Disable Domain Highlighting in Firefox

Aug 18, 2011 by Matt | Posted in Software & Scripts 8 Comments

If you just upgraded to Firefox 6, you probably noticed the new “domain highlighting” feature. The address bar now greys-out the protocol and path in the URL, leaving the domain highlighted in the darker black text. The theory is that it will help less-savvy users easily spot phony phishing domains.

I find it annoying, though. It looks a bit weird, and it makes the path less visible, which is something I work with on a regular basis. If you’re like me and want to turn off the feature, here’s an easy way to do it:

  1. Open a new tab and type about:config into the location bar
  2. Search for browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled in the filter field. (It searches as you type.)
  3. Double click on the browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled line to change the value from true to false.
  4. Close the tab and enjoy your lack of domain highlighting.
  • http://www.ryansammut.com Ryan Sammut

    Thanks, didn’t know that was possible :) URL Highlighting can be useful on long URLs

  • Tharkon

    Thanks a lot. I already looked for ‘domain’ ‘highlight’ and ‘address’ but not urlbar. I’ll keep that in mind for the future. Lol, the Gravitar I made for a different site but was not working there seems to work here.

  • http://hi.baidu.com/suruiqiang sanmao

    thanks
    that is exactly what I want

  • http://www.desua.net kundan Singh

    Thank you buddy i was looking for the link finally you have given me that thanks a lot and lot

  • Rafik Bari

    Is there anyway to do that using PHP / html so that anyone visit your webpage won’t see the domain name highlighted?

  • Bob

    Thanks so much for this. I hate this feature, it’s what made me completely abandon IE (as far as personal use). In IE you can’t turn it off. I do a lot of database work with php. When I’m developing or debugging a new app I find it helpful to have the entire url clearly visible. It drives me nuts when it’s not.

  • Emily

    Hi, I’ve tried this fix and am still having problems. Only with pinterest, for the last few weeks it been displaying only the header (logo) and none of the pins. This has happened before and was fixed by typing in https:// in front of the address but it’s not working this time. was hoping this would fix it….any other suggestions???

  • http://siveb.blogfa.com Ali Najafi

    Useful. Thanks a lot.