How to disable the Smart Location Bar

When you start typing in Firefox 3's Smart Location bar (Support.Mozilla.com), a dropdown list of pages from your history and bookmarks that match what you've typed will be shown. If you would rather not have Firefox display this list, follow the instructions in this article.

Remove bookmarks from the autocomplete list

If you would rather not have Firefox include bookmarks in the list list of page titles and web addresses, follow these instructions:

Use an extension

Install the Hide Univisted extenion.
Note: You may need to create an account and log into Addons.Mozilla.org in order to install the Hide Unvisited extension.

Edit userchrome.css

Create a file called userChrome.css in the Firefox profile folder's chrome sub-folder (e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\Your user name\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxx.yyy\chrome on Windows XP. See How to find your profile (Support.Mozilla.com).

Inside userChrome.css, put this code:

richlistitem[type="bookmark"]
{
  display: none !important;
}
Then close and restart Firefox.
Note: This will prevent bookmark results from __ever__ showing up in the autocomplete list, even if you visit them and they become part of history.

Change the matching behavior

  1. In the Location bar, enter about:config
  2. Search for the preference browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped.
  3. Double-click the browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped preference and make it true.
  4. Clear your Browsing History by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Delete.
Now Firefox will autocomplete what you've typed. It will still match partial URLs with this settings.

Make the autocomplete list look like previous versions of Firefox

If you would rather have Firefox use a text-only list of web addresses instead of a list of page titles and web addresses, install:

Note: The oldbar extension does not change the algorithm used to determine what pages are displayed in the autocomplete list. That is, it will still display results that match page titles and bookmarks. The Hide Univisted extension described above will remove bookmarks from the list.

Completely disable the autocomplete list (Windows and Linux)

If you would rather not have Firefox display autocomplete results at all. This method does not work on Mac.

  1. In the Location bar, enter about:config
  2. Search for the preference browser.urlbar.maxRichResults.
  3. Double-click the browser.urlbar.maxRichResults preference and enter a value of -1.
  4. Close Firefox.
  5. Start Firefox again.

Now when you type in the Location bar, no list of results will be shown.