Hello Mark,

Assuming that you're using Google as your search engine :

When you click on "Tools" => "Any time" => at the bottom click on "Custom range".

Firefox can't change those settings for you, as this is a search engine feature.

I'm using DuckDuckGo as my search provider so your solution won't work for me. I'm aware that I can change the period of a search under the "any time" but that's a one time change. Exit firefox and the setting will revert to the default. What I didn't know was whether the setting I'm trying to change was something in firefox or was set by the search engine coding. Thank you for letting me know...... Mark

I don't use DDG myself (despite what some people may say, I prefer Google for my search enigine) - but I went to find out if in DDG settings you can change the time period to x hours; like with Google, to no avail :

https://duckduckgo.com/settings

Maybe you could ask DuckDuckGo  ?

Maybe post your question here :

https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/

I reached the same conclusion re DDG search settings. DDG doesn't have any help section that I can find, although they do have a "blog". I'll check the link you were kind enough to provide but truth be told, I'm probably just "chasing my tail". Thanks for going the extra mile. Mark

mwcrouch said

Thanks for going the extra mile. Mark

    My pleasure, Mark - good luck !

Hi Mark, if you need search plugins for week/month/year, I created a page to generate those, but you get my site's icon (JS) instead of the duck icon, so that's a little annoying:

https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/duckducktime.php

I didn't see a flexible number of days option on DDG's results page. Have you see that on an advanced search page?

Google is more flexible, but the way they determine the date is a bit hit or miss, so any of these kinds of restrictions is fuzzy at best.

(Earlier Google time range search plugin generator: https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/googletime.php)

I did as your link instructed and after making the default search engine (within the options section of firefox) the one on your page for "the past year", I closed firefox and reopened it. But nothing changed on my search page. I must have done something incorrectly but I don't know what that could have been. Thoughts? Thanks for your help.

Hi Mark, are you saying with the time-restricted search plugin you get DuckDuckGo results but the time range isn't changed from All to Past Year just below the search box on the results page?

Hi Mark, I should mention that search plugins are only used when you search through a Firefox search bar, such as the address bar or the new tab page. It wouldn't change your home page if you set your home page to https://duckduckgo.com/ or run searches from there.

'Couldn't let it go and found this :

https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/features/dates/

Here it says :

"If you instead want to see results from the past day, week, or month, you can select that from the date filter dropdown to the right of the search box on desktop."

With Google you can choose : past 24 hours, past hour …..

To jscher2000, correct. I get DDG search results but they are "any time" instead of just the past year, which is the default selected under Firefox's options section. I typically don't use the address bar search option (choosing instead to search from the DDG search bar in the middle of that page) but I am not opposed to changing my search habits in order to get the default behavior that I'm looking for.

to McCoy, I was aware of the option you mentioned but the problem with using that feature is that it has to be set each time you perform a search. It's not a selection that will survive from search to search without selecting it each time a different search is run.

Thanks to the both of you for your patience and help.....

I just noticed that in the options settings of Firefox, the below notice appears indicating that my time selection is suppose to work in either the address bar searches as well as search bar searches. For that reason I expected that after installing your search plugin it would not matter if searches ran from address bar or the search bar. Firefox says the selection should hold as the default search period regardless......

On well, life is full of trials and tribulations. LOL

You can add a "&df=y" to limit the search to one year (m:month; w:week; d:day:);

• https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&df=y&ia=web&q=mozilla

keyword search:

• https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&df=y&ia=web&q=%s

mwcrouch said

I just noticed that in the options settings of Firefox, the below notice appears indicating that my time selection is suppose to work in either the address bar searches as well as search bar searches.

Well, they meant search bars built-in to Firefox, not search bars on websites...

mwcrouch said

to McCoy, I was aware of the option you mentioned but the problem with using that feature is that it has to be set each time you perform a search. It's not a selection that will survive from search to search without selecting it each time a different search is run.

    Hence I once again mentioned Google .....

    (but in my experience you get the best results using "Any time")

to cor-el.... Thanks for that tip.

To McCoy.....

Thank you for your comment. I just don't find Google to be as good as it once was. Also, logic tells me that no matter what the topic of your search might be, the only difference between an "anytime" date search and a search using "within the past year" is that your "past year" results stop at a year ago while an "any time" search carries you back for "all time" in history. Wading through an "any time" search is time consuming and wasteful, depending on the topic. Don't mean to be argumentative in my comment. I just like my searches to be more "time focused"......

You inadvertently marked my post as Chosen Solution ....

You can rectify it by clicking on the "Undo" button to the right of that post.

mwcrouch said

Don't mean to be argumentative in my comment. I just like my searches to be more "time focused"......

You are definately not argumentative - what one likes; the other one doesn't. Nothing wrong with that.

I have experimented with every date range (even tried this but always went back to "Any time" (and often use language a lady shouldn't be using when I get results from the "stone age" ... )

Main reason why "Any time" (for me) is the best option : I'll be looking for maybe a solution to a problem, and have the time range set to (e.g.) one year. I can't find a solution - I would have found it if I had set the time range to "Any time", because the solution I was looking for was posted, let's say, 13 months ago .... I can also somewhat control the time range by the way I formulate my search queries.