Google Chrome – Keyboard Shortcut to Move Focus to Search Box

google-chromekeyboard shortcuts

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?

Best Answer

Update: This does not seem to be working anymore. Press ESC to move the cursor back into Google's search box.

If you search for something in Google Search …

… just begin typing again. For example, writing "unicorns", then " magic" (that is, space, then the next keyword) will automatically focus the search box again.

Note that you need to enable instant search from your settings:

Finally, you can also press ⇥ (Tab) to get a manual selection for the results – navigate through them with ↓ or ↑, and open them with ↩.

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