How to edit search engines in Firefox Quantum?
In Ubuntu 16, FireFox 58, the configuration file is compressed into the .mozlz4
format:
~/.mozilla/firefox/<name>.default/search.json.mozlz4
You can decompress/compress this file via the python lz4 library:
- Decompress:
import lz4.block as lb infile = '/path/to/infile' outfile = '/path/to/outfile' inf = open(infile, 'rb') inf.read(8) data = lb.decompress(inf.read()) outf = open(outfile, 'wb') outf.write(data)
- Compress:
import lz4.block as lb infile = '/path/to/infile' outfile = '/path/to/outfile' inf = open(infile, 'rb') data = lb.compress(inf.read()) data = b'mozLz40\0' + data outf = open(outfile, 'wb') outf.write(data)
A quick search bookmark is a regular bookmark with a 'keyword' in the properties, so you can edit and configure your quick search engines via the bookmark configuration. Tested in FF Quantum 63.0.3. Simply
- Open Bookmark Sidebar via CTRL+B
- Filter for the bookmark you want to edit [
wikipe
] and right-click it - Edit the URL and keyword to your needs:
I don't think it's possible with Firefox Quantum anymore, although I remember doing the same many years ago by editing the XML file manually to adjust search settings (see here).
- I've tried to find a file containing search engine settings by looking for a phrase with one of my search engine's name recursively in Firefox profile directory, however none of the returned files referred to search engines:
grep -Ri 'some search engine name' ~/.mozilla/firefox/<name>.default/
Alternative solutions that allow the generation of a new custom search engine:
- Mycroft Project:
Intuitive and user-friendly, with great customization options - Ready2Search:
When creating a search engine with an icon, ensure the image file has an extension (.gif
,.jpeg
,.png
, etc.), else it will error with incorrect/unsupported file format.