7

I love the feature that Firefox searches my history and bookmarks when I start typing in the address bar.

However since recently, Firefox also suggests URLs of the form <host>/ when I start typing parts of a host name, although I neither have visited nor bookmarked that exact URL. This is quite annoying because there are a lot of servers (especially company-internal ones) which don't respond on these URLs. Typically, they require a special port (and I have the right one in my history), but Firefox still tricks me into using the wrong, default port.

So, how can I disable the host completion feature and make Firefox only propose the exact URLs that I have visited or bookmarked?

EDIT to clarify the expected behaviour: When I start typing a host name in the address bar and hit enter, I want Firefox to open the first element of the history/bookmark search results shown below the address bar, and not the URL which consists just of the host name, which is shown in the address bar. Is this possible?

3 Answers 3

5

I just found out that the feature I am not quite happy with is the inline auto-complete option of the location bar (which is one of multiple auto-complete options). Apparently, it is not possible to change the behaviour of inline auto-complete so that only full URLs from the history are proposed.

But it already helped me to disable the option (by setting browser.urlbar.autoFill to false on the about:config page). In this way, I still need to press down and enter to select the first matching history entry, but at least I am no longer tricked into trying to open URLs that will show an error page.

2

As of 2019, the prospector extensions and the options mentioned by @oberlies are not available any more.

A solution was mentioned on Reddit. If you got to Library and then Bookmarks, Show all bookmarks (alternatively press Ctrl+Shift+o), each bookmark has a keyword entry. By adding the short version of the website, Firefox will proceed directly to the bookmarked URL instead of the incomplete URL.

See screenshot.

You need a shortcut for each substring of the desired URL:

  • e
  • ex
  • exa
  • exam
  • ...
  • example.com
0

There is an extension for this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/prospector-speak-words/

It doesn't autocomplete the full url in the address bar like Crhome or Opera, but it highlights the first result from history, and hitting enter brings you the correct address.

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