Frequently, the default search engine is reset to google (ESR 115)
Categories
(Firefox :: Search, defect, P5)
Tracking
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People
(Reporter: s1.reich, Unassigned, NeedInfo)
References
Details
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/115.0
Steps to reproduce:
Remark: I found same issue in an older but closed report:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1769044
I found no other way to deal with it than to issue a new report.
Remark: Firefox has just been updated and is displyed as V. 115.10 and named as the latest version.
Bug, to reproduce: In [Menu > Extras > Settings > Search > Standard engine] i have selected anything except google (duckduckgo for example) . After every update, google re-appears in the default search.
Actual results:
in the settings itself, has also been switched to google.
Expected results:
the setting should remain un-changed.
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Comment 1•9 months ago
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The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Toolkit::Application Update' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.
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Comment 2•8 months ago
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Moving over to Search as the updater shouldn't be touching search settings.
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Comment 3•8 months ago
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Hello, thank you for the bug report!
Unfortunately I could not reproduce your issue. Would you be so kind to answer a few questions so we can investigate this further?
- Could you please check the update history of your browser and post it here in an attachment? You can find it in about:preferences#general, Firefox Updates section, Show Update History.
- Do you have any specific configuration on your profile? Is the search bar enabled? Are you using custom search engines/search add-ons?
Update History of browser: There is no way to exactly reproduce the path you gave:
("about:preferences#general, Firefox Updates section, Show Update History").
I could reproduce this: "Menu > Help > About Firefox." and made a screenshot from the appearing information window.
Specific configuration on my profile?
yes: the storing path for my profile is set to drive D instead of
C:\Users[username]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox.
(Firefox had allowed me to seth a custom path path after I have written "StartWithLastProfile=0" (instead "=1") in Profiles.ini.
Search bar enabled? Yes.
Using custom search engines/search add-ons?
Yes: startpage.com installed as add.on
(other possibly (?) relevant add-ons:
duckduckGo Privacy essentials
classic theme restorer
facebook container
i-dont-care-about-cookies
adblocker ultimate)
cant send the screenshot here (?). it reads as follows:
"Extended suppoert release
Firefox ist aktuell
115.10.0est(63 bit)
presently you are on the update channel esr.
(In reply to s1.reich from comment #5)
cant send the screenshot here (?). it reads as follows:
"Extended support release
Firefox ist aktuell
115.10.0esr (64 bit)
presently you are on the update channel esr.
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Comment 7•8 months ago
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Hi, thank you for the report. A few questions:
- Roughly how long has this been going on for?
- Does it happen if you restart Firefox, or is it only when you update?
- Do you ever notice your default engine being set to something other than DDG after restart?
- When it happens next:
- Please can you do a test search on Google, and report the URL of the page.
- Please can you check the Browser Console to see if there's any errors on there, especially to do with search.
To get to the Browser Console, you can go to the Menu -> More Tools -> Browser Console.
Here the answers:
- Roughly this been going on for about 2... 4 months
- Does it happen if you restart Firefox, or is it only when you update? --> only when I update.
- Do you ever notice your default engine being set to something other than DDG after restart? --> never noticed.
At next update, I expect I can report the rest.
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Comment 9•8 months ago
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There should be new releases out tomorrow.
In the meantime, do you happen to know if you installed any third party software around the time when this started?
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Reporter | |
Comment 10•8 months ago
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These are possible candidates which I hat installed (and some of them de-installed again):
DeepL App for Windows (then de-installed)
MixPad MIDI Editor
SilkyPix V.10 (then de-installed)
CCleaner (Update only)
HiSuite (for system image huawei tablet)
AutoHotkey V.2 (then re-installed; could not fix an issue of space-key losing focus for start-pause)
VLC (Update)
(the following video editing apps, but probably installed after the bug appeared)
Lightworks freeVersion
NCH VideoPad
Filmora Wondershare)
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Reporter | |
Comment 11•8 months ago
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Had update today and NOT got the issue this time.
The only explanation from my side: third party software meaanwhile de-installed (see above)?, or Add-on meanwhile de-activated.
One of it is "U-Block origin" which I sometimes have de-activate, and it was de-activated during this update.
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Comment 12•8 months ago
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Adrian, could you please find someone to check whether some of those third party applications are installing search engines or touching search settings (on install)? It may be wise to set a different default than Google, and check if it is reverted.
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Comment 13•8 months ago
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I've checked most of the listed apps in comment#10 and I couldn't find any correlation betwen them and affecting firefox search settings. Usually, when 3rd party apps try to mess up with the search settings, they try to do so by setting a different engine, not google (although a fair point would be that probably we'd be resettings to standard default engine from whatever_3rdparty_engine failed to be set as default).
I've also did several profiles with the above listed addons to see if there's any relationship with update/reset of the change engine, no luck reproducing.
The only way I can speculate this happening for non-default -> addons set engines is that somehow at update, the addon that sets addon_engine gets disabled - even if its happening temporarily due the update at startup, that would cause the engine to reset to its default setting. To simulate
it, in profile directory, rename the extensions folder, start/close firefox. then rename it back -> this shall cause all addons to be disabled.
The above result were done with W10 + 115.9.1esr, 115.10.0.esr, 115.11.0esr - mostly with simulated update from 115.9.1esr -> 115.10.0.esr, since reporter specified in comment#11 that did not reproduce with the latest update.
@s1.reich could you please tell us if u can recall:
- if after the update, the addon that set your default engine - e.g. ddg essentials or startpage.com were disabled?
- did you notice resetting for other engine than ddg-essentials or startpage.com
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Reporter | |
Comment 14•8 months ago
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I could not recall that an addon was disabled which was there to set my default search engine.
Neither I could observe reset of other addon.
I had set duckDuckGo as default search, after having installed the addon, simply using the setting in the firefox menu.
I did this long after I had priorly installed the addons "startpage.com" and "Ecosia.com", of which startpage was still active (forgotten to de-activate manually, but evidently over-ruled by the later setting); Ecosia is at present disabled but I can not recall If I did that by myself.
After the firefox Updates, "startpage" was still active, yet the search engine was set back to google. (repeatedly after about 4 past updates, but not the last one)
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Comment 15•8 months ago
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The severity field is not set for this bug.
:standard8, could you have a look please?
For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.
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Comment 16•8 months ago
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Unfortunately there's not quite enough information here to identify what was causing the issue, so I'm closing this as incomplete.
However, I have filed a couple of follow-ups to add more information to about:support so that in future, we'll hopefully be able to identify more clearly what has happened - bug 1897228 and bug 1897231
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Updated•8 months ago
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Reporter | |
Comment 17•7 months ago
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It happened today again, I can report more:
I discovered Google as standard engine already at the moment when the message appeared:
"Update available, download now?" (before I acutally installed the update!)
In the settings, the standard engine is set to google, as if I have selected it manually.
The addon DDG is still enabled, as before. (another addons, ecosia and startpage.com are disabled and I believe I had it like this before).
The URL of a test search is this:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&q=testsuche
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Comment 18•7 months ago
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So it looks like the list of engines is maintained, but we overwrite the default. The partner code looks correct for ESR.
Mark, any additional thoughts about this?
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Comment 19•7 months ago
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Unfortunately I don't have any other ideas for this. Assuming the rest of the settings are kept, my best guess is that it is third party software interfering, but until we have something like bug 1897231 it might be hard to confirm that.
I vaguely wonder if it is ESR 115 related, but we haven't really seen issues like this for a couple of years, and I'm pretty sure the ones that were in the Firefox software were fixed before then.
For now, we'll put this in the backlog, but realistically, I'm not sure we'll find out what's going on.
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Updated•7 months ago
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Reporter | |
Comment 20•2 months ago
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Again it happened (un-controlled change of standard search engine to Google, in settings)
This time, all Add-on's were disabled which could be relevant for search-engine.
On 25. October, standard search engine was still DuckDuckGo, since 28. October 2024 it was Google, according to History/Chronicle Library.
Present Firefox Version 115.17.0 ESR
I wonder if this can relate to the last update, which according to update-history-webpage was delivered on 29. October...
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Comment 21•2 months ago
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If you are willing we can try to find out at least the rough area where the problem lies.
Ignore your installed firefox or the profile you are currently using as your main one, we don't want to touch those so your data is still there after we finish debugging.
- Install 115.16.1esr, make sure that you are installing it in a new different location.
- Start it up with a new profile ("StartWithLastProfile=0"), you should get the profile manager and be able to create a new profile for it; if not, the fact the a new drive location for install will automatically trigger a new profile.
- Open about:config and set the browser.search.log to true
- Set the engine to non-google.
- Check for updates, you should get the option to update to the 115.17.0.
- Restart to apply the updates and check that your set engine remained the default engine.
- If the engine changed back to google, open browser console (Ctrl+Shift+J) and save the content into a text file to attach to this bug, might be relevant.
The above steps should have you each time at the upgrade path that presumably triggers your engine change, so basically you should repeat the above steps applying incrementally the configurations you have in your profile, starting with the profile location and so forth. You might also want to clean up the test installed firefoxes after each try.
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Comment 22•2 months ago
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(In reply to s1.reich from comment #20)
Again it happened (un-controlled change of standard search engine to Google, in settings)
This time, all Add-on's were disabled which could be relevant for search-engine.
On 25. October, standard search engine was still DuckDuckGo, since 28. October 2024 it was Google, according to History/Chronicle Library.
Present Firefox Version 115.17.0 ESR
I wonder if this can relate to the last update, which according to update-history-webpage was delivered on 29. October...
Actually, seems like I didn't read with enough attention comment 20. If after update, your addons were disabled and your DDG default search engine was set by the DDG privacy addon, the fact that the addon was dissabled will trigger the reset of the engine, since it was set by the addon - this is expected. It should reinstate the DDG engine back as a default if you enable back the DDG addon. - see comment 13
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Reporter | |
Comment 23•2 months ago
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I had manually selected DDG as search engine, after I had disabled the DDG-addon via the addon-menu.
Is my guess correct that in this case it's woth trying your test suggestion (with another installation) and then report?
But another doubt: According to this webseite (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/115.17.0/releasenotes/)
the update was delivered not before 19. Oct, but at 18. oct. the reset to google has already happened. Relevance?
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Comment 24•2 months ago
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(In reply to s1.reich from comment #23)
I had manually selected DDG as search engine, after I had disabled the DDG-addon via the addon-menu.
Is my guess correct that in this case it's woth trying your test suggestion (with another installation) and then report?
But another doubt: According to this webseite (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/115.17.0/releasenotes/)
the update was delivered not before 19. Oct, but at 18. oct. the reset to google has already happened. Relevance?
(Version 115.17.0, first offered to ESR channel users on October 29, 2024 - guessing you mean OCT 29/28 in your comment)
If thats correct, then the engine switch is not related to version update.
That just means that the STR become simpler, not requiring the version update. So, if time allows you, proceed with a different installation on a different location, different profile and incrementally start adding to the new clean profile the customizations you have in your profile. Step 6 is needed after each configuration you add.
Giving the fact that this debug endeavor involves creating and configuring a new profile, that means that you can probably can share said profile - that ofc if you manage to reach a state in which the engine was automatically changed (so try not to add any personal data to it). Not sure how usefull that would be, but wouldn't hurt archiving and sharing said profile if you manage to reproduce.
Thanks alot in advance for spending time with us on this trying to debug it.
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