Firefox for Android: How to Change the Default Search Engine

The URL bar in most browsers doubles up as a search bar. This is a nice quality of life feature that can save you the time of having to first browse to a search engine. It can also help you get to the right place if you mistype a web address in a way that makes the browser thinks it’s a search query rather than a URL.

All browsers with this feature enable it by default, but to do so they have to set a default search engine. The thing is, not everyone likes using the same search engines. To make the feature work for all users, browsers allow you to change the default search engine if you prefer to use something else.

If you want to change the default search engine in Firefox on Android, you need to do so from the in-app settings. to be able to access them, you need to tap the triple-dot icon in the top-right corner of the app.

Next, in the drop-down box, tap the second to last option, “Settings”.

In the settings, tap “Search” to manage your search engine preferences.

The search engines you can choose between by default are Google Bing, Amazon.co.uk, DuckDuckGo, Qwant, Twitter, and Wikipedia.

To select one of these search engines, simply tap the one you want, then tap “Set as default” in the confirmation popup.

Tip: If you want to use a different search engine, you can add it to the list of search engines by long-pressing the search field you want to be used.