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Performing a Google search in Safari with Command-K

Posted on May 25th, 2006 by Administrator


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To do a Google search in Firefox, you can simply press Command-K. I really like that. The default keyboard settings in Safari, on the other hand, are a bit more annoying. To do a Google search you must press Command-Option-F — quite a complicated keystroke for something you may commonly do. Pressing Command-K toggles popup blocking on and off — something I’d never want to do.

Here is how you can make Command-K the keystroke for doing a Google search in Safari, killing two birds with one stone:

1. Open System Preferences.
2. Click on Keyboard & Mouse.
3. Click on Keyboard Shortcuts.
4. Click the “+” to add a new shortcut.
5. Choose “Safari” from the Application menu.
6. Type “Google Search…” (without the quotes) into the Menu Title field. Those three dots are an ellipses, formed by typing Option-semicolon (not three periods).
7. Press Command-K in the Keyboard Shortcut field.
8. Click “Add”.
9. Close and reopen Safari.

Pressing Command-K will now cause the cursor to move to the Google search box!

Posted in All, Tips |

10 Responses to “Performing a Google search in Safari with Command-K”

  1. Peter Garner Says:
    May 25th, 2006 at 8:27 am

    Nice tip. Thanks

  2. Philip Rosenthal Says:
    June 30th, 2006 at 10:25 am

    Thanks for the tip. I was hoping there was such a keyboard shortcut….and one that didn’t involve three keys. I made the change in my new IMac with 10.4 but it didn’t seem to work in 10.3. Any ideas? It wouldn’t let me type Command K in.

  3. James Leung Says:
    June 18th, 2007 at 10:00 am

    > Philip: You may have to remap the original Cmd+K function (which is at defaunt assigned to “Block Pop-Up Windows” to something else first (like Ctrl+P).
    This works for me.

  4. Will Moffat Says:
    August 17th, 2007 at 12:49 am

    Thanks for the tip, saved me thousands of milliseconds of frustration!

  5. colink Says:
    October 3rd, 2007 at 9:04 am

    Ahh! Much better. That was driving me nuts. Thanks for the tip.

    James the default function for “Block Pop-Up Windows” in Safari 3.0.3 is actually Shift+Cmd+K so this should not be an issue for Phillip.

  6. emil Says:
    October 4th, 2007 at 2:11 am

    thanks a lot :)
    The default cmd+option+f shortcut was very bad because it’s very clumsy. I don’t know the Apple programmers thought when choosing it

  7. setter Says:
    October 14th, 2007 at 7:32 pm

    THANKS FOR THE SUPPER TIP !! one of the many annoyances in safari just got dealt with in an elegant and easy way !!!

  8. Ivan Says:
    February 5th, 2009 at 7:30 am

    Doesn’t work here. Leopard, maybe because mine’s in Spanish? “Google” appears in the search text box.

  9. Diogenes Says:
    March 9th, 2009 at 7:03 am

    Ivan,
    go to /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/Yourlanguage.lproj/Localizable.strings

    Open this file in a texteditor and search for “Search Google…” Next to it you will see the text string you must use. It works!

  10. steven Says:
    June 28th, 2009 at 6:17 pm

    this is beautiful. thank you. i would like to take the time to research how the elipses works, but i’ve got a test to study for and i was looking for a way to make searching google faster.

    Godspeed.

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