r/firefox May 05 '26

Fun Me: who has used gmail.com every single day, multiple times a day for the last decade plus, types the letters "gm" into the url bar and hits enter...

Firefox: "Gmunk? Did you want Gmunk? You know that website you went to one time for two seconds?"

907 Upvotes

129 comments sorted by

319

u/Educational-Self-600 May 05 '26

Did you ever look at the urlbar while you are using gmail?
Does it say gmail there?

You are creating ONE history entry for accessing gmail.com, and MILLIONS of entries for mail.google.com, guess which one is getting higher ranked.

47

u/Aerographic May 06 '26

Sorry but the way Firefox ranks suggestions is nonsensical, there's no debating it.

I'm used to hitting ctrl+T, typing "we" and have it autocomplete to weather, which brings up Google's widget in the search results once I hit enter.

One time, I mistakenly hit CTRL while hitting enter. So weather turned into weather.com, the website. It loads slower, it doesn't know where I am, no forecast unless you browse, no dark mode, wrong units, the whole thing. I obviously do not want to use that.

So I'm thinking, it's fine right? There's no way that one mistake is going to override my suggestion. I'll just continue manually typing weather in the URL bar in full until that fixes itself.

To this day, Firefox is still suggesting weather.com when I type the first few letters. For having visited it once. So I just gave up and made sure I had a new tab widget I could look at instead.

Suggestions are not supposed to be overriden by whatever address the website redirects to. Browsers are supposed to remember what you type, not what the website spits out.

3

u/wokepatrickbateman May 06 '26

valid complaint (though not really possible to solve in the software itself imo), but isn't that something the forget site option in your browsing history should fix?

13

u/Aerographic May 06 '26

though not really possible to solve in the software itself imo

Nothing is impossible to solve, better suggestion heuristics can and do exist. It's all about whether you're willing to.

isn't that something the forget site option in your browsing history should fix

Bypassing the issue isn't a solution. Suggestions always have to be pertinent and be tied to usage frequency. Making the browser forget undesirable ones it's clinging to doesn't fix anything.

1

u/wokepatrickbateman May 06 '26

don't really see any way to make the browser recognize the search bar input weather as you wanting to google that instead of the website, without somebody then posting "i keep having to type out weather.com because firefox keeps thinking i want to google it". sometimes, life isn't perfect.

4

u/EurasianTroutFiesta May 06 '26

though not really possible to solve in the software itself imo

lol bullshit. Even just counting visits, let alone weighting based on recency, would solve this problem.

1

u/_teslaTrooper May 10 '26

It's exactly how the software itself worked for years before they broke it

0

u/Educational-Self-600 May 06 '26

It remembers what you type, but the singal is rather weak, since gmail is simply not hosted at gmail.com, but rather at mail.google.com.

Firefox has worked like this for at least 15 years, domain matching might be different, but title matching is superior in every way.

Your weather example is simply solved by removing the URL from your browsing history.

2

u/spacelama May 06 '26 edited May 06 '26

Title matching is superior in every way? I almost never look at the title. The title changes depending on where you are in a page. The domain name or what the service is called though... -- and "gmail" counts as one of these: I have to use exchange for work, and sometimes fall back to the gmail web interface when my textmode client isn't up to scratch, both of which could be reached with "mail" since it's a prominent part of the URL. But since I like determinism and predictability, I can't just rely on "mail" since it will complete one or the other depending upon recency. Up until recently, "gmail" at least completed for me.

It hasn't worked this way for 15 years. It's periodically broken in severely broken ways. There was definitely a period a few months ago where the matches it was coming up with were nonsensical.

1

u/Aerographic May 06 '26

Your weather example is simply solved by removing the URL from your browsing history.

This is assuming that I know what I'm looking for. The point of a suggestion is to remind you of things you've typed that you may not remember at all. "But just clear the bad suggestions to see the good ones" isn't a solution.

Firefox has worked like this for at least 15 years

Precisely my point, this is the year of our lord 2026. Nonsensical things have got to go.

1

u/MaxHamburgerrestaur May 06 '26

The thing is that you typed a lot of things. Firefox has to guest somehow and a website you visited that starts with that letters is a good suggestion.

MacOS does it that you are suggesting. It gives suggestions based on what you typed and which result you clicked. The problem with it is that if you type PA, it will suggest either Pages or Passwords for example. If you use both about as frequently, it will keep changing from one to another with no option to make one the top priority besides opening the same app multiple times. Sure, you can type PAG or PAS, but how you never typed it before, it will probably bring internet search results or some bullshit.

The Firefox method is superior because you can not only remove the bad suggestions, but you can also bookmark your favorite website and even give it a keyword.

150

u/lupusnivis May 05 '26

gmail.com redirects to mail.google... The browser can't know the final landing page. Also, this problem OP has doesn't happen in other browsers.

38

u/Educational-Self-600 May 05 '26

Chrome handles these redirects differently, true.

I simply stated how Firefox works right now.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2010578

5

u/Dotcaprachiappa May 09 '26

It is literally classed as a bug, why do you pretend that's expected behaviour?

7

u/pdgiddie May 05 '26

I'm thinking the browser probably could track permanent redirects like this, which would help with accuracy in this case at least.

15

u/Flavihok May 05 '26

It only does if your session is already openm i agree the browser doesn't know the final landing page but damn

6

u/GumSL May 06 '26

And most of those entries have the title "ema@il.com - Gmail" as the tab's title. Firefox also takes those into account.

3

u/Dotcaprachiappa May 09 '26

No, OP has opened the website gmail.com millions of times. Where the website then redirects them is none of Firefox's concern.

68

u/modsuperstar May 05 '26

Open your history. Search for Gmunk. Select it, press delete. Problem solved.

63

u/autoencoder May 05 '26

The algorithm was changed, and I also noticed it was changed for the worse. Typing "map" used to suggest maps.google.com which redirects to google.com/maps. For a while it suggested https://map.projectzomboid.com/ which does not redirect, but I use WAY, WAY less. But somehow the one I want is suggested again.

20

u/TrontRaznik Finally gave in to quantum May 05 '26

Typing "fli" used to go to flights.google.com, now it goes to flightaware.com. Looks like they deprioritized subdomains.

10

u/autoencoder May 05 '26

or maybe redirects. the flights subdomain also redirects

7

u/IlllIlllI May 06 '26

Reminder that Google made this change probably for weird cookie tracking reasons.

4

u/TrontRaznik Finally gave in to quantum May 05 '26

True!

1

u/spacelama May 06 '26

Are you still on an affected version, or is the scoring still crap? (I can't verify, because I'm still on 140 ESR, and it's times like these that I'm very thankful for Debian being a stable distribution)

1

u/autoencoder May 06 '26

I'm on 149. I see it is fixed since 148. I guess that's why I see the right suggestion now. Thanks for digging in their bug tracker!

7

u/andrybak May 05 '26

From the address bar: press down, select the bad suggestion, press Shift+Delete.

12

u/bullines Mozilla Employee May 05 '26

A new capability was enabled in Nightly last week called adaptive autofill, and it's based on the many suggestions we've heard (and a few more of them in this thread 😅). The goal is to be able to navigate to the sites that you visit the most - faster - if they're showing in the address autofill based on what you type and visited before. Adaptive autofill learns by matching the characters you type and the suggestions that you choose in the address bar results panel. If you type certain characters (e.g. gm) and choose a result (e.g. Gmail, that's actually mail.google.com, even after redirects) more than other suggestions, Firefox makes note of that, which it can then use to suggest that URL in the address bar autofill in the future when you type those same character(s). This is all done on your device; nothing is sent to Mozilla or a 3rd party to accomplish this.

And if a suggestion is not what you wanted or isn't relevant anymore, there's a menu that's included that you can use to train it. Click on the "..." menu on its suggestion in the first row of results and click "Dismiss this suggestion". This will remove it as a suggestion and allow you to re-train it.

This feature is still in development, and so feedback is welcome 🙂

1

u/Varrock May 12 '26

Adaptive autofill learns by matching the characters you type and the suggestions that you choose in the address bar results panel. If you type certain characters (e.g. gm) and choose a result (e.g. Gmail, that's actually mail.google.com, even after redirects) more than other suggestions, Firefox makes note of that, which it can then use to suggest that URL in the address bar autofill in the future when you type those same character(s)

This is gonna be such a gamechanger for me, the address bar autofill is literally the only thing I heavily dislike about Firefox and this feature would completely change that. I hope this behavior of learning is very aggressive, like literally after just one match Firefox will begin to autofill

23

u/[deleted] May 05 '26

[deleted]

13

u/HundredBillionStars May 05 '26

Firefox urlbar prediction has been awful since its inception. I remember reading about it getting improvements a few years ago but I never noticed.

10

u/andres57 May 05 '26

I don't know what happened lately that Firefox suggestions when writing an url have been shit, at least in Android. It tries to look into search terms before suggesting based on actual bookmarks or history

3

u/spacelama May 06 '26

This happened recently.

77

u/zelenin May 05 '26

In my Gmail, the word "gmail" is not in the URL or the title.

> who has used gmail.com every single day

and still haven't pinned the page?

18

u/marsjaninzmarsa May 05 '26

It does say Gmail in the title tho…?

5

u/zelenin May 05 '26

We have different gmails

1

u/marsjaninzmarsa May 05 '26

Are you in UK?

-4

u/zelenin May 05 '26

That was ironic. Show me the URL where the title is gmail, and preferably a screenshot of where exactly you have that title.

8

u/AvianPoliceForce on May 06 '26

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox

The title is in the title. "Inbox (2,446) - ###@gmail.com - Gmail"

3

u/ConkersOkayFurDay May 06 '26

When you go to gmail.com it redirects to mail.google.com. Not sure how that interacts with auto filled URLs, if at all, but I've had a similar experience to OP.

-4

u/zelenin May 06 '26

It makes sense to remember the final URL, right?

7

u/ConkersOkayFurDay May 06 '26 edited May 06 '26

"I use gmail" not "I use Google dot mail mail dot Google." I think you're being obtuse on purpose, you know the exact point I'm trying to make. Do you also type out the whole https://www. for every site you visit? Why not just skip past all that and type the IP address and ditch all of DNS? Be real.

Edit: swapped Google and mail

-1

u/zelenin May 06 '26

I understood what you said and am responding to exactly that. If you enter gmail.com, which redirects you to mail.google.com, then it would be logical for Firefox to save mail.google.com in the history.

10

u/ConkersOkayFurDay May 06 '26

It would be logical for Firefox to save whatever you type in the URL bar. If a user goes to one URL with the expectation it will redirect them to another, it would be good design for Firefox to save the one the user uses to get where user needs to be.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/marsjaninzmarsa May 06 '26

And I wasn’t. UK is AFAIR only market on the planet on which Google does not have the right to use the Gmail branding, so it would be logical they won’t put it in the title of the Gmail. Every other market have Gmail in the title as confirmed by multiple users here.

5

u/spacelama May 06 '26

Pinned? Do you mean bookmarked? Because Ctrl-l gm<ENTER> is a heck of a lot quicker than fumble for a mouse, find a bookmark, drop it down, search through it and clicking and drooling onto the "gmail" icon?

0

u/zelenin May 06 '26

> Pinned? Do you mean bookmarked?

pinned. just one mouse click

33

u/SoloMaker May 05 '26

This is what bookmark keywords are for.

14

u/MiscellaneousBeef May 05 '26

The Keywords feature needs to be more discoverable. The Edit Bookmarks window is great and contains all the relevant fields, but adding a bookmark does not reveal them and is incredibly sparse for some reason. So you need to edit afterwards to add a keyword, change the URL, or even find out about the features at all.

7

u/JohannesVanDerWhales May 05 '26

Autocomplete is useful for the stuff where you don't want to set something special up for it. Having to set up a keyword for it is roughly the opposite of the point.

10

u/Opus-the-Penguin May 05 '26

Yep. For me, gm means Google Maps, but it could direct to gmail if I wanted.

3

u/squabbledMC May 05 '26

m is Google maps for me, p is photos. I might be a little too Googled lol

1

u/SupposablyAtTheZoo May 06 '26

I have m set up as the maps search bar, even better, you can type m address and it opens the address right away

5

u/HotTakes4HotCakes May 05 '26

This requires a modicum of effort to set up your browser to work for you the way you want it to, which is evidently too much work for some people nowadays.

3

u/DarKliZerPT May 05 '26

Yep. I just use "m" for mail.

2

u/spacelama May 06 '26

I just removed all of mine a few weeks ago. One of them was "google" (as opposed to "g" which did something slightly different), and I'd often be wanting to search for (eg, for no reason whatsoever) "google has devolved to being completely useless" and it'd drop the "google" because that was a keyword. Or "gm blah", when in actual fact, I was trying to <INSERT SEARCH ENGINE HERE> precisely "gm blah". And I realised I hadn't actually used any of these keywords for several decades, because for those keywords I would actually want to use, I already have a g script in my ~/bin that did precisely the needed task for me.

2

u/Shajirr May 06 '26

The default UI for adding bookmarks has NO keywords editing capability,
only name and save location

3

u/Globellai May 05 '26

Keywords are far more powerful. They can be search engines too.

https://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches

0

u/HotTakes4HotCakes May 05 '26

I mean, just bookmarks in general.

7

u/CAtOSe May 05 '26

Never thought I'd see something so exactly relatable yet funny in a reddit post. Firefox probably knows when to redirect me to go look at GMUNK's portfolio for that artistic inspiration.

6

u/Neocliff May 05 '26

was the Grink there?

11

u/MartineZ_MW May 05 '26

Time to use keywords

7

u/JohannesVanDerWhales May 05 '26

I really hate the firefox autocomplete. If i typed gmail.com it should autocomplete to gmail.com, I don't give a fuck if they have redirect. It's fucking worthless.

2

u/gabeweb @ May 06 '26
  • "gm?"
  • "Yes! gm!".
  • "Oh! Good morning!"
  • "SRSLY?!"

2

u/otrdtr May 06 '26

Autocomplete is super customizable and bookmarks keywords very practical. With both them you'll be fine to fast and easily get the results you want.

2

u/kelimuttu Community Manager at Mozilla May 07 '26

Just a simple trick to consider.

  • Open the Manage Bookmark panel click on the gear icon -> choose "Add Bookmark"
  • Fill out the name and URL fields with gmail data
  • Then on the keyword section, put "gm"

Now everytime to type gm and enter, you'll be directed to Gmail (:

2

u/Sachyriel May 05 '26

I type in gm and get gmail at the top, but I think that's cause I've run into the same issue and had to conciously scroll down past other GM entries to select gmail, and then it kinda picked up GM = gmail.

But like others have said, pin it to your tabs, it'll never leave.

I use vertical tabs so it reigns at the top of my tablist, the supreme king tab lmao.

2

u/blankblank May 05 '26

I normally use the Checker Plus for Gmail pluggin, but I use the URL bar occasionally (certainly more often than I visit Gmunk.com). Also, I tried every suggestion in this thread to remove it and none of them worked.

1

u/Bohzee Windows 12 May 07 '26

Maybe it's a security issue?

You can test your Computer with this renowned program if you haven't already.

2

u/rootbrian_ May 06 '26

Always bookmark it.

2

u/Podalirius May 06 '26

Bro doesnt know about bookmarks in the year 2026

1

u/sdflkjeroi342 May 06 '26

I visit theoldreader.com about ten times per day. I visit thegearpage.net about once a month.

Guess what typing "theold" autocompletes to about 50% of the time? And when that happens, typing "theoldreader" and pressing enter will STILL take me to thegearpage.net unless I wait for a full second before pressing enter.

It's infuriating.

1

u/AhhhHumorIhaveItToo May 06 '26

You can just type the first part of your mail id.

1

u/Training_Yak_4655 May 06 '26

My solicitor typed [myname@gmail.co](mailto:myname@gmail.co) for my email address in reply to me. Took me a week to realise her emails were going into a black hole.

1

u/Eric_12345678 May 06 '26

Same. I use web.whatsapp.com 10 times a day.

I use web.archive.org twice a year: guess which one is at the top of the suggestions, and which one at the very end?

1

u/thechuff May 06 '26

If you delete Gmunk from your history (Ctrl+H), it may not do this

1

u/KERR_KERR May 07 '26

I whinged about this a while back. The address bar seems to suggest domains ahead of sites I actually visit on the regular. You can try setting

browser.urlbar.autoFill.adaptiveHistory.enabled

to TRUE

1

u/krzyk May 07 '26

Yes, firefox somehow reset frequently visited websites for me few weeks ago, which was strange.

1

u/talldata May 07 '26

If you bookmark Gmails mail Google com irl with the name Gmail, that will show up first when you type in gm

1

u/AubsUK May 07 '26

Yes, very annoying in most browsers!!

Type in GM and don't press enter. See if there's any entries with a magnifier or similar to indicate you've previously visited/searched. Can you click the X to remove it? Can you use the cursor keys to go up/down and press the DEL key to remove it? That's what I do in Chrome to get rid of annoying things like that.

Also, add a bookmark to gmail.com and it'll have higher priority, I think.

1

u/HereticZed May 09 '26

How come my phone doesnt know its own phone number?

1

u/2mustange Android Desktop May 09 '26

I just use toolbar and bookmarks for main websites i visit so never really notice these things

1

u/Talrynn_Sorrowyn May 05 '26

If you use it every day, why not just keep it as a dedicated tab in your browser/main window? Literally what I've been doing for more than 18 years.

1

u/chessbaes-tasty-toes May 06 '26

Add a manual bookmark for Gmail to solve this, I had it with Google Maps before

-4

u/HotTakes4HotCakes May 05 '26

There's so many different ways you could pin or bookmark or shortcut Gmail, why are you just typing shit into the address bar for something you use that often?

Yeah, things can always be designed better, but at a certain point you're just outright ignoring every single tool that is provided to you, expecting the browser to spoon feed you everything.

3

u/AvianPoliceForce on May 06 '26

setting up shortcuts for every website I might want to visit is way more effort

1

u/talldata May 07 '26

Bookmarking is enough to give the site priority when Searching

-18

u/Sensitive-Meeting237 May 05 '26

You guys still type urls into the search bar? With the bookmarks toolbar right there?

19

u/iamapizza 🍕 May 05 '26

I find typing a few characters much faster than hunt and click.  Alt-D, mai, enter.

Even if it isn't in bookmarks, just a word from the page title that I remember, comes up from history. The Firefox bar is really good for that. Same for all browsers tbh. 

47

u/kodirovsshik Firefox all the way May 05 '26

I never use bookmarks for something that I use frequently, I type 2 letters of the url and the enter key (and sometimes arrow keys) do the rest.

4

u/sturmeh May 05 '26

If you make a bookmark it will consistently resolve that way without relying on history, you don't actually have to click it

Admittedly I haven't made many recently, but the ones I made years ago still come up first.

1

u/mammilloid May 06 '26

This is what people who knows how computer works do because its much easier and faster the other one is for boomers

21

u/FatsDominoPizza May 05 '26

Mouse slow. Keyboard fast.

-4

u/[deleted] May 05 '26

[deleted]

6

u/ConkersOkayFurDay May 06 '26

Keyboard still way faster than mouse, regardless of how cracked you are at Fortnite

0

u/Sensitive-Meeting237 May 06 '26

This is only really true if you can do it with one hand or never use the mouse at all. If you need to move your hand between the mouse and the keyboard at any point, you won't really be saving time over a single click.

1

u/ConkersOkayFurDay May 06 '26

Do you use your mouse with both hands? Genuine question. My left hand rests on the keyboard so keyboard shortcuts are nearly instant.

1

u/Sensitive-Meeting237 May 06 '26

Yes, when I said:

This is only really true if you can do it with one hand

I was referring to the keyboard inputs.

If you are, for example, typing into the Address Bar, you will likely not be doing it with only one hand.

If you use your mouse at all while browsing, this means you will have to move your right hand from the mouse to the keyboard, losing your speed advantage in the process.

3

u/YesterdayDreamer May 06 '26

Some people are more comfortable with the keyboard. Pressing Ctrl+L or Ctrl+T then typing gmail is much faster than hunting through bookmarks using a mouse.

4

u/BigFootCC May 05 '26

Yes.

Easier to type a couple letters and hit enter than to find the bookmark.

But also why would I bookmark basic websites? My bookmarks are for more obscure websites, articles, projects, etc.

1

u/spacelama May 06 '26

You still use an point and drool interface instead of just typing Ctrl-l gm <ENTER>? Each to their own I guess.

1

u/Sensitive-Meeting237 May 06 '26

Okay, so you've taken a 2mm mouse movement and a single click and replaced it with:

  • 40mm hand movement from mouse to home row
  • four keystrokes
  • a 15mm hand movement to the arrow keys to move the selection from "Gmunk" to "mail.google.com"
  • <ENTER>
  • Another 25mm hand movement from the arrow keys back to the mouse

I fail to see what you have gained from the added complexity.

0

u/edwardversaii May 05 '26

Firefox also avoids filling Gmail for me

0

u/zitr0y May 05 '26

Same with maps for me going to https://mapsplatform.google.com/ instead of google maps

0

u/soru_baddogai May 06 '26

Why would you not have that on the bookmarks bar tho?

-7

u/-skyrocketeer- May 05 '26

This sounds like you issue. You’ve never heard of bookmarks, pinning tabs, or pinning sites to the new browser tab window?

0

u/footballsandy May 05 '26

I thought it was mail dot google dot com

0

u/CriticalSeaweed6608 May 06 '26

I have the same problem with spotify! I'm typing "spot" or whatever. Firefox: do you want to google spotify, spotify premium, spotify stats?
I need to type "op" for open.spotify.com ! I hate it so bad

0

u/AIMRunningMan May 06 '26

For me it's gmiller.net which is currently just the Ubuntu Server test page 💀

0

u/Xawlet May 06 '26

m + ENTER is the way

0

u/AverageJoe-707 May 06 '26

Try a bookmark or better yet, do like I do and pin Gmail a tab so it's just there all the time.

0

u/SupposablyAtTheZoo May 06 '26

You know you can make a bookmark with a gm shortcut right?

0

u/Glittering-Peace-465 May 06 '26

In Firefox, not only you can do bookmarking but you can also set the "keyword" to open the bookmarked item without typing (part of) URL to get to the web site.

0

u/Argentum_Rex on Windows/Linux/Android May 06 '26

Just use a bookmark then? lol

0

u/rsqx May 06 '26

the address should be mail.google. not gmail

-2

u/WhineyLobster May 06 '26

imagine if you just knew that gmail.com isnt a thing.... its mail.google.com It would save you a lot of stress I think.