7 ms·

Bang commands[0] really sealed DDG for me. I know Firefox had install-your-own search plugins forever, but the total lack of friction of typing “!yt badgerbadge

by teeray 7y ago

Bang commands[0] really sealed DDG for me. I know Firefox had install-your-own search plugins forever, but the total lack of friction of typing “!yt badgerbadgerbadger” to get specifically YouTube results was fantastic. !g (search on Google) also makes it far easier to switch. Don’t like the results? Prefix !g and try again. My other favorites: !sr [name of subreddit] - much faster than “reddit.com/r/[name]” !r - Reddit !w - Wikipedia !cache - get Google’s cache of a page !hn - HN Search !godoc - Search godoc.org for documentation on a Go package. Your favorite language is probably represented EDIT: formatting [0] https://duckduckgo.com/bang https://duckduckgo.com/bang

sdrothrock 7y ago
This is an offshoot discussion and I have nothing against DDG or bang commands -- just presenting another side of convenient searches. > I know Firefox had install-your-own search plugins forever, but the total lack of friction of typing “!yt badgerbadgerbadger” to get specifically YouTube results was fantastic. I find "use your own search" to be much less friction than going through DDG since it takes me right to results from the custom search, rather than having to redirect through DDG before going to the results. (Edited to add the following) I'm not going to lie and say that it doesn't make me a little paranoid to think of EVERY search I do going through one provider regardless of their current privacy stance. I've used them since 2002ish in Opera, continued using them in Chrome, and now I use them in Firefox. AFAIK you don't even need "install-your-own search plugins" -- just right-click on the search box on the site you want to search, and add keyword. For example, I have "aj" for Amazon Japan and "au" for Amazon US, so I can just hit cmd-t for a new tab and type "au pretzels" directly in the address bar. This has the advantage of letting you define your own, too.
- grimgrin 7y ago
  There's a thing I wish FF had that Chrome has had for a long, long time (an older comment of mine): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20056174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20056174 re: ease of searching within sites and building that availability (of sites) up
  - pottertheotter 7y ago
    I switched back to FF from Chrome a year ago and that's one of the things I miss the most. I really like FF and will continue to support them, but there were so many little conveniences Chrome got right that FF seems to completely ignore.
    - rekoil 7y ago
      Yep, the simplicity of Chromes keyword-based search feature is so good, I have several setup which aren't even really searches at all, such as translate from detected language to English (tren Some sentence in other language). You can of course do this in Firefox as well, but in Chrome -besides Chrome most of the time just adding them automatically- there's a simple preference pane where I can easily configure the three important parts; keyword, pretty title, and search URL with %s as the search token. I wish Firefox would add this, it's a big holdover for me.
  - paulintrognon 7y ago
    I don't understand the behavior your are talking about. I tried in Google Chrome and could not figure it out. In Chrome's address bar, you type the name of a site (say reddit.com), then tab, then some keywords, and that does a google search for your keywords inside reddit.com?
    - silverwings 7y ago
      On chrome://settings/searchEngines you can see all the search engines and their search queries listed. In the keyword column, you can also see the associated keyword. This means if you wanted to search in npmjs.com, then type npmjs.com and then a space in the omnibar. Ofcourse, if you wanted to make it shorter, you can edit the keyword in the same page to say `npm`, then you can search by using npm followed by a space or tab
      - cja 7y ago
        I've used that in Firebird/Firefox for over ten years. If I remember correctly it's configured by adding a keyword to a bookmark and adding a placeholder within the bookmark URI.
- mlang23 7y ago
  Wow, thanks for sharing. I didn't knew about the add your own keyword functionality. Pretty nice!
- tripzilch 7y ago
  The advantage to me is that I sometimes use a new browser and lose these settings. Also for defining my own, I seriously haven't found a search that isn't already in DDG. Maybe back in the old days when you wanted a search box from a specific forum (though the site: operator usually works better imvho). I was totally with you on Opera in 2002, however :) All the way until they dumped their own engine and lost many of their unique features. It was still kinda fun to use last time I installed it though. But it also feels just like Chromium with some stuff tacked on.
- jncraton 7y ago
  Exactly. I like to do this for both speed and privacy. You can even use DDG bangs as your keywords. I do this for the bangs that I use most frequently (e.g. !w) for both reduced latency and increased privacy. This means I keep the muscle memory for using bangs on other folks machines, but I still get improved privacy and speed on devices that have my bookmarks synced.
- coryfklein 7y ago
  Wait if I browse Amazon Japan will I find like, different and better things?
  - angott 7y ago
    Maybe yes. But also way more expensive shipping :-)
  - sdrothrock 7y ago
    Different things, definitely. Better? Depends on what you need! I use Amazon Japan because I live here, though.
throwaway8941 7y ago
JFYI, there's no need to install anything. Focus on a search field on (almost any) website, open the context menu, and "Add a keyword for this search". Put a letter or two into the "keyword" input. Profit.
- input_sh 7y ago
  As someone hearing about this for the first time, are custom searches portable? Do they sync with Firefox Sync? Do they work on Firefox for Android?
  - maverick2007 7y ago
    I'd also like to know this. Been using Firefox mobile but chrome on PC and syncing custom search operators could be what gets me to switch back to FF on PC
  - avian 7y ago
    > Do they sync with Firefox Sync? No. > Do they work on Firefox for Android? Yes.
    - severine 7y ago
      I think akvadrako above[1] has it right, they appeared on my mobile phone on sync, as they are bookmarks. Again, I think, I'm not sure ;) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22115461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22115461
      - avian 7y ago
        There are two things being confused here. I was thinking about OpenSearch custom search engines (being deprecated apparently as another comment notes, these appear on desktop as icons under the search input field "This time search with" and similarly in Android as icons above the on-screen keyboard. These definitely don't sync. The other thing are bookmarks with the "keyword" property set. These do indeed sync, like other bookmarks.
jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
I discovered these when I was trying to learn about different bash shortcuts. I thought it was a bug. Filed a report and everything.
h4waii 7y ago
Just an FYI for other, you can also suffix your search with this, so if you type it all out and decide you need to hit up your !g fallback, it still works at the end.
- ben-schaaf 7y ago
  Another FYI, it doesn't actually matter where you put it. As long as there's a space behind the g it works.
jnericks 7y ago
You can also use the bang command at the end of your query.... Just learned this myself recently and makes changing your search engine quickly if you don't like the results
- kilroy123 7y ago
  I didn't know this, thank you.
- s_dev 7y ago
  You can use the bang anywhere in the qurey.
- wastholm 7y ago
  And you can also write bangs "backwards", i.e. `w!` instead of `!w`. This may not seem like a big deal until you've tried to write `foo !w` on Android and had it "corrected" to `foo! w`.
idclip 7y ago
Someone on that dev board is old school. 90s IRC days old school.
- winrid 7y ago
  While I understand the nostalgia, I think this convention has carried into "today" in Games too, like "!kick bots". Maybe they're gamers. ;)
  - idclip 7y ago
    Whoever first implemented those bots ...
    - EvilGrin 7y ago
      Unsure about other games genres but various bots first appeared with Quake due to its easy modding. Reaper was the first if I recall correctly. https://www.quakewiki.net/quake-1-bots/ https://www.quakewiki.net/quake-1-bots/
herpderperator 7y ago
I just wanted to point out that you can also do this on Google, just use the `site:` prefix. Example: `site:youtube.com badger`. Obviously the bang prefix you're referencing are shorter, but this is nothing new. Edit: Ah, I misunderstood. The bang prefix will send you over to the search results page of the site in question. That's pretty neat.
- endgame 7y ago
  This is not correct. DDG's bangs delegate to each site's search engine.
- franga2000 7y ago
  Google's site: prefix makes Google show results it has from that site. A DDG bang will redirect you to the site's own search results.
shmerl 7y ago
I usually add bangs in the end of the string, since it makes editing and removing them easier if needed.
- TheGallopedHigh 7y ago
  Longtime user did not know could do this; cheers.
  - shmerl 7y ago
    I discovered it by experimenting :)
  - pgreenwood 7y ago
    Yes, you can actually put them anywhere in the string.
larschdk 7y ago
For me, the killer feature is DDG's solid keyboard navigation of search results. Google's never worked properly and they eventually removed it.
- ekianjo 7y ago
  and "copy link" actually works as it should on DDG - it does not become a google link.
- the_gipsy 7y ago
  It did work very well for me, at least for a typical search. Ctrl+T, <type search in already focused textbox>, Enter, Down arrow a few times, Enter. There is a lot of value to me in this, the user, but actually negative to google: you can't really justify inserting ads into keyboard navigation, can you.
- elwell 7y ago
  I use Vimium: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogbaibhgnhhndojpepiihcmeb?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogba...
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    If someone is using the duck for privacy, I should hope they're not using Google's Chrome and Chrome store.
    - eliashaddad 7y ago
      Vimium also works in FF. I am using it right now.
- psim1 7y ago
  I just discovered that ' [single quote/apostrophe] opens the selected result (from navigating up/down using j/k or arrow keys) in a new tab.
rplnt 7y ago
Back in the day, say 15 years ago, there were dedicated search bars and prefix searches were the only option. I've hated the idea of separate search bar, so I used the prefix way after it was necessary even for the default search engine. Every browser ever that I can remember had supported them out of the box.
odiroot 7y ago
I'm speaking 3 languages and learning a 4th; this is really a blessing. !wen - English Wikipedia !wpl - Polish !wde - German etc.
timvisee 7y ago
This, with the clean design, are the only reasons I switched. It's especially awesome with all programming related bangs for quick documentation. Oh, and just `!` for 'I'm feeling ducky'.
- blowski 7y ago
  This is great for when I can't remember the exact domain name, and whether it's .org or .net or whatever. e.g. `! kotlin` takes me straight to https://kotlinlang.org/ https://kotlinlang.org/.
jcampbell1 7y ago
It is possible to setup those as the "keyword" for the search engines in the manage search engines setting in Chrome. I dislike having to type '!', so I just set it up so 'g' is the keyword for google, and so a google search is 'g keywords' from the address bar. It is a decent amount faster because there is no redirect.
alexhektor 7y ago
chrome let's you type the first few characters of a page, and then press tab to enter a search term for that page.. e.g. y tab will let you search youtube, which is even a little faster than the DDG bangs for some sites.., but certainly acccompanied by unwanted privacy defaults.. not sure how much of it you can turn off and still use the feature..
- IndexPointer 7y ago
  This. I'll never understand the hype about bangs when you can do the same by typing a letter and tab your browser. en. <tab> to search on English Wikipedia, etc. Having to do ! seems awkward, plus you have to remember the letters.
FabHK 7y ago
BTW, you can use !w<ISO country code> to search for different language wikipedia, eg !wde aldi !wes la casa de papel
agumonkey 7y ago
sadly they removed scihub's bang
- quotemstr 7y ago
  See? That's why it's dangerous to rely on some random third party for your search shortcuts.
  - contravariant 7y ago
    True, but in sci-hub's case it's even dangerous to rely on the first-party to work reliably.
dizzru600 7y ago
Kelly porn
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ghostpepper 7y ago
I just found out about !r the other day and had no idea !hn existed. This is excellent news.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

by teeray 7y ago

sdrothrock 7y ago

This is an offshoot discussion and I have nothing against DDG or bang commands -- just presenting another side of convenient searches. > I know Firefox had install-your-own search plugins forever, but the total lack of friction of typing “!yt badgerbadgerbadger” to get specifically YouTube results was fantastic. I find "use your own search" to be much less friction than going through DDG since it takes me right to results from the custom search, rather than having to redirect through DDG before going to the results. (Edited to add the following) I'm not going to lie and say that it doesn't make me a little paranoid to think of EVERY search I do going through one provider regardless of their current privacy stance. I've used them since 2002ish in Opera, continued using them in Chrome, and now I use them in Firefox. AFAIK you don't even need "install-your-own search plugins" -- just right-click on the search box on the site you want to search, and add keyword. For example, I have "aj" for Amazon Japan and "au" for Amazon US, so I can just hit cmd-t for a new tab and type "au pretzels" directly in the address bar. This has the advantage of letting you define your own, too.

grimgrin 7y ago
There's a thing I wish FF had that Chrome has had for a long, long time (an older comment of mine): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20056174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20056174 re: ease of searching within sites and building that availability (of sites) up
- pottertheotter 7y ago
  I switched back to FF from Chrome a year ago and that's one of the things I miss the most. I really like FF and will continue to support them, but there were so many little conveniences Chrome got right that FF seems to completely ignore.
  - rekoil 7y ago
    Yep, the simplicity of Chromes keyword-based search feature is so good, I have several setup which aren't even really searches at all, such as translate from detected language to English (tren Some sentence in other language). You can of course do this in Firefox as well, but in Chrome -besides Chrome most of the time just adding them automatically- there's a simple preference pane where I can easily configure the three important parts; keyword, pretty title, and search URL with %s as the search token. I wish Firefox would add this, it's a big holdover for me.
- paulintrognon 7y ago
  I don't understand the behavior your are talking about. I tried in Google Chrome and could not figure it out. In Chrome's address bar, you type the name of a site (say reddit.com), then tab, then some keywords, and that does a google search for your keywords inside reddit.com?
  - silverwings 7y ago
    On chrome://settings/searchEngines you can see all the search engines and their search queries listed. In the keyword column, you can also see the associated keyword. This means if you wanted to search in npmjs.com, then type npmjs.com and then a space in the omnibar. Ofcourse, if you wanted to make it shorter, you can edit the keyword in the same page to say `npm`, then you can search by using npm followed by a space or tab
    - cja 7y ago
      I've used that in Firebird/Firefox for over ten years. If I remember correctly it's configured by adding a keyword to a bookmark and adding a placeholder within the bookmark URI.
mlang23 7y ago
Wow, thanks for sharing. I didn't knew about the add your own keyword functionality. Pretty nice!
tripzilch 7y ago
The advantage to me is that I sometimes use a new browser and lose these settings. Also for defining my own, I seriously haven't found a search that isn't already in DDG. Maybe back in the old days when you wanted a search box from a specific forum (though the site: operator usually works better imvho). I was totally with you on Opera in 2002, however :) All the way until they dumped their own engine and lost many of their unique features. It was still kinda fun to use last time I installed it though. But it also feels just like Chromium with some stuff tacked on.
jncraton 7y ago
Exactly. I like to do this for both speed and privacy. You can even use DDG bangs as your keywords. I do this for the bangs that I use most frequently (e.g. !w) for both reduced latency and increased privacy. This means I keep the muscle memory for using bangs on other folks machines, but I still get improved privacy and speed on devices that have my bookmarks synced.
coryfklein 7y ago
Wait if I browse Amazon Japan will I find like, different and better things?
- angott 7y ago
  Maybe yes. But also way more expensive shipping :-)
- sdrothrock 7y ago
  Different things, definitely. Better? Depends on what you need! I use Amazon Japan because I live here, though.

throwaway8941 7y ago

JFYI, there's no need to install anything. Focus on a search field on (almost any) website, open the context menu, and "Add a keyword for this search". Put a letter or two into the "keyword" input. Profit.

input_sh 7y ago
As someone hearing about this for the first time, are custom searches portable? Do they sync with Firefox Sync? Do they work on Firefox for Android?
- maverick2007 7y ago
  I'd also like to know this. Been using Firefox mobile but chrome on PC and syncing custom search operators could be what gets me to switch back to FF on PC
- avian 7y ago
  > Do they sync with Firefox Sync? No. > Do they work on Firefox for Android? Yes.
  - severine 7y ago
    I think akvadrako above[1] has it right, they appeared on my mobile phone on sync, as they are bookmarks. Again, I think, I'm not sure ;) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22115461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22115461
    - avian 7y ago
      There are two things being confused here. I was thinking about OpenSearch custom search engines (being deprecated apparently as another comment notes, these appear on desktop as icons under the search input field "This time search with" and similarly in Android as icons above the on-screen keyboard. These definitely don't sync. The other thing are bookmarks with the "keyword" property set. These do indeed sync, like other bookmarks.

jacobwilliamroy 7y ago

I discovered these when I was trying to learn about different bash shortcuts. I thought it was a bug. Filed a report and everything.

h4waii 7y ago

Just an FYI for other, you can also suffix your search with this, so if you type it all out and decide you need to hit up your !g fallback, it still works at the end.

ben-schaaf 7y ago
Another FYI, it doesn't actually matter where you put it. As long as there's a space behind the g it works.

jnericks 7y ago

You can also use the bang command at the end of your query.... Just learned this myself recently and makes changing your search engine quickly if you don't like the results

kilroy123 7y ago
I didn't know this, thank you.
s_dev 7y ago
You can use the bang anywhere in the qurey.
wastholm 7y ago
And you can also write bangs "backwards", i.e. `w!` instead of `!w`. This may not seem like a big deal until you've tried to write `foo !w` on Android and had it "corrected" to `foo! w`.

idclip 7y ago

Someone on that dev board is old school. 90s IRC days old school.

winrid 7y ago
While I understand the nostalgia, I think this convention has carried into "today" in Games too, like "!kick bots". Maybe they're gamers. ;)
- idclip 7y ago
  Whoever first implemented those bots ...
  - EvilGrin 7y ago
    Unsure about other games genres but various bots first appeared with Quake due to its easy modding. Reaper was the first if I recall correctly. https://www.quakewiki.net/quake-1-bots/ https://www.quakewiki.net/quake-1-bots/

herpderperator 7y ago

I just wanted to point out that you can also do this on Google, just use the `site:` prefix. Example: `site:youtube.com badger`. Obviously the bang prefix you're referencing are shorter, but this is nothing new. Edit: Ah, I misunderstood. The bang prefix will send you over to the search results page of the site in question. That's pretty neat.

endgame 7y ago
This is not correct. DDG's bangs delegate to each site's search engine.
franga2000 7y ago
Google's site: prefix makes Google show results it has from that site. A DDG bang will redirect you to the site's own search results.

shmerl 7y ago

I usually add bangs in the end of the string, since it makes editing and removing them easier if needed.

TheGallopedHigh 7y ago
Longtime user did not know could do this; cheers.
- shmerl 7y ago
  I discovered it by experimenting :)
- pgreenwood 7y ago
  Yes, you can actually put them anywhere in the string.

larschdk 7y ago

For me, the killer feature is DDG's solid keyboard navigation of search results. Google's never worked properly and they eventually removed it.

ekianjo 7y ago
and "copy link" actually works as it should on DDG - it does not become a google link.
the_gipsy 7y ago
It did work very well for me, at least for a typical search. Ctrl+T, <type search in already focused textbox>, Enter, Down arrow a few times, Enter. There is a lot of value to me in this, the user, but actually negative to google: you can't really justify inserting ads into keyboard navigation, can you.
elwell 7y ago
I use Vimium: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogbaibhgnhhndojpepiihcmeb?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vimium/dbepggeogba...
- reaperducer 7y ago
  If someone is using the duck for privacy, I should hope they're not using Google's Chrome and Chrome store.
  - eliashaddad 7y ago
    Vimium also works in FF. I am using it right now.
psim1 7y ago
I just discovered that ' [single quote/apostrophe] opens the selected result (from navigating up/down using j/k or arrow keys) in a new tab.

rplnt 7y ago

Back in the day, say 15 years ago, there were dedicated search bars and prefix searches were the only option. I've hated the idea of separate search bar, so I used the prefix way after it was necessary even for the default search engine. Every browser ever that I can remember had supported them out of the box.

odiroot 7y ago

I'm speaking 3 languages and learning a 4th; this is really a blessing. !wen - English Wikipedia !wpl - Polish !wde - German etc.

timvisee 7y ago

This, with the clean design, are the only reasons I switched. It's especially awesome with all programming related bangs for quick documentation. Oh, and just `!` for 'I'm feeling ducky'.

blowski 7y ago
This is great for when I can't remember the exact domain name, and whether it's .org or .net or whatever. e.g. `! kotlin` takes me straight to https://kotlinlang.org/ https://kotlinlang.org/.

jcampbell1 7y ago

It is possible to setup those as the "keyword" for the search engines in the manage search engines setting in Chrome. I dislike having to type '!', so I just set it up so 'g' is the keyword for google, and so a google search is 'g keywords' from the address bar. It is a decent amount faster because there is no redirect.

alexhektor 7y ago

chrome let's you type the first few characters of a page, and then press tab to enter a search term for that page.. e.g. y tab will let you search youtube, which is even a little faster than the DDG bangs for some sites.., but certainly acccompanied by unwanted privacy defaults.. not sure how much of it you can turn off and still use the feature..

IndexPointer 7y ago
This. I'll never understand the hype about bangs when you can do the same by typing a letter and tab your browser. en. <tab> to search on English Wikipedia, etc. Having to do ! seems awkward, plus you have to remember the letters.

FabHK 7y ago

BTW, you can use !w<ISO country code> to search for different language wikipedia, eg !wde aldi !wes la casa de papel

agumonkey 7y ago

sadly they removed scihub's bang

quotemstr 7y ago
See? That's why it's dangerous to rely on some random third party for your search shortcuts.
- contravariant 7y ago
  True, but in sci-hub's case it's even dangerous to rely on the first-party to work reliably.

dizzru600 7y ago

Kelly porn

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ghostpepper 7y ago

I just found out about !r the other day and had no idea !hn existed. This is excellent news.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]