How To Disable Firefox 3 Awesome Bar

With the release of Firefox 3, a new address bar was introduced which along with your URL history, also drops down URLs from you bookmarks.

This has proved handy for some people, but many dislike it and have their own opinions why it shouldn’t be like this. Here is a small about:config trick that will enable you to disable this awesomeness.

How To Disable Firefox 3 Awesome Bar

1. Open Firefox amd type about:config in the awesome address bar.

2. Press the Iâ€™ll be careful, I promise! button to assure Firefox that you will be careful.

3. In filter, type browser.urlbar.maxRichResults

4. Below filter, you will see browser.urlbar.maxRichResults and its value will be 12.

5. Change the value to 0 (zero).

That’s it. The awesome Firefox 3 toolbar is now disabled. But you will still see the auto-complete URLs that you have been to before.

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Author: Haris Nadeem
He is the founder of Sizzled Core and a Pakistani blogger who loves gadgets and exploring out the web!

3 Comments

Dave L

Thanks for the tip!!

Jul 15th, 2008
David Evan

Thanks. Someday Firefox will get this straight, when they permanently delete when you ask to delete a URL from the awesome bar. Until then I’ve disabled this following your instructions.

Jul 30th, 2008
bobcat

Setting browser.urlbar.maxRichResults to zero does cause the url bar to stop displaying all of them. But I notice that if I set it back to 12 or some other number, they’re still there. This preference apparently only controls what is displayed, not what is saved in a cache somewhere.

Tools -> Clear Private Data doesn’t clear them. That is a glaring privacy issue. Clear Private Data should have a checkbox to clear the url bar. I don’t find the feature objectionable except that there’s no provision for clearing it.

Nov 5th, 2008