It’s been a few years since Mozilla combined the Firefox search and URL bars into a single address bar. You can type a website or search term into the same bar, and Firefox will automatically figure out what it is you’re trying to do (and offer suggestions as you type).
Now Mozilla is rolling out a new version of Firefox with a retooled address bar that puts search front and center.
When you’re reading a website in Firefox 75, the address bar blends into the browser’s top toolbar. But when you open a new tab, you’ll see an oversized search bar like the one in the image above.
You can also click the address bar to make it inflate in size or jump to the search bar by hitting Ctrl+L (or command-L on a Mac). When you first click on the new search bar, you’ll also see a list of your top websites, helping you get to Liliputing (this is one of your tops, right?) with just two clicks.
The new address bar also has larger fonts, and when you start typing a search term, it will suggest popular search terms in bold to make things easier to find.
Mozilla says Firefox 75 also brings improved performance on Windows, a Flatpak installer for Linux users, and bug fixes, enterprise features, and new developer features.
I find this annoying, but you can revert it in about:config or adding the following to your user.js.
Set browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.topsites to false (to get rid of those annoying mainstream sites that are generally making their users into worse people).
(In fact you should probably just disable or clear anything with browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.)
Set browser.urlbar.suggest.searches to false
Set browser.search.widget.inNavBar to True to get the discrete search bar back.
I’m not sure how to keep the URL bar from swelling when clicked but that’s less annoying than the other stuff.
Addendum. To stop the url bar from swelling:
Set browser.urlbar.update1 to false.
You’ll have to restart firefox to see this change anything.