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Search hijack by conduit (/questions/968030/)

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conduit keeps hijacking my newtab

conduit keeps hijacking my newtab

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Conduit is the force behind many "community toolbar" add-ons and if you have any add-on related to Conduit, you probably need to remove it before this problem can be solved.

But I'll start here:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste newtab and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.newtab.url preference and enter your preferred page:

  • Page thumbnails (default) => about:newtab
  • Blank tab => about:blank
  • Built-in Firefox home page => about:home
  • Any other page => full URL to the page

Press Ctrl+t to open a new tab and verify that it worked. Fixed?

Some gotchas:

If Firefox won't let you edit this setting: you may have something called SearchProtect on your system.

If Firefox lets you save your change but ignores it: one of your extensions may be overriding it. You can review, disable, and/or remove extensions on the add-ons page:

orange Firefox button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons > in the left column click Extensions

If the change works during your session, but at the next startup is back to Conduit: you might have a user.js file in your personal Firefox settings folder (your Firefox profile folder). This article describes how to track down and remove the file: How to fix preferences that won't save.

Any luck?