1842106 - Turn off Firefox Android's domain suggestions for address bar autocomplete

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox for Android :: Toolbar, task, P2)

Description

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Android's current list of 400+ domain names for address bar suggestions was created way back in December 2015:

https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-android/tree/main/android-components/components/browser/domains/src/main/assets/domains

This list hasn't been updated since 2015 and now includes expired and squatted domains that might serve ads or malware. Instead of updating the lists of top domains, we should remove it. This would avoid the risk from future bad domains. The default suggestions are out of date and not necessarily relevant for every locale. Autocomplete suggestions would still work based on users' own local browsing history and bookmarks.

The top domain list's original documentation and site policies:

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-esr68/file/tip/mobile/android/docs/defaultdomains.rst

The current lists:

https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-android/tree/main/android-components/components/browser/domains/src/main/assets/domains
https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-ios/blob/main/firefox-ios/Client/Assets/topdomains.txt
https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/firefox-ios/blob/main/focus-ios/Blockzilla/topdomains.txt

Comment 1

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

I also opened https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1895520 (I hadn't seen this)

Comment 2

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

Attachment: Bug 1842106 - Add Nimbus flag to control shipped domain suggestions. r?#android-reviewers

The "shipped domains" are the hardcoded (and outdated) list of domains used to prepopulate the address bar's autcomplete suggestions. suggest-shipped-domains = true is the current behavior. When suggest-shipped-domains = false, the address bar will still suggest results from search engine suggestions and the user's local browsing history.

I will use this Nimbus flag to run an experiment comparing search metrics with and without the shipped domain suggestions.

Comment 3

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/18cbf7f8cdc8
Add Nimbus flag to control shipped domain suggestions. r=android-reviewers,petru

Comment 4

[Serban Stanca [:SerbanS]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/18cbf7f8cdc8

Comment 5

[Lorand Janos]

Verified as fixed on the latest Nightly build (129.0a1 from 2024-07-03).
I can confirm that the popular sites are no longer autocompleted (tested manually a few top domains).
Device used: Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra (Android 14).