SORRY FOR BAD WORDING: Omnibox now confirmed broken for like.... all history.

Also tried just killing all firefox syncs, didn't help either :( (not only that, browser.urlbar.suggest.history is set to true)

When I do check places integrity, everything looks like it's alright > Task: checkIntegrity + The places.sqlite database is sane + The favicons.sqlite database is sane > Task: invalidateCaches + The caches have been invalidated > Task: checkCoherence + The database is coherent > Task: expire

This is absolutely killing me

So the current status is:

(A) history matches are listed in the drop-down, and (B) browser.urlbar.autoFill has its default value of true in about:config

but autofill in the address bar is not happening for any letters in the alphabet?

That's correct!

The exception is for a website which I've bookmarked. The form will be autofilled. But I don't want to bookmark everything.

My guess would be that, despite the good results for the Verify Integrity test, something actually is wrong with the Places database file.

If no other solution arises, you might need to scrap it and start again. But you could try an experiment first to try to distinguish any file issue from other issues:

(i) Create a new profile (ii) Replace the new profile's empty places.sqlite file with your regular one (iii) Test whether you have the same problem in the new profile

In more detail:

New Profile Test

Inside Firefox, type or paste about:profiles in the address bar and press Enter/Return to load it.

Take a quick glance at the page and make a mental note of which Profile has this notation: This is the profile in use and it cannot be deleted. That is your current default profile.

Click the "Create a New Profile" button, then click Next. Assign a name like Jan2022, ignore the option to relocate the profile folder, and click the Finish button.

Firefox will switch your default profile to the new one, so click the Set as Default Profile button for your regular one to avoid an unwanted surprise at your next startup.

Scroll down to Jan2022 and click its Launch profile in new browser button.

Firefox should open a new window that looks like a brand new, uncustomized installation. (Your existing Firefox window(s) should not be affected.) Please ignore any tabs enticing you to connect to a Sync account or to activate extensions found on your system to get a clean test.

You can close this window now.

Back on the about:profiles page:

(A) Click Open Folder for the Root Directory of the Jan2022 profile

• In Windows File Explorer, verify in the path line that it's the new Jan2022 profile
• right-click places.sqlite and Rename to placesOLD.sqlite
• Keep this window open and switch back to Firefox

(B) Click Open Folder for the Root Directory of your normal profile

• In Windows File Explorer, verify in the path line that it's the new Jan2022 your normal profile
• right-click places.sqlite and Copy

(C) Paste the file

• Switch to the Jan2022 window
• right-click a blank area of the list > Paste -- if you get a warning that a file of the same name exists, stop, because this might be the wrong folder
• After pasting, the file should appear in order near placesOLD.sqlite

(D) Click the Launch profile in new browser button for the Jan2022 profile

Does URL bar autofill work any better in the new profile?

When you are done with the experiment, you can close the extra window without affecting your regular Firefox profile. (Jan2022 will remain available for future testing.)

Thanks this is awesome.

So I opened a test 2022 profile and ran it immediately. It did successfully autofill things from my history.

Then I went through your steps, it looks like you might have made a mistake typing in one of the directions after B. But I took my default profile, pasted its places.squlite into the test 2022 profile. It still worked out.

You're right, definitely a typo in B.

So the database file works when dropped into the new profile, and doesn't work in the normal profile. That implies it's a setting problem, but which one? We've checked the obvious things. Maybe someone else will have a brainwave.

Should I just... replace my regular profile's file with a new one and just stay that way?

I thought the test demonstrated that the file is working fine when moved to a new profile. Did I misunderstand your report on that?

I would like to keep using the old profile though. Because it would be a headache to fix everything including extensions. But I could do that if it's my only choice.

So does it work to just copy from a new profile over to my old one which is default-release? (I'm actually confused why there's default and default-release now but anyway)

Before Firefox 67 the default profile was called default and could be taken over by various different flavors of Firefox. default-release is used to distinguish from pre-release versions.

What I'm not sure is what you would be copying. We don't know which file has the problem?

Err... I thought that copying over places.sqlite was supposed to indicate that this file was broken I guess.

But so you're telling me that by chance if I don't get further support then I could fix this by creating and maintaining a new profile right?

I thought the new profile worked with the file you copied over:

So I opened a test 2022 profile and ran it immediately. It did successfully autofill things from my history. Then I went through your steps, it looks like you might have made a mistake typing in one of the directions after B. But I took my default profile, pasted its places.squlite into the test 2022 profile. It still worked out.

It did not work with the file you copied over?

No, no it did work in all cases. I moved over places.squlite and it still worked. I thought that this meant I could just fix this file in the original profile to fix my problem.

I think it means the file is good and doesn't need to be fixed. But that leaves the mystery of why Firefox doesn't present any autofill matches.

( ok thanks for the help

Will infrequently ping this in the hopes that someone can help.

But I guess one day I will use the nuclear option and just redo my profile entirely.

So in the end what I did to make my omnibox suggestions work again and autofill my browsing history was what you suggested. By creating a new profile, I transfused its places.sqlite into my old malfunctioning profile.

Hopefully google algo will pick this up and people with a similar problem will see this.

Thanks a lot for the help.