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.

[GiantJordan]

So they moved how they do it.
I just added one.

I went to the site that had a search bar on it.
On the search bar of firefox the magnifying glass changed to add a green plus symbol.
I right clicked on it and there was an icon for the page I was on also with the green plus.
Click that and it adds it to firefox.
I am on version 130.0

This doesn't appear to work on everything however it did work for the site I wanted it to, help.mikrotik.com/

[mlm]

Was this removed or am I confusing this with chrome? Would really like to be able to adjust my search links. One example can be seen above. Not having to install extensions just for something that should be an alrady exiting database table. (Because somewhere the "Search Shortcuts" has to get its information from.)

[mlm]

Should this not be already possible, is it an adjustment of the DB needed? Because it should be possible without it, or where does "Search Shortcuts" gets its data? it also should have the link like "search-engine/?s=$1" stored, just that it should be possible to adjust the stored link.

[cane1]

Yes and yes.

[cshankar00]

We need this.

[benvim]

I think people are referring to two different ideas. There is go to a site, find the search box, and add that particular search.

But there is also copy a full URL with custom options for a search and add that URL as a search engine.

Personally, I use the latter approach. In Chrome, I possibly have 100 or more of them (they are great for search parameters that are in the URL). I would be 100% Firefox if it had this. But my search engine URLs are all highly customized searches and Firefox doesn't seem to have an equivalent. Though there is the Add custom search engine extension. But for such an obvious power user feature, it would really be nice if by now it was built in.

[Ale_A_C]

Oye sí, recuerdo que sí se podía en Firofox destock (¡No estaba loco!), en celular me gusta bastante, me simplifica muchos proceso por ser más directo. Acabo de iniciar sesión en esto del feedback porque ya no soporto un día más sin esa función ¡Cómo lo extraño! :'c

Hey, yes, I remember that you could use destock on Firofox (I wasn't crazy!), but I like it a lot on my cell phone, it simplifies many processes for me because it's more direct. I just logged into this feedback thing because I can't stand another day without that function. How I miss it! :'c

[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

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?