Waterfox Essentials: Basic Browsing, Search suggestions in Waterfox

As you type into the address bar or search bar, Waterfox suggests relevant search terms or solution buttons related to the task or answer you may be looking for. When search suggestions are enabled, the text you type is sent to your default search engine. This search engine analyzes the words and displays a list of popular results based on the search term.

How search suggestions work

If you see a search suggestion that matches what you are looking for, click on it to see results for that search term. This can save time and help you find what you’re looking for with less typing.

Enabling search suggestions will send the keywords you type in a search field to the default search engine – unless you appear to be typing a URL or hostname.

Searches can be entered into:

• the address bar
• the Search bar, if enabled in the toolbar
• the Search bar on the New Tab page

The default search engine may collect that information according to the terms of their privacy policy. Users concerned about this information being collected may not wish to enable search suggestions, or may choose another default search engine that has a different privacy policy.

Note

Address bar search suggestions will also include matching results from your browsing history, bookmarks and open tabs. See Address bar autocomplete suggestions in Waterfox for more information.

Search suggestions are disabled by default in Private Browsing mode. You must explicitly turn them on in a Private Browsing window to enable them in that mode. You can enable search suggestions for all Private Browsing windows in your Waterfox Options Search settings panel (see below).

Enabling or disabling search suggestions

You can enable or disable Search suggestions at any time. Click the menu button and select Settings. Select the Search panel and then check or uncheck the Provide search suggestions box in your Waterfox search settings.

• To see search suggestions in the address bar drop-down, put a check mark next to Show search suggestions in address bar results.
• To show search suggestions before your browsing history, put a check mark next to Show search suggestions ahead of browsing history in address bar results
• To show search suggestions in Private Browsing windows, put a check mark next to Show search suggestions in Private Windows.

Search history suggestions

When Waterfox finds a match in your previous searches, it may show search history suggestions above the suggestions freshly retrieved from your search site. The suggestions are marked with a clock icon.

In address bar autocomplete matches, Waterfox may replace up to two of the search engine suggestions with search history suggestions. The dynamic suggestions are marked with a magnifying glass icon.

For steps to delete individual search history suggestions, or to clear all search history entries, see Clear recent searches from the Search bar. If you do not want Waterfox to store previous search terms in search history, you can turn off Waterfox’s form & search history using the steps in Control whether Waterfox automatically fills in forms (“Turn off Auto form fill and prevent Waterfox from storing more form entries”).

Waterfox solution button suggestions

When you type certain tasks into the address bar, such as to download or update Waterfox, suggestions may include a solution button to complete that task directly from the search bar. For example, if you type “update waterfox” a solution button will appear to update.

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