Skip to main content


I visit gmail.com less than once a month for something.
I visit my personal mail server's webmail a lot.

Firefox *still* puts in "mail.google.com" as the autofill whenever I type mail into the address bar. *FIREFOX*

What is happening there?
This is the least surprising news about a Mozilla Foundation product favoring one of their major sponsors.
I mean, I guess I get it. But it's a really annoying place to put product placement
Product placement is always going to be annoying, there's no way around it, because it goes against individual choices.
Is it not because the search bar does prefix-first? Do you have some other URL that starts with mail that you access more?
I missed from your first toot that you use your self-hosted webmail a lot. Does that URL start 'mail'?
Yeah, so I have mail.obscuritus.ca and mail.google.com in my history.

I go to mail.obscuritus.ca *a lot*. Probably every time I open firefox.

But if I type "mail." it autocompletes "mail.google.com" for me, which is dumb
Hmm curious. That URL redirects to www for me. I'm guessing you have something stopping it doing that for you? Or perhaps you use a different port. I wonder if there's something at play there.
Yes, it does, it only resolves to the right spot inside my home
Interesting! Standard port? Does it do a redirect to something else or is that actually a URL that responds with something?

I wonder - could you have accessed it where it does a redirect, and Firefox has some bug that means its stored that fact mistakingly? (Firefox doesn't seem to suggest URLs that are just redirects).

I wonder what would happen if you cleared your autocomplete and started again. Though that would make this issue harder to test!
So I have a split horizon DNS, so mail.obscuritus.ca goes to an RFC1918 address inside my network, which is my mail server (externally, it hits my public IP, where my firewall sends HTTP ports to the web server, and mail ports to the mail server).

So I wonder if firefox is downplaying URLs that resolve to RFC1918s thinking about that...
I did manage to find where I think all the results get returned (https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/components/urlbar/UrlbarUtils.jsm#967) and there's a whole bunch of providers of results (https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/components/urlbar/UrlbarProvidersManager.jsm#35). My guess is _something_ somewhere in this is responsible. I find it hard to believe that it is Firefox promoting Gmail over other results in your history. That feels like knee-jerk conspiracy thinking. But proving it wrong requires understanding all of this code, sadly...
Do you happen to have Gmail bookmarked? I just spotted that in here as a factor.
I don't, though thinking about it my wife uses this computer on and off....
Now I'm MORE confused!

Gmail is in my Most Visited bookmarks but mail.obscuritus.ca is not. But convenient.email is. So it's not just "ony stuff from a major provider" or something.

Removing it from bookmarks didn't help.
This entry was edited (2 years ago)
I never see that. You probably have Search Suggestions on. Remember, the Address bar doubles as a search box.
What are you even talking about? How do you think this is a useful part of the conversation?

Do you respect me as a capable member of the tech community? Or do you just think I say things are annoying because I don't know what I'm doing? Or do you just not know who I am and am saying whatever thing pops into your head? (not that I am anyone important)
This entry was edited (2 years ago)
I have no idea who you are. Am I supossed to? Settle down dude, it was just a suggestion. I guess this is what I get for trying to help someone out
The problem is that your help wasn't even interesting. It was literally saying less than nothing.

You showed up in the conversation (fine), to tell me I might have had search suggestions on (an incorrect assumption, since I am talking about autocomplete not suggestions, but you can misread and that's fine), and then condescendingly tried to explain how web browsers have worked for the last 15 years (why? It's just annoying and seems calculated to disrespect).
The messages are arriving out of order and I only got all the stuff about DNS etc after I sent my comment.

Maybe it's simply alphabetical order. mail.g vs mail.o

Anyway, later
Honestly, if it's alphabetical order, that is a really bad choice of orders, and my initial comment needs to be doubled down on
It's just annoying and seems calculated to disrespect
Right, 'cause I have nothing better to do.

If you must know, I actually had search suggestions on my mind because of seeing a post these past days about a new feature "Firefox Suggest" in Firefox 93 (which made me go back to my settings to mkake sure it was all disabled).
Cool. That makes sense. The last clause was where you went from being helpful, to be disrespectful (in perception). It's not that I don't want to engage new people, it's more that I am exhausted and don't have time.

I am a little surprised you're being as combative about this because you seem very put out by a response with a tone you didn't like, despite the fact that it was responding to a tone problem. My goal with my initial response to you was to get you to step back and think about the wording of your response. Obviously it was combative, and probably too much so.

Search Suggestions is the kind of thing that would cause similar problems, though not this one, and is definitely something worth bringing into the conversation if you missed that nuance.
Jalada
there's a whole bunch of providers of results (https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/components/urlbar/UrlbarProvidersManager.jsm#35). My guess is something somewhere in this is responsible.
silverwizard
Gmail is in my Most Visited bookmarks but mail.obscuritus.ca is not. But convenient.email is. So it's not just "ony stuff from a major provider" or something.
This is the kind of stuff I was referring to. If you go to check the settings, the Firefox address bar can autocomplete from any of: History, Bookmarks, Open tabs, Shortcuts (the New tab tiles), and search suggestions from your default Search engine - and now from Firefox 93 onwards, the new "Firefox Suggest" thing which is similar to Search engine suggestions, but from Mozilla. You also have "Most visited sites" (which I guess comes from applying some algorithm to History, which is probably totally overengineered and "intelligent"), "Firefox Snippets", and "Sponsored shortcuts" (I think that last one is new too? I just saw it).

To sum up, I don't think there's any meaningful difference between any of those as far as the address bar is concerned, and how all of those get sorted and presented is anyone's guess. There is however a "Show search suggestions ahead of browsing history" toggle.

I don't know what settings you have set and everything keeps changing between releases, so it could be that something got introduced that wasn't there before. I know I try go to settings from time to time to check, and there's always new stuff - and it gets enabled by default, btw.
yeah, and that's exactly what the original post was mad about! Why does firefox insist on this sponsored black magic!
I assume, to try to keep the lights on?

From what I just checked, its desktop share is below Edge. Now that is bleak

This website uses cookies to recognize revisiting and logged in users. You accept the usage of these cookies by continue browsing this website.