How to add a custom search engine to Firefox mobile

If you've opted to shrug off the trappings of either the Android or iOS default browsers, and adopt Firefox as your de facto standard, you might have found the open source browser a bit more flexible. Because of this, the Firefox browser (for Android or iOS) can serve as an outstanding drop-in replacement for either Chrome or Safari.

And with Firefox, you get a number of handy tricks you can pull off. One such trick is adding custom search engines. This feature allows you to include your favorite, search-enabled, web sites such that you can search them directly from the Firefox address bar. The process of adding and using custom search engines is actually quite easy, once you know how it's done.

That's where I come in. I'm going to demonstrate how to add a custom search engine to the mobile version of Firefox. I'll demonstrate on the Nightly version of the browser on Android (as the regular version still does not open on Android Q Beta 2). The process, however, is the same on the standard version or the Nightly version of Firefox.

With that said, let's add.

Adding the search engine

The first thing to do is to add the custom search engine. I'll demonstrate by adding the TechRepublic search engine. This process is actually quite simple. Here's how:

1. Open Firefox on your mobile device.
2. Go to the Techgo.in site.
3. Tap on the Search icon to open the search feature.
4. Long press the search bar and tap Add Search Engine

1. Give the search engine a name and tap OK

That's all there is to add the search engine.

Using the search engine

Now it's time to use that newly added search engine. This is where it gets a bit less than intuitive. On many browsers (that allow custom search engines), you'd use the search engine by typing the nickname (or name) of the search engine, followed by a space, and then the search string. So if you want to search TechRepublic for articles written by yours truly, you type something like:

techgo "vijay"

The above query would display the results in the Techgo.in site.

But how do you do this in the mobile version? It's simple. Here's how:

1. Open the Firefox app on your mobile device.
2. Type the string you want to search for in the address bar.
3. At the bottom of the screen, swipe to the right or left until you see the favicon for the Techgo site .
4. Tap the Techgo favicon.

Your results will then appear in the Firefox browser. That's all there is to adding a new search engine. It's a simple task that results in a much more efficient search experience (especially for sites you find yourself working with frequently).

Keep adding

Add as many search engines as needed, so to remove a step out of your daily searching needs. If you spend a good amount of time searching on your mobile device, you'll be glad you added these custom search engines to Firefox.