Search engine settings not respected under certain conditions

[Brave-Matt]

Description

Under certain conditions, it seems that the history entries and/or Brave Search override current default search engine settings. The issue appears to be an edge case but is easily reproducible.

It looks like, even when search suggestions are disabled in the browser, for some reason, after performing the steps below the browser seems to automatically select the first search suggestion at the top of the drop-down, even though its not there. You can see this by observing the History icon appear on the left side of the address bar, the same way it does when you select an option from the search suggestions drop-down.

A video of the issue reproducing:
https://imgur.com/a/AmdlsCj

Steps to Reproduce

1. Enabled search suggestions in Settings --> Appearance
2. Set the default search engine to Brave search.
3. Search for a string that hasn't been searched for before, I used “a new search”
4. Go to search it again, this time clicking on the suggestion which was created for “a new search” and Brave search due to the first search in step 3
5. Reset default search engine to DuckDuckGo
6. Disable search suggestions in Settings --> Appearance
7. Searched for “a new search”

Actual result:

Query displays in Brave Search

Expected result:

Query should be run on the default search engine selected

Reproduces how often:

Always

Brave version (brave://version info)

v1.65.123

Version/Channel Information:

• Can you reproduce this issue with the current release? Y
• Can you reproduce this issue with the beta channel? Y
• Can you reproduce this issue with the nightly channel? Y

Other Additional Information:

• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Shields? No
• Does the issue resolve itself when disabling Brave Rewards? N/A
• Is the issue reproducible on the latest version of Chrome? No

Miscellaneous Information:

https://community.brave.com/t/brave-search-overriding-default-search-engine-for-some-previously-used-query-strings/546292/7

[rebron]

On restart, the other search engine does stick and it does get applied. Looks like the step where there's an issue during the session is turning off brave://settings/appearance autocomplete suggestions in the address bar with those exact steps.