In Chrome if I make a Google search and have a list of results, is there a keyboard shortcut to go to the links quickly and switch between the list of results? E.g. in Opera one can achieve it by pressing Tab and using the Up/Down arrows.
3 Answers
Google have removed this feature, so you can't just turn it out like you used to be able to. The way you used to be able to do this was through:
Google Search > Settings > Search Settings > Google Instant Prediction > On
I was so sad to see this feature go that I wrote a hack to re-engineer it last night. So far it only works with Google Chrome, but can be adapted to work with all the others:
- Install Chrome extension ShortKeys.
- Click on the ShortKeys menu and select "Options"
- Click on "Add" and fill in the following fields:
Keyboard Shortcut: tab
Behavior: Run JavaScript
Label as: Result Picker
Paste the following JavaScript into the JavaScript code to run:
document.selectedResultId=0 function selectResult(newId){ els = document.querySelectorAll("div.r h3") if(newId < 0 || newId >= els.length) return //Could modify for page nav...? rp = document.getElementById("result-pointer") if(rp != null){ rp.remove() } document.selectedResultId=newId el = els[newId] lnk = el.firstElementChild el.innerHTML = "<div id=\"result-pointer\" style=\"position:absolute;left:-15px;\">></div>" + el.innerHTML lnk.focus() } document.onkeyup=function(event){ if(event.keyCode==38) selectResult(document.selectedResultId-1) if(event.keyCode==40) selectResult(document.selectedResultId+1) if(event.keyCode==13){ var el = document.querySelectorAll("div.r h3")[document.selectedResultId] var lnk = el.parentElement var url = lnk.href if(event.ctrlKey){ var win = window.open(url,"_blank") win.blur() window.open().close() } else{ document.location = url } } } selectResult(0)
Configure the Activation Settings:
Active while in form fields (Checked)
Websites (Only specific sites)
URLS (one per line): *.google.*
This is what the Options page should look like
- Click Save and then close your browser.
Instructions:
When you restart you should see a little blue ">" appear by search results when you hit tab.
The up/down arrow keys make it cycle through the results.
Hitting "Enter" will navigate to the highlighted result.
Hitting "Ctrl+Enter" to open the result in a new tab. (note: on a Mac this is the actual
control
key, notcommand
)
Happy Searching!
-
1+100 Thank you so much for implementing this! Now that Google Instant is gone (as of July 2017) we had no keyboard shortcuts, but you restored them!! Jul 31, 2017 at 14:57
-
1
-
1On a Mac I was able to get Cmd+Enter to open tabs in the background. Change
document.onkeyup
todocument.onkeydown
, then changeif(event.ctrlKey){
toif(event.metaKey){
and remove the calls towin.blur()
andwindow.open().close()
Jul 31, 2017 at 21:49 -
1
-
1I had to change the query selector today to
.rc > div.yuRUbf
. We should probably have a github repo where we can share changes. Since you're the original author you could create the repo and give it a permissive license like Apache or MIT, then I'd be happy to contribute. Oct 1, 2020 at 13:33
Yes you press TAB
button once to get to the first result. And then you can select with the down/up buttons.
-
-
That's strange, because it definitely works for me. I'm in ubuntu, maybe there ar differences between OSes Jul 22, 2016 at 9:02
-
-
3This only works in Chrome if you have Google Instant enabled in your browser settings. I don't know why.– idbriiJul 31, 2016 at 18:07
-
Just use your arrow keys ←↕→ and then press Enter when you are at the desired result.