googler

googler is a power tool to Google (Web & News) and Google Site Search from the command-line. It shows the title, URL and abstract for each result, which can be directly opened in a browser from the terminal. Results are fetched in pages (with page navigation). Supports sequential searches in a single googler instance.

googler isn't affiliated to Google in any way.

Got some suggestions? with us.

Find googler useful? If you would like to donate, visit the page.

Features
Installation
Usage
Examples
Troubleshooting
Developers
Notes

Features

Google Search, Google Site Search, Google News
Fast and clean (no ads, stray URLs or clutter), custom color
Open result URLs (or the actual search) in browser
Navigate search result pages from omniprompt
Fetch n results in a go, start at the n^th result
Disable automatic spelling correction and search exact keywords
Limit search by duration, country/domain specific search (default: .com), language preference
Supports Google search keywords like filetype:mime, site:somesite.com etc.
Optionally open the first result directly in browser (as in I'm Feeling Lucky)
Non-stop searches: fire new searches at omniprompt without exiting
HTTPS proxy support
Man page with examples, shell completion scripts for Bash, Zsh and Fish
Minimal dependencies

Installation

googler requires Python 3.3 or later. Only the latest patch release of each minor version is supported.

Installing from this repository

To download this repository, you may either clone via git:

$ git clone https://github.com/jarun/googler/

or download a source code archive: the latest stable release or the development version.

Installing to default or custom location

To install to the default location (/usr/local):

$ sudo make install

To remove googler and associated docs, run

$ sudo make uninstall

PREFIX is supported, in case you want to install to a different location.

Running as a standalone utility

googler is a standalone executable. From the containing directory:

$ ./googler

Shell completion

Shell completion scripts for Bash, Fish and Zsh can be found in respective subdirectories of auto-completion/. Please refer to your shell's manual for installation instructions.

Installing with a package manager

googler is also available on

AUR for Arch Linux;
Fossies;
Homebrew for OS X, or its Linux fork, Linuxbrew;
Debian Sid.

Debian package

If you are on a Debian (including Ubuntu) based system visit the latest stable release and download the.debpackage. To install, run:

$ sudo dpkg -i googler-$version-all.deb

Please substitute $version with the appropriate package version.

Usage

Cmdline options

usage: googler [-h] [-s N] [-n N] [-N] [-c TLD] [-l LANG] [-x] [-C]
               [--colors COLORS] [-j] [-t dN] [-w SITE] [-p PROXY] [--json] [--noua]
               [--np] [-d]
               [KEYWORD [KEYWORD ...]]

Google from the command-line.

positional arguments:
  KEYWORD               search keywords

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -s N, --start N       start at the Nth result
  -n N, --count N       show N results (default 10)
  -N, --news            show results from news section
  -c TLD, --tld TLD     country-specific search with top-level domain .TLD,
                        e.g., 'in' for India. Ref:
                        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_domains
  -l LANG, --lang LANG  display in language LANG
  -x, --exact           disable automatic spelling correction
  -C, --nocolor         disable color output
  --colors COLORS       set output colors (see man page for details)
  -j, --first, --lucky  open the first result in a web browser; implies
                        --noprompt
  -t dN, --time dN      time limit search [h5 (5 hrs), d5 (5 days), w5 (5
                        weeks), m5 (5 months), y5 (5 years)]
  -w SITE, --site SITE  search a site using Google
  -p PROXY, --proxy PROXY
                        tunnel traffic through an HTTPS proxy (HOST:PORT)
  --noua                disable user agent
  --json                output in JSON format; implies --noprompt
  --np, --noprompt      perform search and exit, do not prompt for further
                        interactions
  -d, --debug           enable debugging

omniprompt keys:
  n, p                  fetch the next or previous set of search results
  index                 open the result corresponding to index in browser
  f                     jump to the first page
  o                     open the current search in browser
  g keywords            initiate a new Google search for 'keywords' with original options
  q, ^D, double Enter   exit googler
  ?                     show omniprompt help
  *                     any other string initiates a new search with original options

Configuration file

googler doesn't have any! This is to retain the speed of the utility and avoid OS-specific differences. Users can enjoy the advantages of config files using aliases (with the exception of the color scheme, which can be additionally customized through an environment variable; see Colors). There's no need to memorize options.

For example, the following alias for bash/zsh/ksh/etc.

alias g='googler -n 7 -c ru -l ru'

fetches 7 results from the Google Russia server, with preference towards results in Russian.

The alias serves both the purposes of using config files:

Persistent settings: when the user invokes g, it expands to the preferred settings.
Override settings: thanks to the way Python argparse works, googler is written so that the settings in alias are completely overridden by any options passed from cli. So when the same user runs g -l de -c de -n 12 hello world, 12 results are returned from the Google Germany server, with preference towards results in German.

Colors

googler allows you to customize the color scheme via a six-letter string, reminiscent of BSD LSCOLORS. The six letters represent the colors of

indices
titles
URLs
metadata/publishing info (Google News only)
abstracts
prompts

respectively. The six-letter string is passed in either as the argument to the --colors option, or as the value of the environment variable GOOGLER_COLORS.

We offer the following colors/styles:

Letter	Color/Style
a	black
b	red
c	green
d	yellow
e	blue
f	magenta
g	cyan
h	white
i	bright black
j	bright red
k	bright green
l	bright yellow
m	bright blue
n	bright magenta
o	bright cyan
p	bright white
A-H	bold version of the lowercase-letter color
I-P	bold version of the lowercase-letter bright color
x	normal
X	bold
y	reverse video
Y	bold reverse video

The default colors string is GKlgxy, which stands for

bold bright cyan indices
bold bright green titles
bright yellow URLs
cyan metadata/publishing info
normal abstracts
reverse video prompts

Note that

Bright colors (implemented as \x1b[90m–\x1b[97m) may not be available in all color-capable terminal emulators;
Some terminal emulators draw bold text in bright colors instead;
Some terminal emulators only distinguish between bold and bright colors via a default-off switch.

Please consult the manual of your terminal emulator as well as the Wikipedia article on ANSI escape sequences.

Examples

Google hello world:
```
 $ googler hello world
```
Fetch 15 results updated within last 14 months, starting from the 3^rd result for the string cmdline utility in site tuxdiary.com:
```
 $ googler -n 15 -s 3 -t m14 -w tuxdiary.com cmdline utility
```
Read recent news on gadgets:
```
 $ googler -N gadgets
```
Fetch results on IPL cricket from Google India server in English:
```
 $ googler -c in -l en IPL cricket
```

Search quoted text:

 $ googler it\'s a \"beautiful world\" in spring

Search for a specific file type:
```
 $ googler instrumental filetype:mp3
```
Disable automatic spelling correction, e.g. fetch results for googler instead of google:
```
 $ googler -x googler
```
I'm feeling lucky search:
```
 $ googler -j leather jackets
```
Website specific search:
```
 $ googler -w tuxdiary.com hello world
```

Site specific search continues at omniprompt. Use the g key to run a regular Google search. 10. Alias to find definitions of words:

    alias define='googler -n 2 define'

Look up n, p, o, q, g keywords or a result index at the omniprompt: As the omniprompt recognizes n, p, o, q, g or index strings as commands, you need to prefix them with g, e.g.,
```
g n
g g keywords
g 1
```
Input and output redirection:
```
$ googler -C hello world < input > output
```
Note that -C is required to avoid printing control characters (for colored output).
Pipe output:
```
$ googler -C hello world | tee output
```
Use a custom color scheme, e.g., a warm color scheme designed for Solarized Dark (screenshot):
```
$ googler --colors bjdxxy google
$ GOOGLER_COLORS=bjdxxy googler google
```
Tunnel traffic through an HTTPS proxy, e.g., a local Privoxy instance listening on port 8118:
```
$ googler --proxy localhost:8118 google
```
More help:
```
$ googler -h
$ man googler
```

Troubleshooting

In some instances googler may show fewer number of results than you expect, e.g., if you fetch a single result (-n 1) it may not show any results. The reason is Google shows some Google service (e.g. Youtube) results, map locations etc. depending on your geographical data, which googler tries to omit. In some cases Google (the web-service) doesn't show exactly 10 results (default) on a search. We chose to omit these results as far as possible. While this can be fixed, it would need more processing (and more time). You can just navigate forward to fetch the next set of results.
With user agent disabled, results are fetched faster (ref: PR #117). However, abstracts for some Google service (e.g. YouTube, Google Books) results don't show. This can be fixed by handling multiple inner tags. User agent is enabled by default and I'll let this pass as long as I don't see an elegant pull request on this.

Developers

Zhiming Wang

Special thanks to jeremija, shaggytwodope and Narrat for their contributions and efforts in spreading googler.

Notes

Initially I raised a pull request but I could see that the last change was made 7 years earlier. In addition, there is no GitHub activity from the original author Henri Hakkinen in past year. I have created this independent repo for the project with the name googler. I retained the original copyright information.
Google provides a search API which returns the results in JSON format. However, as per my understanding from the official docs, the API issues the queries against an existing instance of a custom search engine and is limited by 100 search queries per day for free. In addition, I have reservations in paying if they ever change their plan or restrict the API in other ways. So I refrained from coupling with Google plans & policies or exposing my trackable personal custom search API key and identifier for the public. I retained the browser-way of doing it by fetching html, which is a open and free specification.

tempuser1909/googler