Firefox Search: Keyword Bookmarks and Address Bar Power Features

Firefox's address bar search is more powerful than most people realize. Here's how to get more out of it.

Multiple Search Engines

Firefox lets you set a default search engine and add alternatives you can invoke with keywords.

Default search engine: Settings → Search → Default Search Engine.

Available engines: Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Amazon, eBay, Wikipedia, and any site you add manually.

Keyword Searches (One-Click Searches from the Address Bar)

This is the most underused Firefox feature for power users.

Method 1: Right-Click Any Search Box

1. Go to any website with a search box (GitHub, MDN, Stack Overflow, YouTube, etc.)
2. Right-click inside the search box
3. Select "Add a Keyword for this Search…"
4. Set a short keyword (e.g., gh for GitHub)

Now: type gh playwright in the address bar and press Enter → Firefox searches GitHub for "playwright".

Useful keywords to set up:

• g → Google
• ddg → DuckDuckGo
• yt → YouTube
• gh → GitHub
• mdn → MDN Web Docs
• so → Stack Overflow
• npm → npmjs.com
• pypi → PyPI
• wiki → Wikipedia
• crates → crates.io (Rust)

Method 2: Bookmark + Keyword

Add any search URL as a bookmark with a keyword:

1. Press Ctrl+D to bookmark a page
2. Edit the bookmark to add a keyword
3. For search, use the search URL format: https://example.com/search?q=%s (the %s is replaced with your query)

Example: bookmark https://pkg.go.dev/search?q=%s with keyword gopkg → type gopkg context to search Go packages.

OpenSearch Auto-Discovery

When you visit a site that exposes an OpenSearch descriptor (most search boxes do), Firefox detects it automatically. After visiting a site with a search box, go to Settings → Search → Other search engines — the site appears there automatically, ready to use with or without a keyword.

Address Bar Search Behavior Settings

Settings → Search controls how the address bar behaves:

Search with Suggestions — Whether Firefox shows search suggestions from the default engine as you type. Disable if you don't want keystroke data sent to the search provider.

Show search suggestions in address bar results — Separate toggle for address bar vs. search page.

Show search shortcuts — Shows other search engines you can switch to (one-click engine switching in the dropdown).

Clipboard suggestions — If you've copied a URL, Firefox can suggest searching for it. Toggle on/off.

Searching Within a Site from the Address Bar

Type site:example.com your query directly in the address bar → Firefox passes this to your default search engine as a site-restricted search. Works with any search engine that supports site:.

Find Bar (Within Page Search)

Press Ctrl+F to search within the current page. Firefox's find bar has a few options most people don't know about:

• "Match Case" button — case-sensitive search
• "Match Whole Word" button — whole-word-only matching
• "Highlight All" button — highlights every match on the page
• Find in All Tabs (via the menu) — search across all open tabs

Search from Context Menu

Select any text on a page → right-click → "Search [Engine] for [selected text]."

The engine used for this is your default search engine, but you can also switch to others via the submenu if you've set up keywords.

address bar Shortcuts Summary

Input	Result
keyword query	Runs query on bookmark keyword
@engine query	Searches specific engine (by name)
? query	Force search (skips URL guessing)
* query	Searches only bookmarks
^ query	Searches only history
% query	Searches only open tabs
# query	Searches only page titles

The *, ^, %, # prefixes are particularly useful — type % github to switch to an already-open GitHub tab without scrolling through the tab list.

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Keyword bookmarks are worth 10 minutes of setup. After a week of using gh react hooks, mdn fetch, and npm lodash directly from the address bar, you won't want to go back to opening the site manually.