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Why does URL auto complete no longer seem to prefer most visted sites?

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I have Firefox setup mostly in the default way and for years (or at least as long as I can remember) when I started typing in the address bar, it would auto complete the most frequented web site I use matching what I typed.

For example, I typed "a" and Amazon's site would auto complete and I'd just have to press return. In recent versions though (at least the last couple I think, and I'm currently using v54.0) of Firefox this behaviour has changed. I visited adultswim (which is a comedy tv channel before anyone raises an eyebrow) three or four times lately to watch their broadcast streams. Now I've noticed when I type "a" instead of Amazon auto completing, adultswim does. As I say I only visited adultswim a handful of times one week and yet I visit amazon nearly every day.

When it used to work OK, if the url autocomplete did this to me all I had to do was open a few tabs and visit the site I wanted to be top in the autocomplete list and Firefox would get the idea that I visited that site more frequently and then autocomplete to that site when I started typing. But it no longer does this either. I can literally sit here for twenty minutes opening new tabs and visiting the site I want "a" to auto complete to but it will still always autocomplete to adultswim. It appears as though the url autocomplete has switched from doing it based on frequency of visited sites to entirely alphabetically.

If this is a new default setting I need to change, and if so how? I've tried doing a full reset of Firefox, clearing "everything" from history to cache, and even uninstalled and reinstalled the program but the problem seem to show back up again after little use.

I have Firefox setup mostly in the default way and for years (or at least as long as I can remember) when I started typing in the address bar, it would auto complete the most frequented web site I use matching what I typed. For example, I typed "a" and Amazon's site would auto complete and I'd just have to press return. In recent versions though (at least the last couple I think, and I'm currently using v54.0) of Firefox this behaviour has changed. I visited adultswim (which is a comedy tv channel before anyone raises an eyebrow) three or four times lately to watch their broadcast streams. Now I've noticed when I type "a" instead of Amazon auto completing, adultswim does. As I say I only visited adultswim a handful of times one week and yet I visit amazon nearly every day. When it used to work OK, if the url autocomplete did this to me all I had to do was open a few tabs and visit the site I wanted to be top in the autocomplete list and Firefox would get the idea that I visited that site more frequently and then autocomplete to that site when I started typing. But it no longer does this either. I can literally sit here for twenty minutes opening new tabs and visiting the site I want "a" to auto complete to but it will still always autocomplete to adultswim. It appears as though the url autocomplete has switched from doing it based on frequency of visited sites to entirely alphabetically. If this is a new default setting I need to change, and if so how? I've tried doing a full reset of Firefox, clearing "everything" from history to cache, and even uninstalled and reinstalled the program but the problem seem to show back up again after little use.

Ti ṣàtúnṣe nípa Carterbriggs

All Replies (1)

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I can only compare what I see, and mine definitely is not alphabetical. That said, there are some sites where I generally go to the home page (just the host name without any path or page) and some where I go to a link within the site, and in some cases I use a bookmark or history entry while in others I type the address, and those little differences might affect the ranking.

If the address that appears under the cursor as you type in the address bar is more annoying than helpful, you can disable that feature as follows (you'll still get the full drop-down of history/bookmark URLs):

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

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

(3) Double-click the browser.urlbar.autoFill preference to switch the value from true to false