A year and a half ago, I posted about how to configure Opera and Iron so that the omni-bar/awesome-bar uses Scroogle as the default search engine. Today Scroogle has been down for like 36 hours, so I guess it’s time to update this with another search engine. And in the process I’m adding instructions on how to configure the Firefox address bar search engine. I write this for Duckduckgo, but of course instructions are fairly similar for any alternative, except that you need to figure out the query URL (shouldn’t be too hard as most search engines use GET rather than POST).
Firefox
In about:config, edit the keyword.URL setting: set its value to https://duckduckgo.com/?q=. That’s all already (for the address bar). For the search bar, just install this add-on.
Iron (should be the same for Chome)
In Iron options got to Basics → Search → Manage search engines. Then add a new search engine as follow:
- Name: DuckDuckGo/em> (you can choose another if you want)
- Keyword: duckduckgo.com (you can choose another if you want)
- URL: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s
Finally, click on “make default”. Also note that you can avoid the typing by just going to DuckDuckGo and then clicking on “Chrome” at the bottom of the page. Step 3 of their mini-guide has a script to automatically add DDG as a search engine (but you’ll still have to set it as default manually).
Opera 12.x (doesn’t seem to work on that terrible Opera 15)
For the detailed manual way, see my previously mentioned post about adding Scroogle. The easy way now: it should already be in your search engine list. Unroll your search engine bar, click Manage search engines, select duckduckgo and click edit. Unroll the detailed view and check use as default search engine.
If you don’t already have DDG (quite unlikely, but who knows…), it’s even easier, actually: go to DuckDuckGo, right click on their search box (not the Opera search box, the DDG website search box) and click Create Search. Enter d for keyword (you can choose any, but that’s the way DDG suggests, and that’s how it is on my default Opera installation), and check use as default search engine.
Voilร , all done ๐
Thank you! ัะฟะฐัะธะฑะพ!!!
Wow, I’m impressed with my memories from my very distant Russian lessons: I did manage to read “spassiba” ๐
Thanks! This is the only way to force tourself to try a different serach engine ๐
Well, for me it was rather a way not to accidentally send data to Google. I usually don’t use the awesome bar, most often when I do it’s by accident (mistyping a URL).
this do not work on opera mini
Ah, sorry I really have no idea about Opera Mini…
thanks. will recommend to everyone. sick and tired of gestapo-gogle
Same here ๐
Merci! =)
BTW: I “found” a solution for Opera Mini … nearby ๐
https://dukgo.com/help/en_US/mobile/opera-mini
Doesn’t work for Opera 21.0. If you add custom search engines there is no option to “set as default”. It seems both Firefox and Opera are trying to force you to use certain search engines and there is no workaround that I can find which is viable.
Oh, forgot to mention (in detail) that this no longer works for firefox either. keyword.URL is deprecated in the newer versions of firefox. It does not work, neither does creating your own string value “keyword.URL”. There was an extension for firefox made that validated the custom creation of keyword.URL but it no longer works either. I’m not sure why but it seems like firefox and Opera are literally trying to force us to use their preferred search engines.
Yeah, Opera based on Chrome is totally screwed up… I still haven’t found out how to set DDG to default (like you, I’ve been able to add it, but same issue: no way to set it as default). I wasn’t aware of that keyword.URL thing in Firefox either, since I stopped using the awesome bar after having too many issues with it (I don’t really remember what exactly was the problem).
Sad news indeed. Quite unexpectedly, Iron is the last of those 3 with the ongoing possibility to customize the default search engine… (at least as of version 33)
I seen to be blocked from installing DuckDuckGo
Which browser? In the current Opera, I’m not sure it can be set as default anymore. I still use Opera 12.x.
THANK YOU! I didn’t have the correct settings, especially for the URL. Once I used what you showed me I finally got the “make default” button to appear. Whew! so let’s see how DuckDuckGo does — I’m looking forward to it!
Glad it helped, but you know, you don’t need it as default just to try it out ๐
I’ve been searching for this solution seemingly forever and today I found your instructions. Thank you very much!!