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I would like to know if there is a keyboard shortcut for switching the search engine in the search bar in Firefox. The current way to do is clicking on the down arrow beside the icon, but I am looking for a quick keyboard shortcut.

Checked the Firefox help, it just has this regarding the switching of search engines in search bar.

I need this, as I need to frequently switch between Google and the internal intranet search engine.

mavis
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mtk
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4 Answers4

16
  1. Click at the icon
  2. Select "Manage Search Engines…"
  3. Select the search engine you want to set a shortcut for
  4. Click on "Edit keyword…"
  5. Give a shortcut, e.g. "g" for Google

Now you can type into the address bar the chosen search shortcut followed by what you like to search. Example: g weather berne.

To switch to the address bar with the keyboard, use the shortcut Ctrl+L. You could also open a new tab (Ctrl+T), because it sets the focus to the address bar automatically.


By the way: this works for nearly all search fields on any website. Just right-click on a search field and select "Add a keyword for this search…" (don't know the actual English translation). Instead of adding this search to the search widget, Firefox saves it as a bookmark.

unor
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7

In newer versions of Firefox, the shortcut you are looking for is Alt + Up/Down.

5

There is a shortcut for exactly this task: from the search bar, press control + Down(Next)/Up(Previous).

Akronix
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  • 1
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4

You can use Ctrl+K or Ctrl+E to focus on the search bar and then use Ctrl+/ as per Akronix's answer.

Unor's method in conjunction with Ctrl+L is of course a lot faster for everyday use.

HopelessN00b
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Asotos
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