1629415 - Restore the browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll preference, which controls text selection in the address bar

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1621570

(Firefox :: Address Bar, enhancement)

Description

[Rory O’Kane]

Firefox 75’s revamped address bar (see the Firefox 75 release notes) is missing a feature that used to exist: support for the about:config preference browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll.

In previous versions of Firefox, that setting’s value defaulted to true, but could be changed to false. When clickSelectsAll was false, clicking in the address bar would place the cursor directly at the click position instead of selecting the whole contents of the address bar. For users like me who always use a keyboard shortcut if we really want to select the whole URL, not having to click twice to start editing a subset of the URL was a useful feature.

In Firefox 75, the browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll preference apparently does not exist. I came to that conclusion by creating a new profile, opening about:config, and searching for “clickSelectsAll”. There is no such preference listed in the new profile. My old profile still has browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll set to false, but its value has no effect.

Support for the false value of browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll should be added back to Firefox’s address bar.