1807570 - Search Engine (not bookmark) keyword support

Status: NEW

(Firefox for Android :: Search, enhancement)

Description

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

From github: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/15985.

On Desktop, we have search engine shortcuts (like @google, @ddg) so this is a request to add that to Fenix.

What is the user problem or growth opportunity you want to see solved?

Keyword-based awesomebar searching (e.g. configuring "wp" as the keyword for Wikipedia's search engine and typing wp asdfg in the awesomebar will take the user directly to the Wikipedia search results for "asdfg"), a feature dating back to at least Firefox v3 (and historically available in Firefox on the Android platform), is not currently possible in Fenix. Historically this has been achieved using Bookmark keywords, but (per https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1653261) this is being deprecated in favour of Search Engine keywords. Search Engine keyword support already exists in Firefox for Desktop, and adding it to Fenix would once again allow for keyword-based searching on Android.

How do you know that this problem exists today? Why is this important?

Per #12099, there are lots of people who have relied on bookmark keyword support for keyword-based searching (myself included), and since that issue has been closed as wontfix (based on the above Bugzilla bug) keyword-based searching isn't currently available in Fenix at all.

Who will benefit from it?

Anyone who relies on keyword-based searching.

┆Issue is synchronized with this Jira Task

Change performed by the Move to Bugzilla add-on.

Comment 1

[api]

Plus one!
This is one of the major features of Firefox and seeing it replaced by only the search bar engines features makes me very sad.
I use it for several intranet applications and websites which will never have a search addon.
Also it is really insufficient that although my bookmarks are perfectly synced in the "Mozilla Firefox World" I cannot just run these search commands on my smartphone.
Is there any chance a new addon could bring this feature or does this need to be integrated in the browser itself?
(unfortunately after years I don't see that this feature request will ever make it to the dev :-/)
Best Anton

Comment 2

[rjgjgaspari]

Yes!
As soon as I upgraded Firefox on my mobile phone, I missed this.

I use the keyword search constantly on my Desktop Firefox. This is a stand-out feature! More than one coworker at our software company has asked me "What did you do there?"

I also think it is a shame that the all my bookmarks get synced from Desktop to mobile except these ones.