Select Google or Startpage as default search engine for Firefox in Linux Mint


Back to the home page


Linux Mint has set Yahoo as default search engine in Firefox. That's not ideal: most people prefer Google or the privacy-protecting Startpage (which uses the Google search engine without invading your privacy).

Mint has made it rather difficult to change Yahoo into Google or Startpage, but below I've described how you can do that.

Note: when you use the search bar with the default Yahoo engine, Linux Mint earns some money when you click on ads in the search results. You might want to consider to contribute to the development of Linux Mint by donating to Linux Mint instead.

1. Firefox menu button (with the three horizontal dashes on it) - Preferences - tab Search

If you want to set Startpage, that's easy: Startpage is already listed in the One-Click Search Engines. Click it and you're almost done.

But when you want to set Google, you have to do a bit more. Down below, click on the blue line Find more search engines. See the screenshot below (click on it to enlarge it):



2. In the web page that then appears, scroll down to the section "commercial engines", at the bottom of the page. Click on the Google logo, in the middle of the row of commercial engines. See the screenshot below (click on it to enlarge it):



3. On the next page, click again on a link in order to add Google. See the screenshot below (click on it to enlarge it):



4. In the popup window, tick the box "Make this the current search engine" and confirm the selection of Google.

5. Finally, close Firefox and re-launch it. Then open its Preferences again, in order to check your default search engine: in some cases the selection of Google might not have persisted (which is a bug!).


To the content of this website applies a Creative Commons license.

Back to the home page

Disclaimer