1722395 - Firefox home page search says "Search with Google" regardless of default search engine

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Search, defect, P2)

Description

[Mike N]

Attachment: Firefox-default-search-box-always-google_7_26_21__2_15_PM.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:90.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/90.0

Steps to reproduce:

I downloaded a fresh install of FF for mac (90.0.2 (64-bit)) and noticed the gray hint text in the search box on the home page always refers to Google regardless of the default search.

• I updated Firefox on my macbook pro (catalina 10.15.7 (19H1217))
• Changed my default search engine to DuckDuckGo
• Opened a new browser window

Actual results:

• The FF homepage searchbox hint text said "Search with Google or enter address" even though my default search was DDG
• The searchbox functioned correctly as a DDG search box
• I tried all other search engines as default and the text always referred to Google
• The URL bar on top of the browser window correctly refers to the default search engine

Expected results:

• The hint text should reflect the default search engine.
• i.e., it should have said "Search with DuckDuckGo or enter address" to reflect my default search engine.

Comment 1

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

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Search' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Mike N]

I just noticed this was connected to my FF History Settings. The search hint text is correct unless a non-default setting is selected for History.

From what I can tell, the search hint text is inconsistent only when one of these is the case for my History settings:
A) "Firefox will never remember history" is selected, or
B) "Firefox will use custom settings for history" is the selected and the "Always use private browsing mode" checkbox is checked

If the correct search engine logo is showing in the field (and the correct search function), it seems it should be possible to have the text show the correct search engine name. If that's not possible, maybe it's possible to avoid showing the search engine name when the browser cannot remember history.

It looks really bad (broken) when the search engine logo does not match the text immediately to the right of it. I hope you can fix.

Thanks

Comment 3

[Petruta Horea [:phorea]]

Reproduced in latest Nightly 92.0a1 by setting Nightly to Never remember history and changing the default search engine after browser restart.

According to mozregression, this was regressed by:
Bug 1616700 - Part 3 - Update the placeholder string on the handoff input to read "Search with {engine} or enter address"

Comment 4

[Marco Castelluccio [:marco]]

Harry, can you look into this?

Comment 5

[Harry Twyford]

The issue here is that the code that powers the search box on about:home and about:privatebrowsing does not distinguish between windows in private browsing mode and thus windows that are on about:privatebrowsing; and windows that are in permanent private browsing mode and thus are on about:home.

Comment 6

[Harry Twyford]

Attachment: Bug 1722395 - Fix placeholder string in handoff input in permanent private browsing mode. r?standard8!

about:newtab doesn't load aboutPrivateBrowsing.ftl and conversely about:privatebrowsing doesn't load newtab.ftl. Since permanent private browsing mode uses about:newtab as its new tab, we need to make sure we load our strings from newtab.ftl in that case.

Comment 7

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/bee56878871a
Fix placeholder string in handoff input in permanent private browsing mode. r=Standard8

Comment 8

[Sandor Molnar[:smolnar]]

Backed out for causing bc failures in browser_ContentSearch

Backout link: https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/f476a39177f342831386f50a074d5733716c56be

Push with failures

Failure log

Comment 9

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/86c5a61c6b78
Fix placeholder string in handoff input in permanent private browsing mode. r=Standard8

Comment 10

[Sandor Molnar[:smolnar]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/86c5a61c6b78

Comment 11

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

Please nominate this for ESR91 approval when you get a chance.

Comment 12

[Harry Twyford]

Comment on attachment 9234505 [details]
Bug 1722395 - Fix placeholder string in handoff input in permanent private browsing mode. r?standard8!

ESR Uplift Approval Request

• If this is not a sec:{high,crit} bug, please state case for ESR consideration: This bug can display an incorrect engine name on the new tab page when permanent private browsing mode is enabled. Permanent private browsing mode may be more common in ESR environments, such as libraries. We don't want to be displaying incorrect engine names in the UI given the business-critical nature of search engine contracts.
• User impact if declined: Users may see an incorrect engine name on the new tab page when permanent private browsing mode.
• Fix Landed on Version: 92
• Risk to taking this patch: Low
• Why is the change risky/not risky? (and alternatives if risky): Small front-end patch. Narrowly scoped and well-understood. It's baked for over a week on Nightly with no known regressions.
• String or UUID changes made by this patch:

Comment 13

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

Comment on attachment 9234505 [details]
Bug 1722395 - Fix placeholder string in handoff input in permanent private browsing mode. r?standard8!

Approved for 91.1esr.

Comment 14

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-esr91/rev/4c022fcfe47a