How can I stop Firefox from autocompleting the wrong site in the location bar?

There are a few sites I have visited by mistake. These are not bookmarked, but despite repeated clearing of browser history, both from within Firefox, and using CCleaner, Firefox keeps suggesting these sites via autocomplete in the location bar. This happens on both OSX and Windows.

For example, one time, about 23 versions ago, I typed vim and then accidentally pressed ⌘-Enter instead of ⌘-Shift-Enter. The latter would have browsed to www.vim.org whereas I ended up on www.vim.com.

To this day, when I type vim in the location bar, I am offered vim.com, and not vim.org as the first choice even though I have cleared history many times, and vim.org is bookmarked:

How can I get Firefox to offer vim.org (which is bookmarked) instead of vim.com (which is not bookmarked) when I type vim in the location bar?

PS: Search suggestions in both the search bar and the location bar are disabled.

PPS: On my MacBook Pro, if I press Delete, or ⌘-Delete, or Shift-Delete, it clears vim.com from the location bar, but the same thing happens again the next time I type vim into the location bar.

PPPS: The magic of asking on SuperUser strikes. Doing the same thing I have done before, delete from auto-complete, clear history, and then clean using CCleaner, I now have what I want.

Sinan Ünür

Posted 2016-02-13T14:41:21.520

Reputation: 991

The marked "duplicate" Q is about text entered into a form field in a web page, it doesn't even mention the location bar / address bar. Just because they share the same basic answer doesn't really make them duplicates. – Xen2050 – 2016-02-14T04:25:18.910

It sounds like you solved it, but here is a similar question: http://superuser.com/questions/1014611/is-it-possible-to-get-old-suggestion-system-back-in-firefox-43-0 Maybe the answer will be useful to someone

– MC10 – 2016-02-22T17:08:31.427

Answers

As you're typing the v i ... in the location bar and the autocomplete menu pops up underneath, use the arrow keys to select/highlight the unwanted entry, then press the DEL key to remove it from the list.

Xen2050

Posted 2016-02-13T14:41:21.520

Reputation: 12 097

12The length of a reply does not have an impact on whether should be a comment or an answer. what does have an impact is whether it solves the problem. – Nzall – 2016-02-13T15:34:05.123

Wow, I can't believe I never thought of this either after years of being a firefox user. Totally worth an upvote! – Adam D. Ruppe – 2016-02-13T15:36:34.497

@NateKerkhofs True, but my first idea of "press del" would have been too short even for a comment ;-) – Xen2050 – 2016-02-13T16:47:11.460

I have to use shift del – user1717828 – 2016-02-13T19:27:22.677

I'm just going to assume my install of Firefox is corrupted in some way because when I do this it disappears from the list, but the next time I type it's still the first autocomplete entry. – Doug Kavendek – 2016-02-13T20:40:28.080

@DougKavendek That's what I thought, too, but when I cleared history one more time immediately after deleting the offending entry from the location bar, it worked! – Sinan Ünür – 2016-02-14T01:27:38.773

@DougKavendek & Sinan Ünür Firefox can sometimes get it's profile "frozen" or otherwise corrupted so it's always in the same state, new bookmarks or history doesn't stay after a restart, and old stuff can't be deleted (or much worse symptoms). Search the web for something similar to "firefox fix corrupted profile" for some info on how to save some data (generally involves creating a new working profile & copying over some data) and see Mozilla's support site https://support.mozilla.org/ specifically Firefox won't save settings or remember information

– Xen2050 – 2016-02-14T11:59:37.113

It should simply be a case of hovering your mouse over the item you want removed and hitting the DEL key (Note on Mac, you may need to use SHIFT + DEL or with an extended keyboard SHIFT + BACKSPACE.)

More information here.

Jonno

Posted 2016-02-13T14:41:21.520

Reputation: 18 756