Found in

• Beta v116.0b1

Affected versions

• Nightly v117.0a1
• Beta v116.0b1

Tested platforms

• Affected platforms: Ubuntu 22, Windows 10
• Unaffected platforms: -

Steps to reproduce

1. Have some searching history with a chosen one-off.
2. go to about:config and set browser.urlbar.update2.emptySearchBehavior set to 2
3. Select a One-off by clicking it with an empty input

Expected result

• Selected one-off is displayed in the address bar, with the search history expanded in a dropdown.

Actual result

• The search history is not displayed.

Regression range

• First bad: Tested autoland build: a13a18fa (verdict: b)
• Last good: Tested autoland build: 0e92eedf (verdict: g)
• Pushlog: https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/pushloghtml?fromchange=0e92eedf57c18669a86832037d5df5338690af75&tochange=804b1d8afb887937b4033bf8b586ef88000e0811
• Potentially regressed by: bug 1832060
• This was implemented in bug 1654862

:daleharvey, since you are the author of the regressor, bug 1832060, could you take a look?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Set release status flags based on info from the regressing bug 1832060

We should evaluate to remove the browser.urlbar.update2.emptySearchBehavior pref, especially with trending suggestions. It was likely a placeholder because we didn't have much better results to show for the empty string. Trending suggestions may be a better choice.
This requires some investigation to verify that the pref is indeed just a feature that didn't make the cut to release. We're not planning anything related to it at the moment.

This bug seems to happen again in the first beta of 118 (v118.0b1) as it reproduced in 117.0b1, while it does not reproduce in builds v117.0b2 through v117.0b9.

Yeh we can review whether we want to keep the emptySearchBehaviour pref, its not a maintained pref at the moment so the prefs not working together is ok, will talk to product to determine whether we want to maintain this pref or strip it out.

Marking this as fixed by bug 1885897. Pref was removed from Fx.

Verified as fixed on Firefox 128.0b1 and Firefox Nightly 129.0a1 on Windows 10, Ubuntu 22, macOS 14.
Confirming that browser.urlbar.update2.emptySearchBehavior pref has been removed.