/safari-bangsearch

DuckDuckGo !bang commands in Safari's address bar.

Primary LanguageHTML

Safari !Search Extension

Quickly switch search engines by using DuckDuckGo !bang commands in Safari's smart search field. For example, use "!w Rome" to search for Rome on Wikipedia, or "!a shoes" to search for shoes on Amazon. See the list of available !bangs at https://duckduckgo.com/bang

Download bangsearch.safariextz from the releases page and double-click on it to install.

How it works

Bangs are powered by DuckDuckGo. See the list of available !bangs at https://duckduckgo.com/bang

This extension redirects every search that starts with a ! to DuckDuckGo. For other searches, Safari's default search engine is used as normal.

Tip: to quickly perform a search in the current tab, press Command-L and start typing.

Why?

Safari's lack of search shortcuts in the address bar impairs productivity. While Chrome supports search keywords in the Omnibox and Firefox has the Omnibar extension, Safari has a feature called "Quick Website Search" which, unfortunately, is inefficient to use, as it requires you to type a website's full domain name before you can search it.

DuckDuckGo !bangs allow me to search much faster. While I could set Safari to always use DuckDuckGo, the truth is I still prefer Google for general searches. This extension allows me to use Google by default and switch to DuckDuckGo for site-specific searches.