How to edit an address in toolbar without using "Show browser suggestions"?

I’m not sure if this is a new Chrome feature or a new Brave feature, but I couldn’t edit an address in the address bar if I disable the “Show browser suggestions” option. After tapping on the bar, it clears the entire text and only shows ‘Search or type URL.’ There’s also no scroll bar that usually shows previous history, etc.(This is because I turned off the above option.)

Because of this, I can’t do anything with the address bar since it requires me to remember every address manually.

How can I fix this? Is this a bug, or just a new feature that I can turn on or off?

Version info::
Brave 1.71.114 and Chromium 130.0.6723.58
Android 13;

This is annoying change in the latest version that I just came here to complain about and see if there is a setting I can disable. I DO NOT want to have to tap an extra edit button every time, the old way worked fine… You can see in my screenshots where to tap to edit your URL now.


It is broken for sure. Only way to not show a empty URL is turn this show browser suggestion back on. It’s a bug for sure. It has been kind off since last few version, but was able to highlight text URL and still copy, paste and edit. This new version totally broken it.

I agree that this can be annoying and I’m not personally a fan either. That said, the other side of this argument is for users who do want to be able to tap into the address bar and immediately start typing to enter a new address, as this would require the same additional tap/step for them.

Perhaps a middle ground would be to simply keep the URL displayed in the address bar, but highlight it so that users can still start typing right away to replace the current URL/text with what they want — but even then, this would still require an extra step for users such as yourselves as you would then need to perform a different additional tap/step to begin editing the address from the highlighted state.

Lastly, there could be the option to implement a “toggle” of some kind to enable/disable this option. However, that would be a lot of work (proportionally) for a very niche request and would also need to be maintained through every Chromium bump. Further, implementing an option/toggle for all such requests eventually leads to an extremely long, cluttered and convoluted Settings menu.

Regardless, I’ve opened the following issue on our Github for our developers to review:

Hope this helps.

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I don’t mind disappearing URL. The problem with this new edition is the edit, copy, share menu disappear as well when “Show browser suggestion” is turned off. Thus I can’t copy nor edit anything, no menu, can’t edit. This clearly is a bug. It just a big blank of nothing.
Please inform the developer of this bug please. I would like to have the browser suggestion off and still able to copy or edit URL. I don’t mind the extra click.

Oh I see — this is my bad, I completely misread what the actual issue was. I do see what you’re talking about and also think this is likely a bug. Will open a separate issue for this.

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Opened the issue here — thank you for clarifying:

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@Sunodoggy1112 @ShnikeJSB @evarbl we’ll have a fix for this out early next week. Thanks again for reporting.

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I thought this was how it used to work before this version, though? I used to tap in the address bar and it would be highlighted by default, and I could edit/copy/whatever the URL, or just start typing a search that would go to whatever search engine I have selected. Now I have only the option to search the search engine and have to select the edit button to do anything with the URL. Before it was all in one place with no extra taps, so this change makes no sense to me.

It was kinda off already previous few version; however, still able to highlight the URL and edit that way. This time totally broken.

I’m no professional programmer, so I don’t know if this is bad form. Scold me the appropriate amount if it is!

Kiwi has implemented a toggle for clearing the address bar on focus. I figured I’d mention it in case it could give some inspiration.

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Hi Steven

Did you guys work on it already? The most recent version released on Oct 23rd still did not fix the issue. The problem is still there. Please update on this.

Hi @Sunodoggy1112, we released a fix yesterday, it’s slowly rolling out. The release notes will be updated within the next few minutes https://brave.com/latest/.

Thank you!

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I thought this was how it worked in previous versions—I used to tap the address bar, and it would highlight by default, letting me edit, copy, or start typing a search that went to my selected search engine. Now, I can only search, and I have to select an edit button to interact with the URL. It used to be all in one place without extra taps, so this change doesn’t make sense to me.

@jadenwu39 as stated above, this issues has already been resolved with the latest browser update. Please update your browser as soon as possible.

Looks like it’s still the same in mine? Jadenwu seems to have almost copypasted my reply above while changing a few things. But yeah, it’s still this “new” extra taps edit interface in 1.71.123.

@ShnikeJSB the change you’re referring to is this one, not the issue listed above:

This are two separate issues.

I’m not entirely sure why the one linked above was closed as a duplicate of the other as they are two separate issues. I’ll have to look into it and come back when I have more information.

Devs have reopened this issue to discuss what actions they want to take.

Any updates? This is really annoying and already made me switch to duckduckgo on my phone sometimes. I would just like the url to be highlighted when tapping the url bar without removing the url.

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