Firefox 3: Disable The "Smart" Location Bar (Sort Of)

by Rich Menga on Jun 18, 2008 | 73 comments

I have already found that the “Smart” Location Bar, a new’n'improved feature in Firefox 3, really ticks me off. Why? Because there’s absolutely no way to shut it off via the options panel.

Note before continuing: Some people really like the “Smart” bar. I don’t.

Fortunately you can somewhat disable it via about:config.

Step 1. Type about:config in the location bar.

You’ll get this:

(click to enlarge)

Oh ha ha ha, very funny Mozilla. A warranty on a free product. Oh yes, I’ll be careful, not to worry!

Notices like this annoy the crap out of me. [click]

Step 2. Type urlbar next to filter.

Looks like this:

(click to enlarge)

Step 3. Change two of the values.

Change browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped to true and browser.urlbar.maxRichResults to 1 or 0. If you want the location bar to act like Firefox 2 did, set it to 1. Otherwise set to 0.

Looks like this:

(click to enlarge)

You’re done at this point.

Now when you start typing in something in the location bar it will skip popping up this crapola all over the place.

Final tip:

If you like the Smart Location Bar but would rather see it have less results, keep matchOnlyTyped to false and set maxRichResults to 5 instead of 12.

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TECarter
Thank you thank you thank you. Works great – so glad someone has the expertise to solve this! I’m bookmarking your site (found in google search for “disable smart location firefox”) for future use.
Christian
OH Dude, thank you SO MUCH.
I HATE this “smart” blabla. IT ANNOYS ME TO DEATH!
<3 i love you!

Drew
It’s only annoying at first until you know what you are doing with it.
It’s actually an awesome (no pun intended) idea and makes bookmarking and managing bookmarks much better than the traditional way of IE.
If it’s annoying you then you most likely haven’t used it to it’s full capabilities yet.

joe
No, its annoying all the time; if I want to bookmark something, I’ll do that deliberately, thank you very much. I don’t want my software watching over me.
allen
A horrible idea for most power users. I have some personal bookmarks that I do not want the casual friend who is checking sports scores to see listed.
I hate it and it annoys me that I have to “hack” the program to turn off.
brista
Condescending much?
Anyway, for those of us who don’t like it, check out Old Location Bar add-on.
noob
Actually, this was the reason why i downgraded to Ff 2.0 after 1 day of ff3.0.
THe “smart” location bar is a horrible idea. Things equally stupid would be the “one-button-mac-mouse”(if your so tard as to use mac, lolz), and Flash-webpages.

sryii
Awesome! You’re awesome! I hated that annoying little bar that popped up. Thanks for doing the actual work for me. You rock!
http://bookswrittenby.com Jeff
Great! I hate the “smart” location bar. Firefox 3 really should have included a simple option to turn this “feature” off.
I don’t go to the sites in my bookmarks too often, so it was distracting to see those sites pop up in my location bar. I use bookmarks to remember sites for long into the future, to revisit someday. Sites that I read often are all using feeds anyway, so I rarely have need to visit those sites.
Will
thanks you helped a lot
nony
seriously, mate – many, many thanks. that damn smart bar really got annoying quickly.
http://naw Chris
I don’t like other’s in the household to know the sites I visit! I almost dumped Firefox beccause of this one….

J
Yeah I know what ya mean, I just about did that for the same reason.

myname
Thanks for this, I can now heave a sigh of relief from being ‘spammed’ by all those listings my brain didn’t want to see each time I type something in the address bar.
Why oh why did Mozilla Firefox choose to be so dictatorial on this one. Freedom? I think not.
And whoever said ‘IE’s method was the ‘traditional way’ of doing things doesn’t know their browser history AT ALL.
roop
Thanks, I’ve hated the smart bar almost as much as the restore session nag.
Web Surfer
Thanx so much friend! Just downloaded the newest version of Firefox tonight, and like someone said above, i was almost tempted to get another browser until i found your site! ^_^ I’ve always hated those pop-up suggestions on other sites too, such as Google, Yahoo, etc. I personally don’t want a history of my sites being featured every time i browse, distracting me or left for other people to see in case they use my computer sometime. Besides, it tries to second guess you too much, it put in a couple of sites i had only used a couple of times. “Smart” technology doesn’t always equal useful. Thank for the heads-up.
Justin
You sir. Are my hero.
Costa Plenta
Way to Go – Thanks. Extremely annoying to have a limited number of bookmarks drop down like that from a ‘smart’ bar. If its so smart, why does it tell you what you already know, your bookmarks?!?!
Should be called Annoying Bar or even Stupid Bar.
mitch
Rich,
Not sure if Firefox deleted the “about:config page but i do not get that page when I type about:config into the firefox browser address line. Can you help me? Thanks in advance.
Mitch
gustavo
thank you very much for this mod! the smart location bar really pissed me off.

Doc Caliban
Thanks for this reply, it helped me find this page by Googling: firefox 3 address bar pisses me off
And thanks to Rich for the fix.
Maybe after another 20 years of enthusiest / professional computer use, I’ll become a ‘Power User’ who can appreciate things like this.
-Doc
PS: It’s been a decade, when will ‘googling’ become a recognized word in spell checkers? Gah!

http://www.kideas.com RocketCityMamma
THANK YOU! I cannot express my gratitude enough. That thing pissed me off to no end.
http://rancer4.ohost.de rance
thanks for the addon i really hate this crap in firefox. this is the worst crap ever. i’ll type in game and lotsofgames.com will show up. its an address bar. i dont want to search my history along with addresses. boy they kjnow how to fuck shit up dont they. i say ill be getting another browser soon. FUCking this shit sucks. first thing after i installed firefox 3 and i dont install new shit very often. i usually wait to see what people think. i dont jump on the new crap cause usualy they’ll mess something up. i went to history and wanted to go to a page i went to 3 days ago. what do you got. a page of everything youve went to all messed up together in one page. MAN. how am i supposed to find that webpage. and i noticed tons of links poppping up that had no similiarity to the webpage i was going to. whats smart about not being similiar. this is so dumb. ill probably find a new browser soon. or maybe internet explorer can get their security fixed. i havent had spyware since, but i cant stand this … thanks for the addon.
kmb
Thanks a lot, but I still have ONE (always the same) bookmark appearing… as soon as I type the first letters “www.”… do you have any idea how to get rid of it ? thanks, kmb.
dj
I’m with you. If I think something is important enough to bookmark, I’ll bookmark it. And, when I want it, I’ll go to my bookmarks, same with my history. Keep them out of my way, but I always know they are there and I can quickly and easily go to them. I use Ctrl-B or Ctrl-H to quickly display them, and they have their own search. When I go to the “location bar” or “address bar” or “search bar”, I want to search the Internet for something new. The multi-line and images are also annoying. Whatever happened to the “keep it simple”. At a minimum, there should be a dialog (or even about:config options) so a user can customize it, and make it useful. The location bar is something that one uses a lot so it’s a constant annoyance, not something you can live with because you use it once in a blue moon. Already made the about:config changes. I will definitely recommend the extension to others. Thank you.
http://backamp.wordpress.com Ed
Thanks! I really didn’t want to roll back to FF2.0, but that was driving me to distraction.
Barb
All I can say is yippee to finally dumping the ‘smart’ bar. The thing is beyond annoying and should have been incorporated into the Options… section to turn off from there.
http://internetbusinessmastermind.com Ralf
Thank you for posting this.
Didn’t like the new firefox location bar behavior at all and couldn’t find the solution at mozilla’s knowledgebase.
Ralf

Bob
…I second what everyone else has said. Thanks for this! It’s now been changed.

Archer
Hey thanks for posting this…has someone notified Mozilla to let them know what a complete annoyance this is?
meme
“Smart” bar has to be one of the stupidest ideas ever and whoever thought of it deserves a flogging. Thanks for this help to get rid of it but it doesn’t fix the problem totally, so i had to go back to using FF2. And what a great relief it was to downgrade.
I will only upgrade when they give the option to remove the stupid bar. Mozilla are fast becoming the new Microsoft. The stupid idiots.
jon
For those who don’t need a dropdown at all (ie, you have your bookmarks ‘bookmarked’, and you can type a url quickly enough that scanning through the dropdown is pointless), set ” browser.urlbar.maxRichResults ” to ” -1 “. It will be completely disabled now.