How are you "deleting" those one-click search engines?

Just de-select the search engines that you don't want to appear or show in about:preferences#search .

The thing is that the one-click search engines are packed in the omni.ja file which is installed anew with every Firefox major & minor update, which allows Mozilla to switch their "preferred" search engines as the agreements between the search engines and Mozilla change, as it did with Yahoo in the not so distant past.

the-edmeister said

How are you "deleting" those one-click search engines?

I select Google from the one-click search engine list and click remove.

If you click remove in "Options/Preferences -> Search" then are you aren't actually deleting the search engine, but you merely hide it (search.json.mozlz4 => hidden: "true"). "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) will still display it.

Search engines you disable (i.e. remove the checkmark in Options/Preferences -> Search) are added to the browser.search.hiddenOneOffs pref on the about:config page.

howdytom said

the-edmeister said

How are you "deleting" those one-click search engines?

I select Google from the one-click search engine list and click remove.

How soon does it return to the list? Does it seem to be triggered by a particular event, such as quitting and restarting Firefox? Does it come back as checked or unchecked?

Starting in Firefox 68, the built-in search engines are packaged as extensions (XPI files) instead of OpenSearch plugins (XML files). The integration between the Search panel of the Preferences page and the add-ons management interface still needs a little work. If you can track down the circumstances that seem to cause the problem, it may be worth filing a bug report.

You can check for issues caused by a corrupted search.json.mozlz4 file in the profile folder.

You can rename/remove search.json.mozlz4 (and possibly search.json, search-metadata.json, search.sqlite) in the Firefox profile folder with Firefox closed to rebuild the search engines registry.

You can use the button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page.

• Help -> Troubleshooting Information -> Profile Directory:
  Windows: Show Folder; Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder
• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Profiles

Firefox will rebuild the search.json.mozlz4 file from the builtin search engines.

cor-el said

If you click remove in "Options/Preferences -> Search" then are you aren't actually deleting the search engine, but you merely hide it (search.json.mozlz4 => hidden: "true"). "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) will still display it.

This does not make sense to me. Hiding and removing should also remove the search engine.

jscher2000 said

How soon does it return to the list?

Great question. I have unchecked all items, than clicked the remove button. As far as I can see Firefox resets the default search list as soon as I hit update Firefox.

cor-el said

You can check for issues caused by a corrupted search.json.mozlz4 file in the profile folder.

It could be a corrupted search.json.mozlz4 file, however I don't think so. This behaviour occurs on multiple machines. Manually renaming and deleting files is not a solution.

howdytom said

jscher2000 said

How soon does it return to the list?

Great question. I have unchecked all items, than clicked the remove button. As far as I can see Firefox resets the default search list as soon as I hit update Firefox.

This sounds familiar. Some users of past versions reported that if they removed ALL the default search engines from the One-Click Search Engines box, then the next Firefox program update restored them. There must be something in the installer code related to that particular scenario. (For comparison, I only remove Amazon and eBay and they never come back during updates.)