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

Posted Jun 18, 2008 by Rich Menga  

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:

image
(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:

image
(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:

image
(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.

Which Of These Traits Applies To YOUR Computing Life?...

72 Responses to “Firefox 3: Disable The "Smart" Location Bar (Sort Of)”

  1. fhgjfjhf says:

    This GUIDE DOES NOT WORK !!!!!!

  2. amy b says:

    it works! thank you thank you thank you! i was SO SICK of that! :)

  3. m25 says:

    This doesn’t work work worth a crap. This “feature” ruins firefox 3. Does anyone on the planet know how to setup firefox 3 where the stupid url bar acts like a normal url bar or is that asking too @#$ing much? For you egg heads, that means it only shows the history of url’s that you have typed in manually. That’s it. Stop thinking too much. If you can’t figure that out, I can write it down for you. DAMN IDIOTS.

  4. jeremy says:

    yes this did work. completely. all of my starred bookmarks were removed and NO history shows when i type. i know what i’m talking about and this is what you are all looking for. i did change the “rich results” to zero because all but one disappeared when i changed it to one. so m25 quit being a frigging crybaby.

  5. Melissa says:

    Thank you, that had been bugging the heck out of me.

  6. Kristen says:

    Hey there, thanks for making the directions easy to follow. I have to say that the stupid Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer still pops up and asked me for a password. I really hate this thing.

  7. bradmaung says:

    it surely works..good on ya..cheers..

  8. dusty says:

    didn’t work for me. the feature is sooooooo annoying. anyone finds a fix–please feel free to reply to this post and share it.

  9. Crayon says:

    I followed the above instructions. But when I press delete after a few letters of the web address, the websites in the smart bar still appear. Anyone else having this problem?

    Help!

  10. Erik says:

    I did this a long time ago and it worked fine, but now for some reason the smartbar works regardless of the settings.

  11. CB says:

    Thank you so much – this works really well. Very helpful and easy to follow. The flamers above who seem to be so misanthropic and retarded as to not see its amazing value to the future of the human race must be eliminated.

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