Hi, are you clicking the icons along the bottom of the address bar drop-down? What normally happens is:

• Click the icon
• To the left of the cursor in the address bar, a gray tile appears with the name of the search engine you selected
• Type your query and press the Enter key or click the submit button
• Firefox sends your query to the selected site

Which step is breaking down?

I could always click on the area you mentioned, it shows the DuckDuckGo search engine, I would just click on that logo and it would open up a large search box on the main page and it no longer does that! Has that ability been removed?

Hmm, I'm not sure where you were clicking then. If you clicked a suggestion line, then Firefox should load the address linked to that suggestion. However, if you clicked one of the small icons in a row at the bottom of the drop-down, it adds a filter to the address bar and doesn't change the page currently displayed in the tab.

Before Firefox 128, some users would choose a search engine and then -- without entering their query in the address bar -- press Enter and Firefox would go to the search engine page anyway. Starting in Firefox 128, Firefox won't submit a completely empty query, you have to type at least a space. (Unexpectedly controversial; not sure how this might evolve in the future.)

For one-click access, it probably would be easier to use of these options:

(A) Pin DuckDuckGo to the shortcuts section of the new tab page. Then when you first click in the address bar, it will be among those 8-10 suggestions and you can click it to go to the site. The following article describes how to set up a shortcut or rearrange the ones you have (the address bar drop-down shows the first 8-10):

Customize items on your Firefox New Tab page

(B) Use a bookmark. If you display the Bookmarks Toolbar, you can add DuckDuckGo to a convenient spot. The following article has more info on the bar:

Bookmarks Toolbar - Display your favorite websites at the top of the Firefox window

When you are on DDG, you can drag the lock icon down and drop it on the bar to create a new bookmark.

Thank you for all your help & suggestions, I will read the articles you listed and go from there. Again, thanks for all your support, very much appreciated, all you volunteers do a great job helping the community.

You can type an '@' in the location/address bar to bring up all available search engines.

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/change-your-default-search-settings-firefox