New tab page handoff is enabled by default on Nightly. It is being enabled for all users with Proton. The browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.improvesearch.handoffToAwesomebar pref should be enabled by default. We should land this close to the patch that enables Proton by default.

I'll talk with Product about whether we want to just remove the pref and the code that supports using the searchbox on the New Tab Page, or if we want to keep them as safety valves in case handoff is not a success. If we do remove the code, we should also remove some Fluent properties.

As an update: we intent to enable proton by default on Apr 6th

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=0a5336017ee4da8c5ded4aa7c6a10242212cc255

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/7453288066f0

verified fix on windows10 64bit, ubuntu 20 and MacOs 10.15 using firefox nightly 89.0a1

handoff is enabled by default and proton is enabled by default

My browser just updated to 89 so this is the first time I've seen this behavior. Search here didn't find any of the various duplicate bug reports, so I also filed one. But my reason isn't present, so let me record it here:

Here is why this is a problem:

When I search, I want to be very certain that what I type is interpreted as a search query and not an URL. I search for URLs to find information about the site without opening the site. I do this especially if I am suspicious about the safety or reputation of the site. Now, with the text going into the location box, if I type an URL, this will open that page.

Workaround is to open a search site, and then enter the URL I want to do a search on there.

There is also the simpler issue of changing focus after the user has intentionally set focus to the search box.

This may not be a problem once people are untrained from the convenience of having a search box on the blank page, and go back to opening a search site first.

Note I used to work for Google, in crawl scheduling rather than query processing, but am very aware of "nav queries". The fact that people do this does not remove the need or desire to search for information about an URL.

I've set the relevant option to false, now that I know about it. If / when it goes away, I'll just be reminded every time I start to type in the search box that it's not safe. As others have commented, just take the search box out if it will no longer be used. That will be an even better reminder to just open the search site first.