When Google released Chrome, its own in-house web browser in 2008, everyone noticed a big new thing for a browser, which is, a combined address bar and search bar. That means, chrome users could able to type web addresses and search as well in one unified toolbar. Chrome named it “Omnibox”. For years, noticeably, only Chrome had this feature. Many users like me got this feature useful and handy. Omnibox was one of the features that made Chrome very simple to use.

Later, in recent years some popular browsers like Opera, Internet Explorer felt the necessity of integrating location bar and search bar into one. And you can see combined search bar and address bar in latest versions of Opera and IE.

Advantages of Combined Address and Search Bar

• Your browser toolbar looks clean and simple.
• You leave more space on toolbar.
• You enter addresses and search the web from one place, thus no need to go here and there for different jobs.
• You get search suggestions as well while typing a web address.
• A unified web access bar makes the browser more user-friendly.

Though, on Firefox, you can still search from Firefox address bar in recent versions, it still has a particular search box. And the search functionality in Firefox location bar works only in some circumstances. So it would be great to combine Firefox address bar and search bar into a unified toolbar.

There are many Firefox add-ons to combine address and search box. Omnibar, Foobar and InstantFox are the popular ones. Here, we will use the most popular add-on of its kind, Omnibar.

How to Combine Firefox Address and Search Bar into One using Omnibar

1. From Firefox, go to Omnibar add-on page. Install it and restart the Firefox.
2. On next restart, you will find your address box and search box unified into one.

That’s it! Search action will happen as long as you don’t enter a valid web address. You can simply change the search engine and enable or disable search suggestions by clicking on the search engine icon from the right side of the omniber.

1. To configure Omnibar, go to Firefox Add-ons page by clicking Menu button and then Add-ons.

2. Click on Options under Omnibar add-on. It will open Omnibar options.

Here you can configure the Omnibar on how many maximum number of suggestions, history and visible results are shown.

Note: If you still want the original search box, remove the tick mark from ‘Hide search box’.

So with Omnibar add-on, you can get Chrome like Omnibox on Firefox. You can also try Foobar and InstantFox as they bring same Omnibar like functionality to Firefox. If you can search within Firefox address bar, why do you need an extra search box?

Verdict

Combining address and search box on Firefox should bring more usability and save space. It’s must have for those who switched from Firefox to Chrome only for unified Omnibox.

Author: Jaber Al Nahian

Jaber is a Programmer and Tech Enthusiast Geek from Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is the founder and Chief-Editor of TechGainer. While he is away from his keyboard, either he's fishing or messing with wildlife. In case, you can contact him at rijans[at]techgainer[dot]com.

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