Google Search Navigator

This is a simple browser extension that enhances the keyboard navigation in Google Search. Google used to provide an experimental keyboard navigation for search results, but it was often broken, and seems to have been removed as of 2017-07-31. In addition, I wanted to add new keyboard shortcuts and the existing ones to be more vim like (j/k for navigation).

Installation

NOTE: Due to temporary copyright issues (#59, #60) the extension was taken down on 2018-05-21. We expect it to be back on the store soon (pending a minor legal review by Google).

for Chrome: Install from the Chrome Web Store.
for Firefox: Install from the Add-ons for Firefox.
for Microsoft Edge: Install from the Microsoft Store.

Keybindings

Note: All shortcuts can be customized to your liking via options.

↓/j: Select next search result
↑/k: Select previous previous result
//Escape: Focus on input search box
Enter/Space: Navigate to selected result
Ctrl+Enter/⌘+Enter/Ctrl+Space: Open selected result in background tab
Ctrl+Shift+Enter/⌘+Shift+Enter/Ctrl+Shift+Space: Open selected result in new window/tab
←/h: Navigate to previous search result page
→/l: Navigate to next search result page
a/s: Navigate to All tab (= default search tab)
i: Navigate to images tab
v: Navigate to videos tab
m: Navigate to maps tab
n: Navigate to news tab
alt+s: Navigate to shopping tab
b: Navigate to books tab
alt+l: Navigate to flights tab
f: Navigate to financial tab
Ctrl+Shift+h: Filter results by past hour
Ctrl+Shift+d: Filter results by past 24 hours (day)
Ctrl+Shift+w: Filter results by past week
Ctrl+Shift+m: Filter results by past month
Ctrl+Shift+y: Filter results by past year
Ctrl+Shift+a: Turn off filter (show all results)
Ctrl+Shift+s: Toggle sort by date/relevance (only when filtering)

Development

We use yarn package manager for dependency management and gulp for build. Installing and building (deploying the web extension files) is as easy as:

yarn install && yarn build

The extension will be deployed directly to the src directory. You can load this directory as an unpacked extensions to your browser.

It would be better to deploy for example to build/deploy and add gulp-watch to update the deployed files automatically. However when done so the browser's (Chrome) auto-reload extension gets broken and one has to reload the extension manually on every change. Hence the src directory is used for the convenience.

Build

To deploy the production sources use:

yarn build --production

The automated build scripts are currently not implemented so manual process is required afterward.

TODO