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Pressing ctrl-k used to take me to the plain vanilla version of Google's homepage. Apparently, this has changed, as of Firefox 31. Pressing ctrl-k now gets me to some sort of Firefox-branded wrapper around the Google search box. Is there a way to change this new behavior back to the old behavior?

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5 Answers 5

Reset to default
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I solved this by changing the about:home page itself. This is a "hacky" solution that will probably need to be re-applied on every upgrade, but here goes:

Locate the omni.ja file, mine was in c:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\browser. Note that there are several.

Edit the file chrome\browser\content\browser\abouthome\aboutHome.xhtml. To do this, you need to unpack omni.ja, do the edit, and then re-pack omni.ja again.

I put this instead of the original file content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<head>

<script>

window.location.href = "https://www.google.se/";

</script>

</head>

<body />

</html>

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    Note that repacking omni.ja requires aggressive compression to be parsed properly by Firefox. On *nix/mac, use zip -qr9XD omni.ja * to repack. See About Omni.ja for details.
    – Will Martin
    Jul 31, 2014 at 16:12
  • This works as a charm. I got zip for Win from stahlworks.com/dev/index.php?tool=zipunzip
    – benka
    Aug 1, 2014 at 9:07
  • Thanks, Anders. I might play around with this at some point down the road.
    – bjkeefe
    Aug 1, 2014 at 15:37
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From discussion on the Mozilla Support Forum, it appears that there is no way to make ctrl-k behave as it did in previous versions of Firefox; the logic is built in to the code. Pressing ctrl-k did, and continues to, take you to the search window in the navigation toolbar. If you have customized your nav toolbar to remove the search window, as I have, then ctrl-k, which used to be hard-wired to jump to google.com, is now hard-wired to jump to about:home. (This is what I referred to above as "some sort of Firefox-branded wrapper ...")

I came up with a workaround which may be of interest, so I'll repost it here.

Following the instructions at Mozilla Support's How to search IMDB, Wikipedia and more from the address bar, define g to point to the search window at google.com, and then instead of ctrl-k, do ctrl-l g.

Why would I want to go to google.com and enter the search term there, rather than just append it to the smart keyword directly? Because sometimes I'm unsure of spelling, or phrasing, and I like to get the help of the drop-down suggestions.

Why would I prefer plain google.com to do this, versus the about:home page, which also has the suggest-as-you-type behavior? For the Google Doodles. No other reason.

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It seems you have removed the search box beside the URL bar. To put the search box back where it originally was:

Ctrl+K+Enter

Ctrl+K should move the focus to the search box beside the URL bar. You must put the search box back there (as it comes by default) if you have taken it off previously.

Then pressing Enter when you are there will load the Google search page.

For me going from Ctrl+K to Ctrl+K+Enter was not that hard to get used to.

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  • You are correct, Marcelo. (Maybe I should have added this info to my question, instead of saying it in my answer.) I prefer not to have the search box displayed next to the location bar, because I'd rather have the location bar be as wide as possible, and prior to the recent changes in Firefox, getting to Google was just a ctrl-k away. Thanks for your suggestion, though. I may take it up if I find ctrl-l, g, enter something that won't stick in my muscle memory.
    – bjkeefe
    Aug 1, 2014 at 15:36
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I searched for a LONG time and found the solution that works best for me AND you can basically make any URL a keyboard shortcut this way:

  1. Install the Add-on Keyconfig: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=72994

  2. Open Keyconfig by pressing Ctrl+Shift+F12

  3. Click the Shortcut column heading to sort by Shortcut and scroll down to Ctrl+K
  4. Click Edit this key and change the text of Ctrl+K to the following: gBrowser.selectedTab = gBrowser.addTab("www.google.com");

You can make any shortcut for any URL with this code!

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I've written a simple addon that takes you to google.com when you press Ctrl-K in Firefox. It can either replace the current tab or open a new tab. And you can change google.com if you want to use a different search engine. You can also change the key combination. The addon is called Keyboard Shortcut and you can download it here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/keyboard-shortcut/

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