2020177 - When opening firefox, if you click on the address bar before the homepage loads and you don't type anything, the homepage URL is appended to it when it eventually loads. Whatever you type after will have the URL in front of it.

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect, P3)

Description

[[:bola]]

Attachment: firefox_bug.mp4

Steps to reproduce:

1. Set the homepage to some website
2. Launch Firefox
3. Quickly click on the address bar before the homepage loads
4. Wait for the homepage to load, don't type anything
5. Notice that the URL is appended to the address bar

Actual results:

The homepage URL is appended to the address bar while that's in focus. This means that, once you start typing, your search/address will contain that URL in front of it.

Expected results:

The homepage URL should not be appended to the address bar when it's focused.

Comment 1

[[:bola]]

To clarify, the reason why I believe this is a bug and not an enhancement is because if, under the same scenario, you start typing right away, the URL is not appended to the address bar once the homepage loads. It instead respects what you're already written. So, I assume this is a defect/oversight.

Comment 2

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

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

Comment 3

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Bug 1645648 might help this.

Comment 4

[Daisuke Akatsuka (:daisuke)]

Attachment: Bug 2020177: Show loading URL when start up with homapage

When a navigation starts, the URL bar does not immediately reflect the
loading URL in some cases (such as startup or certain initial loads). As a
result, the URL bar remains in a state that appears editable but is not yet
synchronized with the ongoing navigation.

If the user begins editing the URL during this period, the browser later
treats the navigation as the authoritative source of truth and overwrites the
URL bar when the load completes, discarding the user's edits.

By displaying the loading URL early, the URL bar is brought into a consistent
state with the navigation from the beginning. This ensures that subsequent
user edits are recognized as intentional overrides, and therefore are not
replaced when the load finishes.

Comment 5

[Daisuke Akatsuka (:daisuke)]

Attachment: Bug 2020177: Show loading URL when start up with homapage

When a navigation starts, the URL bar does not immediately reflect the
loading URL in some cases (such as startup or certain initial loads). As a
result, the URL bar remains in a state that appears editable but is not yet
synchronized with the ongoing navigation.

If the user begins editing the URL during this period, the browser later
treats the navigation as the authoritative source of truth and overwrites the
URL bar when the load completes, discarding the user's edits.

By displaying the loading URL early, the URL bar is brought into a consistent
state with the navigation from the beginning. This ensures that subsequent
user edits are recognized as intentional overrides, and therefore are not
replaced when the load finishes.

Comment 6

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/firefox/commit/192265c24df3
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/df9241cee721
Show loading URL when start up with homapage r=geckoview-reviewers,tabbrowser-reviewers,urlbar-reviewers,core-sessionstore-reviewers,sfoster,dao,m_kato,farre

Comment 7

[Serban Stanca [:SerbanS]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/df9241cee721

Comment 8

[Ardelean Oana, Desktop Test Engineering [:oardelean]]

Reproducible on a 2026-04-26 Firefox Nightly build on Windows 10.

Verified as fixed on Firefox Nightly 153.0a1 and Firefox 152.0b1 on Windows 10, Ubuntu 22, macOS 15.