How to Reset Search Settings of Firefox Browser

Sometimes when you install a software downloaded from the internet, it ends up installing a toolbar or add-on in your Firefox browser – resulting in hijacked search results. Some toolbar software are so badly programmed that even after you remove them from Firefox, they leave behind the changed settings and your search results in Firefox are still affected. You can follow the following steps to rest your search settings in Firefox:

1. Open Mozilla Firefox browser. In the location bar type about:config and press Enter.
2. Firefox will show a warning. Click on the button labeled I’ll be careful I promise! to proceed.

   

3. In the Filter field type browser.search.defaultenginename. You would see a preference named browser.search.defaultenginename as shown.

   

4. Right-click on browser.search.defaultenginename and select Reset from the menu to reset this value to Firefox default.
5. Similarly, follow the steps 3 and 4 for the following preferences too and reset their values to the default ones.
   

   S No.	Preference Name	Description
   1.	browser.search.defaultenginename	Changes the search engine
   2.	browser.startup.homepage	Changes the Home Page
   3.	keyword.URL	Search URL prefix (not used in Firefox version 23+)
   4.	browser.newtab.url	New tab page URL (appears when you open a new tab)

6. After resetting the values, restart the browser for the changes to take effect.

If even after making the above changes, you still see the remnants of the search toolbar in the Firefox web browser, then its time to reset your Firefox browser and create a new profile. This article – how to reset Mozilla Firefox to fix common problems shows you steps to reset your Firefox web browser and get rid of all the annoying toolbars.