Join the Mozilla’s Test Days event from Dec 2–8 to test the new Firefox address bar on Firefox Beta 134 and get a chance to win Mozilla swag vouchers! 🎁

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Cuireadh an snáithe seo sa chartlann. Cuir ceist nua má tá cabhair uait.

Cannot change default search engine from DuckDuckGo to something else

more options

Even in safe mode, I cannot make a change to my default search engine stick; it always reverts to DuckDuckGo.

After changing the default search engine in Preferences->Search to, say, Ecosia Search, typing a space character in the address+search bar goes from a generic world favicon to DuckDuckGo. Restarting with a cleared cache doesn't help.

None of my addons are related to search except Ecosia Search. Even with Ecosia Search removed, I get the same behavior, the default search engine reverts to DuckDuckGo. In any case, safe mode with all addons disabled doesn't change that behavior.

If i remove DuckDuckGo from the list of search engines, I cannot search at all and I cannot choose a default search enigne from the drop down list in Preferences->Search.

Note that I can always choose an alternate search engine in the drop down search menu, and that works. Setting a default search engine doesn't work.

Any suggestions on how to make a search engine other than DuckDuckGo be my default search engine would be appreciated. As a bonus, an explanation of why I'm having this difficulty would be wonderful.

TIA.

Even in safe mode, I cannot make a change to my default search engine stick; it always reverts to DuckDuckGo. After changing the default search engine in Preferences->Search to, say, Ecosia Search, typing a space character in the address+search bar goes from a generic world favicon to DuckDuckGo. Restarting with a cleared cache doesn't help. None of my addons are related to search except Ecosia Search. Even with Ecosia Search removed, I get the same behavior, the default search engine reverts to DuckDuckGo. In any case, safe mode with all addons disabled doesn't change that behavior. If i remove DuckDuckGo from the list of search engines, I cannot search at all and I cannot choose a default search enigne from the drop down list in Preferences->Search. Note that I can always choose an alternate search engine in the drop down search menu, and that works. Setting a default search engine doesn't work. Any suggestions on how to make a search engine other than DuckDuckGo be my default search engine would be appreciated. As a bonus, an explanation of why I'm having this difficulty would be wonderful. TIA.

Réiteach roghnaithe

Hi, you appear to be using Firefox from the repositories (distributionID: archlinux), so it is possible this is related

You can try the Firefox version from the official Mozilla server if you currently use a version from the repositories of your Linux distribution.


You can rename/remove search.json.mozlz4 in the Firefox profile folder with Firefox closed to rebuild the search engines registry.

You can use the button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page.

Firefox will rebuild search.json.mozlz4 from the builtin search engines.

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (2)

more options

Réiteach Roghnaithe

Hi, you appear to be using Firefox from the repositories (distributionID: archlinux), so it is possible this is related

You can try the Firefox version from the official Mozilla server if you currently use a version from the repositories of your Linux distribution.


You can rename/remove search.json.mozlz4 in the Firefox profile folder with Firefox closed to rebuild the search engines registry.

You can use the button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page.

Firefox will rebuild search.json.mozlz4 from the builtin search engines.

more options

You are correct, I am using the Arch Linux distribution, but your solution of quitting Firefox, deleting the file search.json.mozlz4 worked. (There was a momentary hiccup when Firefox seemed to want to insist on using Google, but some antiacid in the the form or a restart cured the problem.)

Thanks.