81

I search on Google a lot. I find it very annoying to have to move my mouse to the search box and click once so that I can input another search term.

I did Google for some time, but no one seems to be quite as annoyed with this, surprisingly.

I'm using Firefox 8 and Chrome 16, on Windows 7.

If you know Atlassian Confluence, you might probably know that pressing / will move input focus to the upper right search box, very convenient for a keyboard shortcut hobbyist . Try it here.

Atlassian Confluence provides / as "go to search box" shortcut

EDIT:

According to slhck's statement. I tried it on several PCs(5+, including virtual machine). The strange thing is that only one of them exhibits the stated behavior. Others(I call them dumb ones) exhibit a weird behavior. Even if I select Always show instant result and save, it reverts to Only when my computer is fast enough, and the keyboard navigation still does not work.

google preference weird behavior

Poking around for some moment, I finally managed to make it work. The trick is: Select Never show instant result , save, then select Always show instant result again. Now it remains there and keyboard navigation works .

Confirmed on Chrome and Firefox, and Windows 7 IE8.

Anyway, don't you think there should be a keyboard shortcut(or any key) to jump to search box no matter instant predication is on or off?

Dog Lover
  • 352
Jimm Chen
  • 6,464

19 Answers19

54

As of 2021, apparently you need to type a slash to get back to the search box.

Google will show this in the bottom-left corner:

(I didn't get this to work on latest Chrome on macOS with a German keyboard, so your mileage may vary…)

slhck
  • 235,242
29

Ctrl+K in Chrome not only moves your courser to the Google ommibox, but it also clears it, saving you the extra keystroke.

F6 is another way to get to omnibox, and will always work, whereas key combinations may also depend on where your mouse courser or focus is; for example, on SE, Ctrl+K is the shortcut to add code to a question or answer.

wizlog
  • 13,573
20

In Google Chrome, you can press Ctrl+L to focus the address bar. This would allow you to perform a new search instantly.

In case you want to focus the search box on the actual Google website, please refer to slhck's answer.

You can also enable Instant inside Google Chrome by checking the following setting:
enter image description here

Community
  • 1
Oliver Salzburg
  • 89,072
  • 65
  • 269
  • 311
7

The CTRL+E shortcut works for Firefox, I.E. and Chrome (in Windows) to move the focus to the search box (well, in IE and Chrome to the address bar, clear it and start with ?, which is the same as a search box).

For Ubuntu, Firefox doesn't seem to pay attention to CTRL+E (at least not for me), but CTRL+K works.

Then depending on how you've configured your browser is the search engine that will be used to perform your search.

frozenkoi
  • 683
7

Control+K is probably the shortcut I use the most every day.

It works for Firefox and Chrome on Linux, Windows, and Mac (use the Command key on Mac).

Control+E is the equivalent for IE.

For Safari, it's Command+Shift+F (far less convenient).

jahroy
  • 382
5

Pressing Esc while on a Google search cycles between selecting all of the current search text and selecting none.

Dog Lover
  • 352
Emwat
  • 189
3

I am a heavy Ctrl+K (and Ctrl+L) user, but this is not sufficient for this use case. Often I want to adjust my search with additional refinements. To do this what I found easiest is to use Chrome (instead of Firefox) with the so-called Vimium extension, see: http://vimium.github.io/

The key combination that brings you to the search box is gi.

Note: This is by the way not the only speed-up you get. I love their way of addressing links in the browser, just type f and you will have a few letter combinations that bring you to any link on that page. You will never go back.

Anne van Rossum
  • 311
2

As of 2017-07-31, Google removed this feature entirely from search.

I created the open source Web Search Navigator extension to fix this and add extra features (like configurable keyboard shortcuts).

See installation instructions.

Hope you find it useful, but in any case - feedback is welcome!

infokiller
  • 401
2

On a Mac, Command+L moves focus to the search bar.

ZygD
  • 2,577
Rose Perrone
  • 517
1

For Google Chrome

Address Bar
Ctrl + L

Google Search
Ctrl + K

Search Box of any Website
Use Search Box Focus

ZygD
  • 2,577
Falaen
  • 151
  • 4
1

The top voted answer works without installing anything. But this works on almost ALL websites, eg. stackoverflow, google, duckduckgo....

  1. In chrome/firefox, install the Surfingkeys extension.

  2. Reload the webpage, and simply press "i" on your keyboard. This will focus the first textbox on the page.

enter image description here

tinker
  • 350
1

Since the search box in a website is not identified in a standard way across all websites, there isn't a dedicated keyboard shortcut to jump straight to it. What you'll have to do is just keep hitting Tab (or Shift+Tab to go backwards) until you end up in the search box again. These keyboard shortcuts will cycle through all the website's links and input forms.

Some search engines will let you begin typing immediately to do another search if you don't click anything else. Other than the method above, sometimes they'll code their site with some javascript that captures keyboard input. Experiment and see what the site provides.

Ben Richards
  • 12,917
0

For your intended use case (search, and then search again without using the mouse), you can use 'Esc' which will select the search box again so that you can type.

Andrew
  • 111
0

Could might try hitting "ESC" and then just start typing; the typing will probably be appearing appended to whatever string you've already typed in the search bar. This works for me on Firefox on OSX.

Also since anything that isn't recognized as a URL is interpreted as a search on my browser (default search set to google.com), if you don't want to append to the text, but, rather, replace it entirely, then you might as well do CNTRL-L (COMMAND-L in OSX) and use the address/search bar combo in Firefox / Google Chrome.

T Sandwich
  • 1
0

I too felt the same way while using the google search box often.

There is no shortcut for such function, But there is another way for it.

You can use the method of using the mouse on the keyboard buttons with the help of mouse keys option.

Once you did this, place your cursor over the search engine box and left it untouched.

Now you can press "5" button which is the replacement of a left click in the mouse.

I hope this would be useful when you watch English movies, series (especially The Big Bang Theory) or other videos and you want to find the meaning of any word.

Pierre.Vriens
  • 1,425
Vishva
  • 1
0

Its 2020, but Google does not support it yet :(. its works very well in Youtube with '/' key and am fan of this. None of the answers above worked for me through but Anyhow i found a useful chrome extension you can use to focus google search box and modify search keywords. Quick Focus Search Boxes Hope this help.

Sudhir Singh
  • 1
0

There is a famous trick, before pressing /, you must press , (just comma without Ctrl). Just after pressing , and then /, you will get the desired result. Also the shortcut will not work before your Google account has fully loaded, that is it's a Google shortucut, not a Chrome shortcut.

zx485
  • 2,337
ionecum
  • 1
0

Aside from all the good answers already posted, you can always install a keyboard macro processor like AutoHotKey in Windows or AutoKey in Linux. Once you do that, you can define hot keys that do anything you can do from the keyboard (and a lot more) regardless of what the applications or Window manager provide for you.

Joe
  • 586
  • 6
  • 13
0

If I just type something, it jumps to the Google Search Box. Also Backspace moves to the Google Search Box. The spacebar does something different (it is like pushing PgDn?).

chelder
  • 259