engine name: Google sans youtube
Engine URL:         https://www.google.com/search?q=%s+-site%3Ayoutube.com&hl=en
Alias:              gg

Note: you can remove &hl=en or replace the en with a different language code

[LGM159]

tussockadored you rock!

I just verified that the above instructions work using a search for "eric clapton videos" where a regular google search returned a whole screen full of youtube videos and my custom search omitted those video results. Here are my settings:

Search engine name: Google sans youtube
Engine URL: https://www.google.com/search?q=%s+-site%3Ayoutube.com&hl=en
Alias: gg

Notes:
1. Normally, I'd use URLs like {google:baseURL}search?q=%s+-site%3Ayoutube.com&hl=en but Firefox doesn't recognize {google:baseURL}, so I have to substitute the static google root URL (which won't every change, so it's safe to do).
2. You can remove &hl=en or just replace en with a different 2-char language code
3. Here's the wikipedia listing for language codes for reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639_language_codes

[LGM159]

I used the above procedure and it worked. Thank you!!

[hackerb9]

Tussock, Thank you! This works perfectly so now I can default to a non-AI google search (https://google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14)!

Does anyone know why Firefox does not have that setting enabled by default? In fact, why does the boolean not even exist and have to be created?

[mortal_engin3]

@AgentvirtuelThanks. Worked.

But it should be there by default.

[singhh9596]

You can manually add the search engine. Open the search engine you want, click on the address bar, and then press the '+' button at the bottom of it to add the search engine.

[memestreak]

It appears that the browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh configuration option no longer exists in Firefox Developer Edition.

[giampi75]

Memestreak, you can add it manually

[memestreak]

Thanks, giampi75, this works!

[micseydel]

I created this account to add to the list of people who are surprised that this feature was removed. Pushing users to install addons instead seems like a risky choice re:security and privacy when there's been such a simple solution for so long.