【Help Needed】How to Disable Browsing History - Based Search Suggestions in Address Bar/New Tabs?

[sencuz]

May I ask how to turn off the search suggestions "based on browsing history" that appear when using the address bar or clicking on a new tab? It would be even better if I can specifically delete or block certain search suggestions/URLs. If that's not possible, turning off the entire feature is also acceptable.
Thank you.

[dosubot[bot]]

Hi @sencuz! I'm Dosu and I’m helping the desktop team.

Disabling browsing history-based suggestions in zen-browser/desktop is tricky due to technical limitations: even if you turn off "Show recent searches" and "Suggest from browsing history" in settings, the address bar often still shows suggestions, which are actually "shortcuts" and not direct history entries. These shortcuts are currently forced on for technical reasons and can't be fully disabled through the standard settings alone [source].

You can try these steps for the best available control:

• In about:preferences#search, disable all suggestion sources (browsing history, bookmarks, clipboard, open tabs, search engines, search suggestions, and recent searches). This helps, but shortcuts may still appear [source].
• In about:config, set browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.system.topsites and browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.feeds.system.topstories to false. This hides most suggestions, but it may break the "always floating" URL bar behavior [source].
• To revert the new tab behavior to standard Firefox (which stops the address bar from auto-expanding and showing suggestions), set zen.urlbar.replace-newtab to false in about:config [source].

To remove individual suggestions from the dropdown, highlight the suggestion and press Shift+Delete (there's no 'X' button for this) [source].

Selective blocking of specific URLs isn't currently supported. The above steps are the most effective ways to reduce or hide unwanted suggestions for now.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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