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Address bar suggestions have words containing the search terms but not the search terms themselves

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It's hard to describe what I mean without an example. I type "tart" into the search bar, and instead of the recently visited Wikipedia page on tarts, the autofill suggestions are full of pages in my history with "start" or "starter" in the title, or even in the URL but not the title. Is there any way to change it so the suggestions only contain the exact words I've typed?

It's hard to describe what I mean without an example. I type "tart" into the search bar, and instead of the recently visited Wikipedia page on tarts, the autofill suggestions are full of pages in my history with "s'''tart'''" or "s'''tart'''er" in the title, or even in the URL but not the title. Is there any way to change it so the suggestions only contain the exact words I've typed?

Chosen solution

You can limit matching to page titles or URLs, by starting your input with a specific character:

  • must be in title (or in a tag you assigned): #
  • must be in URL: $

Ref. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/address-bar-autocomplete-firefox#w_changing-results-on-the-fly

But I don't think there's a convenient way to force Firefox to search starting from a word boundary (like a space, slash, or punctuation mark) in recent years. Possibly an add-on might be able to do it, although it might need to have its own drop-down rather than being able to take over the address bar drop-down.

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Chosen Solution

You can limit matching to page titles or URLs, by starting your input with a specific character:

  • must be in title (or in a tag you assigned): #
  • must be in URL: $

Ref. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/address-bar-autocomplete-firefox#w_changing-results-on-the-fly

But I don't think there's a convenient way to force Firefox to search starting from a word boundary (like a space, slash, or punctuation mark) in recent years. Possibly an add-on might be able to do it, although it might need to have its own drop-down rather than being able to take over the address bar drop-down.

Helpful?

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Or in the example case, when you realize tart is overbroad, add a space and wiki to zoom in on what you are looking for.

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