1934305 - Address bar not showing zero prefix entries from history if top sites are disabled

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect, P3)

Description

[Zapper]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:133.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/133.0

Steps to reproduce:

"Remember History" is set under the P&S settings, but no history is saved as of v133.0 install yesterday. All I see on clicking the address bar is some searhes I made yesterday. The update performed like a clean install woth some settings transferred, but all history disappeared and most cookies removed. Using deaktop with Win11 home.

Actual results:

Click address bar even after using for 2 days and numerous sites visited, and nothing shows except 3 address bar searches I did yesterday.

Expected results:

Seen a list of recently visited sites with most often visited sites near ir at top (FB at top, Google mail site 2nd for last 6 months+)

Comment 1

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

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Bookmarks & History' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

"Remember History" is set under the P&S settings, but no history is saved as of v133.0 install yesterday.
The update performed like a clean install woth some settings transferred, but all history disappeared and most cookies removed.

It's not clear if you lost your previous data (history, cookies, etc.), or if Firefox is unable to store history.

If you log in to a website (e.g. Facebook), and restart the browser, are you still logged in? Does it show up in the history?

If you follow these instructions, do you see more than one profile?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-remove-switch-firefox-profiles#w_manage-profiles-when-firefox-is-open

Based on the description, this looks more like a support issue than a bug. Volunteers on the support forum can help: https://support.mozilla.org

Comment 3

[Zapper]

Never knew about the about:profile before, opened the other profile in a new window, went to various sites from my bookmark toolbar and the bookmark list, then clicked on the address bar and found 5 searches from before the latest install and a list of "trending on Google" - things which never appeared in this area prior to this upgrade. The searches were from before the new installation. There was no list of the sites I visited or any sites visited prior to this update. The "remember History" is still set in P&S. After some effort yesterday I was able to get rid of "trending on Google" (as if I cared about that!) and most of a line of search engines at the bottom.

Looks like most of the cookies are there, but sites where I automatically logon on (Disqus, YouTubeTV) no longer are logged in, I have to go through the process, in the case of YouTubeTV, I have 5 profiles and it was a chore yesterday to get logged in with the right profile.

Comment 4

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

It's quite hard to follow if you have solved the problem or not.

After the update, did you still have bookmarks and other customizations (e.g. extensions, themes? If not, for some reason Firefox created a new profile, which explains why you found 2 in about:profiles.

Is history working now?

Comment 5

[Zapper]

Has not been solved.

After the update, bookmarks were saved, most addons were there but disabled. History is still not working in either profile.

Comment 6

[Zapper]

Update - when I go to History in the menu bar (which I never do) I see every place I go, so it is saving history. Normally, I click on the address bar and see the most visited sites, which as I said before, FB is on top and a gmail site is second. If the most used addresses are no longer in the address bar, that was not noted in any docs I have seen. The History in the Menu bar appears to show all visits in chronological order, useless for going to the most used sites.

Comment 7

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

Please attach to the bug the raw content of your about:support:

• Type about:support in the address bar, press enter.
• Click Copy raw data to clipboard.
• Come back to this bug, click the Attach new file button above your first comment.
• Paste the content from your clipboard, add a description and hit Submit at the bottom.

Comment 8

[Zapper]

Attachment: about:support raw data file

Comment 9

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

It looks like you disabled all suggestions in the address bar? Please check your Settings (Search pane, address bar).

Comment 10

[Zapper]

I will send a photo if you really want it, but this is what is there:
Show search suggestions is checked.
Under there, Show search suggestions in address bar results is checked, the other 3 are not checked.
Show recent searches is checked

Under Address Bar - Firefox Suggest:
Choose the type of suggestions that appear in the address bar:
Browsing history is checked
No other boxes are checked in this area

Comment 11

[Francesco Lodolo [:flod]]

Trying to move to Firefox::Address Bar to see if anyone there can narrow down the issue.

Comment 12

[Zapper]

Not suggestions - Address bar not showing history.

Comment 13

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Since history appears in the menu, it looks like it is being stored, so this is some kind of selection bug in the Address Bar.
History is stored also based on counts extracted from the database.

In comment 0 I see you say it's when "clicking" the address bar, so I wonder if you're seeing the bug only in that case, or also when actually typing a few characters. Like if you type "am" or similar short strings, do you see history results then?

I think what happens here is that with the introduction of Trending Searches/Recent Searches there is always a provider with high priority running, that means the basic Places provider doesn't run because it has a lower priority. Before the change the TopSites provider was not running thus we were moving to lower priorities providers and Places was running a zero prefix search, and thus showing history.
Dale, do you think this is a valid theory?

Comment 14

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

We could, in theory, increase priority of the Places provider if TopSites are disabled, or split out a zeroPrefixPlaces provider. There may be UX questions here about what's expected outcome when TopSites are disabled.

Comment 15

[Zapper]

When I type a couple characters, the sites come up under "Firefox suggest". Normally, what I expect, after years of running Firefox, is clicking on the address bar and getting a list of well-used web sites. The keying of a few characters does make it easier than having to search through bookmarks or history, I just don't understand why a feature that was around for years suddenly quit working. Plus the fact that it basically performed a "clean install" then imported my bookmarks and some cookies, losing some things in the process (I had a 'new tab' icon that had transferred for years after developers had removed it, I even kept a copy of v25 install to get it back when I got a new system, but it no longer works). I had to re-initalize my addons as they were disabled. Due to a problem with Forecast Fox, all I had was weather from NYC, but I had a laptop that had not been used and was able to start it off the network and export the settings before the update had a chance to mess it up. I ma not happy with this update, but you may have figured that out. End of rant.

Comment 16

[Dale Harvey (:daleharvey)]

I cannot get my urlbar to show history when its the only available result, giving the above settings I just have an empty zero prefix state / urlbar not opened, but I guess there is some level of activity needed to elevate a frequently visited site to a higher state that is shown on zeroprefix.

However the logic about recent searches preventing lower priority providers showing up in zero prefix looks very much correct from the code https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/components/urlbar/UrlbarProvidersManager.sys.mjs#567

This wasnt a change made on purpose, its a bit of a edge case and a side effect of how the providers manage priority. Initially it seems a fix would be use the priority as a sort order instead of only showing from a single priority. There are also several discussions about improving what we do on zero prefix so not 100% what the best strategy is for this to go forward with.

Comment 17

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

This bug has been marked as a regression. Setting status flag for Nightly to affected.