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Find feature Ctrl + F

  • 9 replies
  • 53 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by groucho43

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Before the recent update of Firefox, I was able to use the Find... (Ctrl + F) feature to find a certain phrase on all tabs that I had open, as the find bar would show up on all tabs even when I just opened it on one tab.

But now, opening the find bar on one tab will not open it on other tabs, therefore I have to keep pressing Ctrl + F on each and every tab, even though I'm searching for the same term on all of the tabs I have open. This has become quite the hassle. Is there a way to fix this? Without downgrading my firefox or installing an addon.

By the way, this happened after closing firefox for a little bit, then it updated. I did not do anything for this to happen, nor did I install anything.

Thank you.

Before the recent update of Firefox, I was able to use the Find... (Ctrl + F) feature to find a certain phrase on all tabs that I had open, as the find bar would show up on all tabs even when I just opened it on one tab. But now, opening the find bar on one tab will not open it on other tabs, therefore I have to keep pressing Ctrl + F on each and every tab, even though I'm searching for the same term on all of the tabs I have open. This has become quite the hassle. Is there a way to fix this? Without downgrading my firefox or installing an addon. By the way, this happened after closing firefox for a little bit, then it updated. I did not do anything for this to happen, nor did I install anything. Thank you.

Chosen solution

hello hunter214, this has been a change in firefox 25 - refer to the release notes at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/25.0/releasenotes/. you can just continue to search in a new tab by pressing F3.

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All Replies (9)

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Chosen Solution

hello hunter214, this has been a change in firefox 25 - refer to the release notes at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/25.0/releasenotes/. you can just continue to search in a new tab by pressing F3.

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Thanks Philipp! That certainly works out as I don't want to install any add ons. I did check out the release notes, but I didn't see the F3 option. Nevertheless, thanks for letting me know about it.

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You can still press the F3 key to search on other tabs to make the Find bar display with the previous search terms.

See also:

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same here i'm really upset with this damn new feature..... any way to change it to the old style? (yeah i already read the previous posts, but i want the old bar style)


im used to love firefox.. but before 4.5 i been hating it more and more.... but still is better than chrome and other browsers...

Modified by Dingel

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Same problem and it really pisses me off :(

I always have a lot of tabs open and when I was searching for something specific, I was just hitting F3, enter my keyword. The search bar would stay in front even if I switched tab and would keep the word I entered, that was very convinient.

Now that sucks! If i do the same as use to do, it won't work anymore !!! When I hit F3 and enter a word, if I switch tab the search bar will have disapear and I'll have to hit F3 again for each tabs, what a drag. Even worse, I have to enter again for each tabs the word I was looking as each time I hit F3, it brings me a blank searchbox :(

I've already stopped using Firefox on Android because they ditched the text reflow, will I have to do the same with Windows?

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To revert the Find Bar behavior, as well as to make lots of other changes to it, you could try this extension:

FindBar Tweak: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/findbar-tweak/

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You should keep the search term when you hit F3 on another tab.
If not then you may have an extension interfering.

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Thanks, I've installed the add on and things are a bit better.

But I think it sucks to have to rely on add ons to make things work with Firefox.

Things were working just fine, why are the developpers making things worse, they want us to use other browsers???

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Check to see whether your Ctrl key is stuck. If so, unplug your keyboard from your computer, clean it carefully, dry it up, then plug it back in again. This has happened to me twice and the solution was that easy.