Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi could all be losing the ability to remove the default search engine list. This means that upon installation, the default list of search engines cannot be tampered with.
Chromium Open Source Web Browser
According to the story by PCMag, any browser that is using the Chromium open source web browser as its base will be losing the ability to delete search engines from the default list that is automatically presented upon installation.
Whenever users install a brand new browser, the browser most typically offers a list of different search engines for users to choose from and set that particular search engine as the browser's default.
Users can No Longer Delete Any and All Search Engines
Previously, users could delete any and all of these search engines. According to an article by Ghacks, a recent change that came to the Chromium browser has made it so that users are unable to remove them.
That particular change impacts a number of popular browsers. These include Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Brave, and Vivaldi. As seen on Chromium.org, a proposal to completely remove, or at least make the process more difficult to delete, different search engines from the entire list was already made back in Oct. 2021.
Chromium Developers Decide to Make It Impossible to Remove Search Engines from List
The main reason for this is that it took two clicks in order to achieve, which is usually viewed as "irrecoverably destructive because, despite some users being knowledgeable enough to utilize the Add dialog in order to recreate a pre-populated entry, users won't be able to suggest, new tab page, or even other specialized URLs."
Despite having the choice of making it either just a tad bit more difficult or making it rather impossible, it seems like Chromium developers have decided to make it impossible at the end, as of writing.
In addition, others in the proposal thread have also pointed out that removing "deletion" would actually fix more problems compared to the number of problems that it would create.
Microsoft Firefox Unaffected by the Change to Chromium
For users, this simply means that the list can only get longer. It is, however, rather unlikely that users will ever visit it more than just once when they are setting up their new browser.
One particular popular browser, however, remains unaffected by the change. As of press time, Firefox users will not need to worry about the change. This is because Mozilla's own browser is not actually using Chromium and therefore is not directly impacted by the change.
Firefox users are still given two options, as of writing, which is to either delete search engines from the entire list or even just simply hide them from view. This makes it much easier for Firefox users since they can also easily switch later on should they want to.
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This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Urian B.
