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.

[MABS]

Anteriormente se podía realizar búsquedas en Yahoo y otros, pero actualmente no es posible, simplemente no hay opción, pues no aparece entre las opciones elegibles y tampoco permite agregarla.

ejemplo:

https://espanol.yahoo.com

Sería bueno agreguen opciones personalizables para que así el usuario pueda modificarlas a su elección.

Allow adding search engines manually

Previously you could search on Yahoo and others, but currently it is not possible, there is simply no option, since it does not appear among the eligible options and does not allow adding it either.

example:

https://espanol.yahoo.com

It would be nice to add customizable options so that the user can modify them to their choice.

[erlefloch]

add support for manually adding search engine in firefox desktop

Hi,

I would like to be able to add search engine manually in Firefox desktop. This is for search engines like Google Scholar, on which the "add search engine" button don't show up.

This feature is already available in Firefox for android, and I don't see why it is not implemented for desktop Firefox too.

Thanks !

[Jon]

(Note: similar ideas have been merged into this thread)

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[gor1kartem]

You can actually add your website as a search engine. Go to "https://www.dict.cc/?s=", then right-click on a search bar and you will be given the option to add it as a search engine. However, this does not always work. I can't add "https://learn.microsoft.com/ru-ru/search/". So Mozilla should definitely add it.

[bryant183]

Why can't you add a custom search engine by adding a URL? We all need this function! The browser can have your search engine, but the customized search engine is also necessary! The current way is very troublesome!

[Jon]

(Note: a similar idea has been merged into this thread)

[maria2101]

@gor1kartemthank you! it's at least something.

[emvaized]

You can install custom search engines from Mycroftproject — there's plenty of them, and you can submit more.

Also, you can visit about:config page and set browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh flag as "true" — this way you'll be able to add any search engine you want.

[fasseg]

I don't want to install an add-on just to use another custom search engine. I'd very much like the option to add a custom search engine like librex using just a URL and a query param. Just look at the mobile firefox version. It works perfectly nice there.

[a2kolbasov]

Firefox Desktop supports adding your own search engines, but it's very strange.

1. Right-click on the input field.
2. Select "Add a Keyword for this Search".
3. Enter your keyword for this search engine and save it.

As a result, the search engine will be added as a bookmark. It will not appear among other search engines. But you can search for it by entering “you_keyword your_query” in the address bar.

[Blocky]

Request for Improved Search Engine Customization in Firefox

Dear Mozilla Support,

I'm writing to express my feedback on the current state of search engine customization in Firefox. As a power user, I value the ability to personalize my browsing experience, and adding custom search engines is an important aspect of my workflow.

While I appreciate the focus on a simplified user experience in recent Firefox iterations, the process for adding custom search engines feels cumbersome and hidden. Previously available methods seem less accessible now.

I believe offering a more straightforward way to add custom search engines would cater to power users like myself without compromising the overall user experience for others. Perhaps a dedicated menu option or a more user-friendly interface for managing custom search engines could be implemented.

I understand the importance of security and stability, and I would be happy to see a solution that balances customization with these priorities.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to any future improvements in this area.

Sincerely,

Blocky

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[Jon]

Similar idea here: Adding custom search engines 

[robsku]

I find search engine management to be a rather cumbersome and unwelcome part of my FireFox experience. I have a couple dozen browsers installed (every one I could find in Fedora 39 repos, plus a couple that had to be installed either from proprietary binary blob [e.g. Vivaldi], or compiled from source [e.g. ELinks (with TrueColor support compiled in)]), but most are there just for testing — although I do use multiple browsers depending on what I'm doing.

My top-3 browsers on desktop/laptop are FireFox, Vivaldi and ELinks — the latter being only a text-browser, but the best one I know of, and even it has better search engine management UI, basically everything I want. Vivaldi seems to do everything that FireFox does, and more — again, everything I want.

But FireFox. It basically has no search engine management to speak of. You can add them, although sometimes only by creating your own opensearch.xml type file to get what you want. After adding it, you can only edit the keyword list and remove the search engine. I can't even edit the search engine's shown name after I've added it.

This is basic stuff in Vivaldi and many other modern browsers already. I'm suggesting you add an editor to edit a search engine — perhaps by right-clicking a search engine in Settings, or just double-clicking its name? The way you do it is not important — Vivaldi does it one way, and it really pleases me.

The editor should allow not only modifying the search engine's name, but also the search URL, the search suggestions URL and even the icon used for the search engine.

Otherwise, I love FireFox. I think Vivaldi is the only one that even can compete, but I don't like it not being FOSS, and it's still behind FireFox in the end — I would likely choose it if I had to choose a preferred browser in an environment where adding my favourite extensions would be a no-no. But extensions are what made FireFox — I mean, the first version I remember being really lightweight and stripped down. NetScape's features made browsing so much better. Until you got to add-on's, and realized how much more you could do with it, and it had barely been born! 😄

But this is one area where extensions can't add the missing functionality, and power users like myself are left with cumbersome ways (like removing the search engine and adding a new modified version of it by making your own opensearch.xml for it). Please consider this, I'm sure that there is a large number of users who have been wishing it was possible in FF, maybe even tempted by other browsers because of the lack of it!

Love you.