Hey everyone, I’ve noticed that the Site search shortcut keys aren’t working for me after the update in the Brave browser.
Has anyone else experienced this issue? Is it a known problem or a bug with Brave?
Site search shortcut not working in Brave browser
Description of the issue:
The Site search shortcut does not work in the Brave browser. Normally, pressing the given shortcut key should activate the search bar, but nothing happens.
Steps to Reproduce:
Actual Result:
Pressing the assign shortcut key does nothing in Brave.
Expected result:
Pressing the shortcut key should focus on the search bar, allowing immediate input of the website.
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In the latest version, only custom search shortcuts can be retained, but the feature that allows users to jump directly to a specific website by entering search letters has been deleted. This feature is quite useful and is also an advantage of Brave Browser. Can it be restored?
@Gaurav_212005 it’s because you’re not doing it proper. Your shortcut is working but the issue is your URL.
Such as for Brave Search you wouldn’t put in https://search.brave.com/ but you would put in https://search.brave.com/search?q=%s. You go to the search and type in a query. Then search engines usually have Q (for query) = and it puts the word you typed in. You replace the word with %s.,
For ChatGPT, you would need to have https://chatgpt.com/?q=%s for a normal prompt. If you want it to have the Search option enabled on that prompt then instead use https://chatgpt.com/?q=%s&hints=search
Yeah I got your point, but I don’t wanna share it. I only want that it should open up the site instead of searching them something in that side and for that purpose I had given them shortcut key.
Which indeed we can’t add a shortcut to trigger a bookmark to my knowledge. I’m not aware of the Site Search ever working for people to put it in as just a site without the %s query part or to navigate.
Let me tag in @Mattches to see if he knows anything.
I just noticed this change after updating today as well. For quite a long time I’ve used custom search engines without a %s placeholder as a way quickly open sites. This mimics the behavior of Firefox’s mechanism to add keyword shortcuts to a bookmark which also allows you to type a word to open a bookmark. With the search engine approach you have to set the URL in the engine instead of attaching it directly to a bookmark of course, but it acted basically the same. It seems to be a fairly common recommendation online as well when looking to emulate Firefox’s keyword shortcuts.
@cxdv@Gaurav_212005 I just was testing and originally was able to see the behavior as you both mentioned in Chrome. But then I checked and it had an update. Upon updating Chrome it seems they have the same behavior. This would mean it’s an upstream change.
Not sure why they are now preventing this little cheat/trick, perhaps because of some who misunderstood how it was meant to work and was having issues with searches?
But now it just would be a question of whether Brave can implement something themselves. Whether it be adding shortcut options to bookmarks or if can bring back the capability for website URL to be put in without the search query %s aspect.
Okay but I tried using the Chrome with the updated version, I can’t find an problem over there, but I hope that brave bring back the previous capability.
Existing shortcuts stay there but if you try to use it, they don’t work. And if you go to edit, you’ll see that it shows not valid. So things you had added before would still be visible there but unusable
For example, using the shortcuts from the image above, if I enter the address bar and type :g then hit Space or Tab, I see that I’m now searching via Google:
However, you state:
These shortcut keys work only if you type them into the address bar that you’re already focused in – they will not jump or move focus to the address bar if the focus is somewhere else on the page/browser.
To jump/move focus to the address bar from somewhere else in the browser, the default shortcut is Ctrl + L (Command + L on macOS). Note that this shortcut can be changed to the desired keystroke by going to brave://settings/system/shortcuts and changing the Focus location action key command:
So to summarize with an example, if I want to jump to the address bar from somewhere else in the browser, then search using a specific engine (lets say Google again) within the address bar via those search engine shortcut keys, I would:
Press Ctrl + L (or whatever custom shortcut keystroke you may have changed it to) to jump focus to the address bar
Type :g then Space or Tab to initiate the search shortcut
What he’s referencing is prior to the newer Chromium update you used to be able to put in any URL, such as https://chatgpt.com/ and set a shortcut, like maybe /ch. That would then be saved as a search engine, though it wouldn’t be able to do a search on it. So when I would go type in /ch and hit enter, it would go to ChatGPT.
But now when you go to do it, the line can’t be saved. It requires the query portion such as https://chatgpt.com/?q=%s. Then it works as you mentioned in the last reply, where they have to do the space or tab and type in a search query which then takes them to the results.
So difference is old one let them go to the main page without any result.
Old setup:
On this one you see it doesn’t say it’s invalid and it could be saved. This is how it was on Chrome and Brave.
@Saoiray thank you for clarifying.
While not entirely convenient, it seems like the solution would be to simply add the ?q=%s to the end of the search engine URL string and everything should behave normally.
You can even have it set to do this automatically (as discussed before) by deleting the old entry for chatgpt (or whatever the relevant search is), visiting the site and performing a search.
@Mattches iffy. The way they had it served where just typing in the shortcut and hitting enter immediately opened up the page, like they clicked on a bookmark.
If you put in the query portion, then the way it works is just typing in the shortcut makes it appear as normal text and would be searched on your default search engine. So like below is set to Google:
If I tab to Search Brave or I hit Space, then all it does it switch the search engine but it doesn’t go anywhere.
But if had worked the way they were talking, I could have had :br set to go straight to https://search.brave.com/ So go to address bar, type in :br and hit Enter, then it would go to https://search.brave.com/ landing page.
All they were doing is using Site Search as another form of Bookmark, but with the capability of adding a specific shortcut for easier navigation.
