Mozilla VPN is currently experiencing an outage. Our team is actively working to resolve the issue. Please check the status page for real-time updates. Thank you for your patience.

Avatar for Username

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

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

How can I disable searching when typing a question mark in the awesomebar?

  • 4 replies
  • 0 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by zeroknight

Kevin Cox
Kevin Cox
more options

I use a lot of keyword search engines. This means I can type something like `kagi foobar` to search Kagi for `foobar`. However the awesome bar has a "feature" where if you type a question mark (?) anywhere it instead uses the default search engine. This means that `kagi How do I cook a turkey?` searches my default search engine for "kagi How do I cook a turkey?" rather than searching Kagi (based on the `kagi` keyword). Is there a way to disable this behaviour?

I have searched about:config and "Search Shortcuts" in preferences doesn't have a `?`. I never use `?` as a shortcut to search (I just type the keyword for the engine I want) so completely removing it would be perfect.

I use a lot of keyword search engines. This means I can type something like `kagi foobar` to search Kagi for `foobar`. However the awesome bar has a "feature" where if you type a question mark (?) anywhere it instead uses the default search engine. This means that `kagi How do I cook a turkey?` searches my default search engine for "kagi How do I cook a turkey?" rather than searching Kagi (based on the `kagi` keyword). Is there a way to disable this behaviour? I have searched about:config and "Search Shortcuts" in preferences doesn't have a `?`. I never use `?` as a shortcut to search (I just type the keyword for the engine I want) so completely removing it would be perfect.

Chosen solution

This should be fixed in Firefox 123 by Bug 1667639.

Read this answer in context 👍 1

All Replies (4)

zeroknight
zeroknight
more options

You can install Kagi as a search engine and assign it a keyword which is not affected by question marks.

Kevin Cox
Kevin Cox Question owner
more options

Thanks, that is a good workaround!

Unfortunately search engines don't sync via Firefox Sync while keyword search engines do, so it doesn't work well for my use case.

zeroknight
zeroknight
more options

You can avoid triggering the default search engine by adding punctuation immediately after the question mark: 

kagi How do I cook a tofurkey?.

kagi "How do I cook a tofurkey?"
zeroknight
zeroknight
more options

Chosen Solution

This should be fixed in Firefox 123 by Bug 1667639.