Modify entries in browser url autocomplete bar

Question

Recently a website I often visit changed its domain name. As a result, all of my browser's URL autocomplete entries are incorrect. They point to example.com instead of example2.com.

I'm interested in fixing this on Firefox and Chrome.

I know I can delete entries like so: https://superuser.com/a/273280/70097, but is there a way to rename all the example.com entries to example2.com? I would rather preserve all my useful autocomplete entries without having to start from scratch.

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 08 '14 at 20:56

2

Main sources for URL autocomplete of Firefox Awesome Bar and Google Chrome address bar are both Sqlite databases, stored in user profile folders of browsers, e.g. in Windows XP respectively somewhere under (roughly)

"%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\"

and

"%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\AppData\Google\Chrome\User Data\"

Firefox database: file places.sqlite, table moz_places, field url

Google Chrome database: file Favicons, table favicons, field url

Data could be managed and edited by simple yet powerful tool DB Browser for SQLite...

answered Nov 08 '14 at 20:56

JosefZ

13,217

Thanks, I got it working in Firefox, however the Chrome solution doesn't seem to work. I still have the wrong entries in autocomplete – mark Nov 10 '14 at 20:51
Did you empty the Chrome cache? 2. I didn't say database Favicons is the only autocomplete source: do a search Chrome user profile for files containing wrong URLs

JosefZ

Nov 10 '14 at 21:28

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 10 '14 at 20:58

For Firefox on Mac:

install sqlite (brew install sqlite)
cd to Firefox profile: cd ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/<hash>.default-<ts> where <hash> and <ts> are the appropriate ones for your profile
sqlite3 places.sqlite
UPDATE urls SET url = replace(url, 'example.com', 'example2.com') WHERE url LIKE '%example.com%';

Caveat:

If you already have some example2.com history, then you will get a unique key constraint error when updating. Since I didn't care about the example2.com history, I deleted all those entries before running the above commands, via DELETE from urls where url like "%example2.com%";

Modify entries in browser url autocomplete bar

2 Answers2