How to remove the Google search box from the Firefox New Tab page
Mozilla Firefox 31, the latest version of the popular browser added a curiosity that got not just a few people a little bit annoyed. When opening up a new tab, the usual large thumbnail previews of past sites visited are shown, but now there is a Google search area above it which takes up screen real estate that could easily have been used to display more thumbnails.
Critics of this change to how Firefox uses its home page have had users scrambling to find a way to purge this seemingly hard-coded change from the web browser rather than going to the trouble of re-installing an earlier version just to get away from Google. Not everyone loves Google after all.
Because of this rush to find a solution, several ways have been discovered to completely remove the Google search area from the Firefox home page. You can take your pick which is the one you prefer to use on your version of Firefox; some fixes will work on one platform but not others.
The first solution is probably the best one
1. Go to your Firefox user profile folder, open the "Chrome" folder inside it (create a folder name Chrome if you don't already have one), and create a new file named userContent.css.
The Firefox user profile folder is stored in different locations depending on the version and platform. To locate where your version of Firefox stores it, select the menu, click help ? symbol and then Troubleshooting information. Under the Application Basics section, click Show Folder to reveal where your folder is located.
You can also type about:support in the address bar, which will open Troubleshooting information. Then click on Show Folder.
2. Having created the userContent.css file or if it already present, open it up in your favorite text editor, such as Notepad.
3. Now paste the batch of code below into the userContent.css file. Should the file already exist and already has some text inside, retain this but paste the code below at the very end of the file:
/* Disable Search box in New Tab page */
@-moz-document url(about:newtab)
{
#newtab-search-container, #newtab-search-logo { display:none !important; }
}
4. Once you have successfully pasted the code shown above, save the file and launch Mozilla Firefox a second time. You'll will now no longer see the Google Search box when opening a New Tab page.
Given that there is no value setup up in the about:config settings within Firefox to tweak to remove the Google search box, there are a couple of other ways to try to remove it.
The second solution is just a Firefox extension
The first is an extension that has been around for a while now and some users are having success using it for this issue. New Tab Tools is a free download which allows the user to customize the new tab page however they wish. The Google search automatically expunged when this extension is installed and active.
The final solution is a bit more technical
Stylish is a customization extension for Firefox that is capable of changing many aspects of the web browser. Script writers can post code to userstyles.org and these can be added to Stylish to create their own customizations.
To try this final solution, download and install Stylish and then download and install the Firefox Remove Search Field to run this customization that will remove the search bar from the New Tab page.
