Remove Firefox Location Bar Select-All Annoyance

I just discovered how to change a default Firefox setting that has been bothering me for ages.

The Problem

In Safari (the browser I use most often) single-clicking on the location bar does what most text input fields do: it places the cursor at the location in the text over which you positioned the mouse.

In Firefox, single-clicking the location bar highlights the URL. Without fail, I start typing an addition to the the existing URL only to find that I have erased the text I was hoping to start with.

Whether or not I should just suck it up and learn to touch-type and/or not be so lazy that I don’t want to type out an entire URL is beside the point. It’s just annoying.

The Solution

Thankfully, it’s actually a relatively easy and small change.

Open Firefox and type about:config into the location bar.
Search for the browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll setting and change it to false by double-clicking it.
That’s it! The change should take place immediately without even having to restart Firefox.

Firefox

Comments

Benevolent Anarchist on 18 Aug 2009 at 10:59 am

Just wanted to add my .02 on this. I also found this to be annoying, but what I didn't realize is that I only found it annoying maybe 30% of the time and so I switched it back on. If you use quick-searches often, having the select-all to false is an annoyance.