@leocg Have the devs ever given a clear reason for this? Isn't this forum the intended place for people to give feedback and suggest changes/features?

There are dozens of threads requesting this, going back more than a decade, usually closed without any consideration or comment. Other browsers allow full customizability for default search engines, and "type a prefix every time you search" is so inconvenient that I'm considering uninstalling OGX and moving to something else.