Edit: I think what's new is the UI to add the new engine by typing the URL by hand. Previously engines needed to support OpenSearch to auto-add them (but you could easily add custom ones this way). However pretty much all of them do (it's no trouble, just some XHTML in the page). I don't know why you would do it by hand.
But I've always been able to do it. All I had to do was to simply visit my SearXNG instance once, then it would pick it up and put it in the list of search engines (OpenSearch API) and then I could just set it as default.
One thing I could not do was edit search engines (e.g. the URL they visit). I still can't do that in fact but maybe that's new?
Theres a panel where you fill out the name, search URL, suggestion URL, and search keyword yourself, under settings. You can add whatever you like, even if its not OpenSearch compatible, just like you already could on Chrome (for the better part of a decade, mind you)
If a dev is lazy and doesnt incorporate OpenSearch functionality you can homebrew it easily this way.
I personally use it quite often to restrict searches for engines that otherwise only support OpenSearch for their entire catalog.
For example, I have seperate `@ma` for manga and `@an` for anime via MAL, where by default (IIRC) they only have the combined "search everything" advertised through OpenSearch.
I also use it to search individual boards on foolfuuka archive sites, as the default OpenSearch advertisement suffers the same issue as MAL where it's only for searching every board on the site at once.
I'm sure I have even more examples on my browser, I actually use it all the time so I'm glad this is getting mainlined rather than nixed. I use Librewolf, so they already had this enabled by tweaking the corresponding about:config setting themselves.
And yes good point. I can also imagine using it for stuff that's not strictly a search engine as such.
For example, create a bookmark with keyword "youtube" and url "https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%s".
Then whenever you type "youtube something" in the address bar, it shows you the results directly.
The %s trick existed for so long, it even worked back in Internet Explorer.
But for me I've always been able to do it. All I had to do was to simply visit my SearXNG instance once, then it would pick it up (OpenSearch API) and then I could just set it as default.
In fact I remember setting up my new tablet a few months ago, and I didn't need to mess with about:config at all, it worked like I mentioned above. On firefox mobile they make it super hard editing about:config for some reason so I'm sure I didn't do that.
From the linked bug:
> Firefox now supports adding your own custom search engines. Just right-click a search field of a supported website and select Add Search Engine, or go to Settings > Search > Add (below the search shortcuts table) to manually enter a search URL.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-or-remove-search-en...
Mozilla documentation of the feature (updated 2024): https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-or-remove-search-en...
Edit: No, after reading it more deeply it seems to be some new UI to manually type the search URL instead of using OpenSearch for it.
No. Starting 2-3 years you had to go through about:config to do this, such as detailed at
https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/comments/qqkw5x/enabling...
and
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/custom-search-eng...
etc.
Heaven knows what they were thinking when they made this option only available by the user adding an undocumented preference!
I needed to do this on desktop linux a few months ago to use the AI-avoiding &udm=14 google tweak[0]
So the URL entry box wasn't really needed for the main purpose. It's nice to use the feature to use with things that aren't literally search engines though. Or to tweak the URL. I wonder, is the AI avoidance thing very effective? Not that I use Google directly but still.. (I use SearXNG as meta search)
Yes, it's just a way of going directly to google's "web" search instead of "all" so you don't get the AI summary and half a screen of assorted guff before the search results themselves. In that sense it's 100% effective.
But anyway it was nice to see that FF had added startengine to the choices for search engine.
Only my iPad gives me the unfiltered web, to discourage me from using it as a browsing device. It's very effective.
Onavo•1d ago
metalman•1d ago
Exactly where did all, ALL, the horking huge piles of money go?, which in the current political environment could be a question that not only get's asked, but answered