Search Bar bug in Safari Tab Groups

[Lexxie9952]

**Search Bar cursor intermittently jumps to address bar

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/8754ff7e-42ee-401e-aa67-957117db1128

** When opening a new tab within a tab group, then placing the cursor into the search bar to type in a search term, the cursor will randomly jump back to the address bar. Sometimes once, sometimes multiple times. The time delay before jumping is semi-random with some predictive consistencies.

This happened on 19.2.4 and now also in 20.0.0.

• The time it takes to jump from search bar to address bar: it seems to either be 1 second or 5 seconds. (Not 2 or 3 or 4 seconds--perhaps this will be helpful.)
• After clicking back into the search field, sometimes the jumping stops and you can type your search term without a problem.
• Other times (intermittently), while typing your search term, it will jump back into the address bar again.

Problems caused This intermittent random jumping to address bar often results in all or part of your search terms getting put into the address bar instead, often resulting in partially cut off search terms going to the browser's default search engine, instead of through the search defined within Bonjourr.

Use-cases effected The search bar for Bonjourr is useless and redundant if it's the same search engine as the browser default. Because then you can just use the address bar. However, Bonjourr users like to use the Bonjourr Search Bar for a different use case. It's. very good to set an alternate search engine from the browser default. For example, a private search on DuckDuckGo or an AI search from Perplexity. Unfortunately, this bug makes the Bonjourr Search Bar practically unusable for anyone using Safari tab groups. Tab-group browsing is becoming much more popular as all the Power Users now recommend it to increase productivity and efficiency. Bonjourr start page search is totally broken for this case.

To Reproduce

0. Create or enter a tab group.
1. Open a new tab that has a Search Bar.
2. Click to focus your cursor into the Search Bar.
3. Watch the cursor jump back up to address bar in either 1 seconds or 5 seconds.
4. You can start typing in search bar before, and see that you will be interrupted from typing your search.
5. The 5-second jumps are especially annoying because part of your typing goes into Bonjourr search bar then part of your typing goes into url address bar. INTERMITTENT / SOMETIMES: You can go back to Search Bar after an interrupting jump, and start typing again, and it will jump multiple times back to the url address bar. Other times, it only seems to happen once. I cannot figure out what conditions determine when you will get a single jump or when you will be getting multiple jumps. Either way, the randomness and intermittency of the different behaviours has rendered the Bonjourr search bar unusable on Safari.

Platform testing I have tested on two different computers:

1. Mac Mini M1 with Sonoma and Safari 17.5, with all other extensions turned off.
2. Macbook Pro M1 Pro with Sequoia and Safari 18, with all other extensions turned off. The same thing happens on both.

When the bug does not occur

1. When not inside a tab group.
2. In other browsers: Orion - it works, even inside alternative TAB GROUPS. No bug. Firefox and Brave: it also works, no bug.

Expected behavior The cursor should stay in the text input field of the Search Bar, and allow you to finish typing search terms.

Screenshots If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem.

Devices (please complete the following information):

• Mac Mini M1, Macbook Pro M1 Pro
• OS: macOS Sonoma, macOS Sequoia
• Browser: Safari - Versions [17.5, 18.0]

[victrme]

It seems to be out of our control 🤔

It doesn't happen when using https://online.bonjourr.fr, but only with the extension. I installed Infinity New Tab and the same issue happened.

My guess is that when using tab groups, Safari is ignoring user actions and keep trying to focus the address bar.

[Lexxie9952]

I will report it to Apple as a Safari bug.

In the meantime, the Safari users are paying customers. Probably they need a FAQ or other information page for how to set up https://online.bonjourr.fr/ temporarily as the start page, until the bug is resolved.

[victrme]

Safari users are not paying customers 😄

This is low priority right now, but we'll add a workaround in our documentation at some point.