Opera Browser Not Saving Custom Default Search Engine Settings
 

I have encountered this with Opera 12.15 on both Slackware --Current and Debian Wheezy.

I set Startpage to be my search engine for the search window in the address bar and for the speed dial.

When I exit and restart Opera, the default is reset to Google. The problem is recurring regularly and consistently.

Has anyone else encountered this?

I'm using Opera 12.02 and I never have that problem. Have you used older Opera versions, and if so, did you have the same problem?

@frankbell: Same here.

Bug/"undocumented feature" was introduced in version 12.15 / build 1748 and only seems to happen on the start-page / speed-dial page.

Thankd, druuna.

I still have v. 12.14 on one computer and it behaves properly.

Same here. Frank, I am glad that you posted this, because I was beginning to get worried that I was the only one noticing this odd behaviour.

Anyway, openSUSE/Opera 12.15 is 'bad', and a recent previous version* was 'good'.

It seems to apply to both the little search box towards the top right and the search engine on the speed dial page (although, I am only really bothered about the drop-down search box, as I don't use the search engine function on the speed dial page). The behaviour is that you can change the 'default' but that makes absolutely no difference when you close and re-start Opera. It always 'defaults' to Google, no matter what you set as the 'default'.

I can't see any real explanation, other than a bug. Or, at least, I can't see any explanation in which this behaviour an advantage for the user.

* (Not sure if this was 12.14, or not as openSUSE do not officially take every update, unless there are security implications...with browsers there quite often are, so you do get most, but not all, versions. Anyway, back as far as 12.10 I'm pretty much certain that it was 'good', and probably a few minor versions beyond that, and by 12.15 it was certainly 'bad'.)

This is the first version on which I have noticed the issue, and I usually stay pretty current.

Like you, I rely heavily on the search window in the arrow bar, so I'm training myself to reset the search engines upon start up until this goes away. I like Opera enough that I shan't abandon it just over this.

This problem persists with Opera 12.16 Build 1860 x64 on PC-BSD 10.1 installed from packages and it's making me crazy. If anyone has found a workaround or fix I would be grateful for a post as I don't believe there will ever be another release of 12x from Opera. I don't recall seeing this problem in the PBI (Push Button Installer) version of Opera 12.16 for PC-BSD, so maybe the a fix was included when that was packaged.

I have not had this problem with Opera 12.16 for Linux, available here,

https://people.opera.com/ruario/snapshot/Opera/

Maybe it has something to do with the way Opera is being packaged for FreeBSD then. I was using the Opera 12.16 PBI (Push Button Installer format for PC-BSD) before they dropped PBI for pkgng apps exclusively, and don't recall the search bug problem in the PBI version.