How to hide HTTPS URL scheme in Firefox title bar

Question

Right now Firefox shows the full URL in the title bar for visited sites. There is a browser.urlbar.trimURLs preference in about:config which hides the http:// prefix but not https://. Other browsers like Safari and Chrome hide the https:// prefix as well as www.. Is it possible to replicate this behavior in Firefox?

Answer 1

You can add support for this in Firefox by including the following in a firefox.cfg (or equivalent) AutoConfig file:

// -*- mode: javascript; -*- vim: set ft=javascript:
// See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customizing-firefox-using-autoconfig
"use strict";

(() => {
  if (Services.appinfo.inSafeMode) {
    return;
  }

  const addressPattern = new RegExp(
    "^(chrome:(?!//(global/content/commonDialog)\\.xhtml)|about:(?!blank))"
  );
  const hostnameStripPattern = new RegExp("^www\\.");

  Services.obs.addObserver(subject => {
    subject.addEventListener(
      "DOMContentLoaded",
      event => {
        const document = event.originalTarget;
        const window = document.defaultView;
        if (!addressPattern.test(window.location.href)) {
          return;
        }

        // Hide URL scheme once editing in URL bar is finished.
        const urlbarInput = document.getElementById("urlbar-input");
        const updateURLHandler = () => {
          if (!window.gURLBar.focused) {
            const untrimmedValue = urlbarInput.value;
            let url;
            try {
              url = new window.URL(untrimmedValue);
            } catch (error) {
              // Catch TypeError: URL constructor errors for invalid/partial URLs.
              if (error instanceof window.TypeError) {
                return;
              }
              throw error;
            }

            // Preserve existing behavior for built-in prefixes like "view-source:".
            if (url.protocol !== "https:" && url.protocol !== "http:") {
              return;
            }

            const suffix = url.pathname + url.search + url.hash;
            const displayValue =
              url.hostname.replace(hostnameStripPattern, "") +
                (suffix === "/" ? "" : suffix);

            if (displayValue !== urlbarInput.value) {
              window.gURLBar.value = displayValue;
              window.gURLBar._untrimmedValue = untrimmedValue;
            }
          }
        };

        urlbarInput?.addEventListener("SetURI", updateURLHandler);
        urlbarInput?.addEventListener("blur", updateURLHandler);
      },
      { once: true }
    );
  }, "chrome-document-global-created");
})();

See this answer for additional context and installation instructions.

This will recreate Chrome's behavior, where the https://[www.] prefix is removed but the suffix is retained unless it's only a /. To use Safari's behavior (which removes the suffix entirely and only shows the domain), change displayValue to url.hostname.replace(hostnameStripPattern, "").

You may also want to turn on the security.insecure_connection_text.enabled preference in about:config or user.js to show a "Not Secure" indicator in the URL bar for HTTP sites.

user_pref("security.insecure_connection_text.enabled", true);

There's an open issue for this on Bugzilla here.