1621623 - Address bar one-click search engine suggestions reappear on each upgrade of Firefox

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1628405

(Firefox :: Search, defect, P3)

Description

[David Larlet [:davidbgk]]

Attachment: screenshot of the settings box for one-click search engine.png

I don't want to have search engine suggestions at the bottom of my web page suggestions when I type something in Firefox's address bar, so I removed these from the settings by unchecking the ticks in “One-Click Search Engines” or even by removing the search engines from that box completely.

Either way, when I update my browser, they always reappear and I have to redo the removal in the settings. That is kind of annoying and I think it is a bug.

If I remember correctly, it was already the case before, at least for the last 3 major versions (lazy me).

Comment 1

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Removing engines may not work, you should just untick them, if all the engines are unticked one-off buttons should not appear.
I just tried and it works for me... thus I wonder if the problem is that hidden engines are marked as checked, so one-off should not just check the checked status but also whether the engine is hidden.
Mark, may that be the case?

Comment 2

[David Larlet [:davidbgk]]

Thanks for your quick reply Marco, did you try to untick them with Firefox 73, then upgrade to 74 and no search-engine were displayed in the address bar? It keeps adding new ones on upgrade for me, I'll check with the next version by restoring default then untick them all instead of deleting to see if it's better. Thank you for the pointer.

Comment 3

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

David, which engines is it adding? Are there standard ones, or maybe there's a Yahoo entry?

Is it changing the default engine as well?

If you have them, something that might be useful is the search.json.mozlz4 file from your profile from before & after the upgrade. These store preferences relating to your search engines.

Though the strange thing is, the tick preference is stored somewhere else, so I'm a little surprise that's not working either.

Comment 4

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Hi David, any update here?

Comment 5

[David Larlet [:davidbgk]]

Attachment: search.json

Hi Mark,

It's adding almost random standard entries (not all), it's really weird. It does change the default engine if I remove everything from the one-click box.

I will try to be more precise during my next upgrade and provide a diff of the file before/after.

Here is my current `search.json` file once reformatted (attached, nice proposal when I tried to copy-paste it!). Well except the resulting double message :D

Comment 6

[David Larlet [:davidbgk]]

Deleted.

Comment 7

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Thank you for the update, David.

That search.json file looks like it is from a Firefox that was run in 2016... are you sure there wasn't a search.json.mozlz4, i.e. with the mozlz4 extension?

Could you also attach a copy of the output from Help -> Troubleshooting information? There's a copy at the top-right, and you should just be able to "Attach new file" and the paste the content.

Comment 8

[David Larlet [:davidbgk]]

Attachment: Copy of Help output (French)

Comment 9

[David Larlet [:davidbgk]]

Attachment: search.json.mozlz4

Comment 10

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The priority flag is not set for this bug.
:daleharvey, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 11

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Thanks David, as far as I can tell your settings and the cache file look to be what I'd expect.

What might be really useful, is if you're able to catch a log from startup for when this occurs. This would need to be caught soon after the first startup that it occurs. Our next release isn't due until 7th April.

To set up the logging you can do this:

• Enter about:config into the address bar, and acknowledge the warning.
• Search for browser.search.log, click on the toggle to set it to true.

To view the log (and copy it if you've hit the issue), you can do this:

• Go to Tools -> Web Developer -> Browser Console (not the web console).
• Right-click and select Select All
• Right-click again, and select Copy message
• Select to attach new file, and paste the log.

If you can get the search cache files from before and after in that case, that would also likely be useful.

Comment 12

[David Larlet [:davidbgk]]

:standard8 thanks for the info, I logged successfully before switching to 74.0.1 (from 74.0.0) but sadly - well, sort of - there was no search engines coming back this time… I'll try to log before/after a major upgrade within a few days.

Comment 13

[David Larlet [:davidbgk]]

:standard8 I can reproduce the bug! Hopefully with enough data, I'll attach all files I collected before/after the last update. With a screenshot of the new search engines presence in the search/URL bar.

Comment 14

[David Larlet [:davidbgk]]

Attachment: search-74.0.1.json.mozlz4

Comment 15

[David Larlet [:davidbgk]]

Attachment: search-75.0.0.json.mozlz4

Comment 16

[David Larlet [:davidbgk]]

Attachment: console-export-2020-4-7_22-9-23.txt

Comment 17

[David Larlet [:davidbgk]]

Attachment: console-export-2020-4-7_22-11-47.txt

Comment 18

[David Larlet [:davidbgk]]

Attachment: Capture d’écran, le 2020-04-07 à 22.10.46.png

Comment 19

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Hi David, I've looked at the data, but I'm confused about a couple of things:

• Which search engines were shown previously, and is it just twitter and wikipedia afterwards? No DDG etc.
• Were you hiding these by clicking the tick rather than the remove button?

Also did you remain on the French build for the upgrade or switch to US English?

The address bar picture you posted (attachment 9139051 [details]) has "This time, search with" in English, and the upgrade log references en-US. However the search-75.0.0.json.mozlz4 references 'fr' which would be the French locale.

If you were starting with the en-US version, that's enough to get us to change the default set of engines (you get twitter + Wikipedia-en versus Qwant + Wikipedia-fr).

However, the 75.0.0 cache doesn't say that, which has me confused, unless somehow during the upgrade Firefox forgot which locale it is on.

Comment 20

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Or do you use the en-US build with a language pack maybe (i.e. you've changed the language via preferences)?

Comment 21

[David Larlet [:davidbgk]]

Hi Mark,

My goal is to have no search engine at all appearing in my address bar with DDG as my default search engine. This was the case with 74 prior to upgrade to 75. Attached are my current settings (I didn't unchecked Wikipedia and Twitter yet, given I try to stay in a “default” upgrade state to enrich this bug).

My current chosen language is English (United States). I have installed a French dictionary though to help me find typo when I'm writing. I upgraded using the default Firefox auto-update feature via Firefox > About Firefox.

Maybe there is some confusion because at some time in the past I was probably using Firefox with the French language by default and that might be a reminiscent thing in my profile which messes up when there is a default set of engines update…

Comment 22

[David Larlet [:davidbgk]]

Attachment: Capture d’écran, le 2020-04-08 à 09.43.36.png

Comment 23

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Hi David, from the log I can see:

1586311814050	addons.xpi-utils	WARN	Add-on [e-mail] is not compatible with application version.

and from your config I see:

"intl": {
    "localeService": {
      "requested": [
        "fr",
        "en-US"
      ],
      "available": [
        "en-US",
        "fr"
      ],
      "supported": [
        "fr",
        "en-US"
      ],
      "regionalPrefs": [
        "fr-CA",
        "en-CA",
        "nl-CA"
      ],
      "defaultLocale": "en-US"
    },
  },

I think these basically mean it'll probably download the French language pack when it can, so your UI would revert back to French. You might be able to see the language pack via Tools -> Add-ons -> Languages.

If you only want en-US now, then I'd recommend removing that and going to Preferences -> General -> Language and changing the language selection there to English (en-US).

I've now filed a separate bug (bug 1628405) about what I think is going on here - the un-applying and applying of the language pack on upgrade is causing the search service to be confused, and as a result re-enabling the engines when it shouldn't be.

That seems to match your search.json.mozlz4 files, the 74.0.1 had Qwant and Wikipédia (fr) in it, whereas the 75.0 one has Twitter and Wikipedia (en).

If you think I've missed something about what's happening here, please let me know, there could be more than one issue at play.

Comment 24

[David Larlet [:davidbgk]]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for taking the time to investigate and filled the appropriated bug related to the origin of the issue. I removed the French language pack for now and I hope it will be better (and hopefully fixed!).

Should I mark that one as Invalid or Duplicate? Feel free to close it, the new one is probably more pertinent.

Comment 25

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Thanks for the response, I'll mark it as duplicate.