GNOME – Customize Search Engine Buttons in GNOME Shell

gnomegnome-shellsearch

When searching in gnome-shell, there are two buttons towards the bottom of the screen which can be used to search with Wikipedia and Google.

Is there any way to customise these? If, say, I wanted to replace the Google button with one for DuckDuckGo, how would I go about this?

Best Answer

Gnome-Shell search providers are described by XML files in the folder /usr/share/gnome-shell/search_providers

You will notice two XML files - google.xml and wikipedia.xml

Lets create a new search provider - copy the google.xml file as a template

11.10

sudo cp /usr/share/gnome-shell/search_providers/google.xml /usr/share/gnome-shell/search_providers/duckduckgo.xml

12.04

sudo cp /usr/share/gnome-shell/open-search-providers/google.xml /usr/share/gnome-shell/open-search-providers/duckduckgo.xml

Now lets open the file and change some details to search with duckduckgo:

11.10

sudo nano /usr/share/gnome-shell/search_providers/duckduckgo.xml

12.04

sudo nano /usr/share/gnome-shell/open-search-providers/duckduckgo.xml

Change the following XML tags:

<ShortName>DuckDuckGo</ShortName>
<Description>DuckDuckGo Search</Description>
<Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://www.duckduckgo.com/?q={searchTerms}"/>

The only difficult part is finding out how a search engine searches - in duckduckgo I searched for something - you see in the title bar how the search provider adds its search terms

enter image description here

final result

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In order to see the changes, you need to restart GNOME Shell by pressing Alt+F2, typing "r" and pressing enter.

Linked Questions:

Is it possible to re-arrange the search providers on the GNOME Shell Activities Overview display?

For 11.10

The location of this was changed for 11.04, for 11.04 look below. You can do this with a quick edit of the file /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/layout.js If you find the code:

this._corner = new Clutter.Rectangle({ name: 'hot-corner',
                                       width: 1,
                                       height: 1,
                                       opacity: 0,
                                       reactive: true });

Change reactive: true to reactive: false and it will disable the hot corner but still allow to activate the overview screen by clicking the Activities button or by pressing the Super (Windows) key.

I'm going to look into making an extension to modify this behaviour instead of direct modification of the panel.js file as it will be overwritten with updates.

For 11.04

Same as above but edit the file /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/panel.js:

this._corner = new Clutter.Rectangle({ width: 1,
                                       height: 1,
                                       opacity: 0,
                                       reactive: true });

Gnome Shell – How to Switch Window Controls to the Left

For 10.10

The more simple way to do that is: Alt+F2 → gconf-editor

Navigate to apps → metacity → general, and double click on the entry: button_layout, then enter close,minimize,maximize:. You can also use spacer at some point to add a space.

For 11.04 and 11.10

Alt+F2 → gconf-editor

Navigate to desktop → gnome → shell → windows, and double click on the entry: button_layout, then enter close,minimize,maximize:. You can also use spacer at some point to add a space.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Disable automatic activation of Gnome Shell activities on mouse over

For 11.10

For 11.04

Gnome Shell – How to Switch Window Controls to the Left

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