Unable to use custom search engines in address bar

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1

I understand that I should be able to add a new search engine to Brave, assign it a short 2-4 character sequence (such as “:sh”), and then when I type that sequence into the address bar and hit space, I can then search using that search engine instead of the default one. However, I am unable to do this. I have gone into Settings > Search Engine > Manage Sites and Search, and I have this screen.

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Clicking on the pencils lets me reassign the shortcuts, but does not let me change the site. Interestingly, I can delete default search engines from this list, but I cannot add them back.

I do not know what the difference between site search and search engines is, but while I can add to them freely, none of the custom ones I add seem to work.

This is the behavior when I type “:g” into my address bar

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And then hit Tab or Space.

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And if I type in a search term like “brave” and hit enter, it takes me to the Google search results for brave. This is the behavior I expected to see.

Now if I do that for Presearch (which from my first screenshot uses the shortcut “:pre”, this is not what happens.

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It shows me the option to switch to the tab, which I have open in a separate window, but it does not say anything about searching Presearch. Pressing Tab moves the selection down to “Switch to this tab”, pressing Space simply adds a space to the characters already in the address bar. If I type in a search term like “brave” and hit enter, it takes me to the Brave Search results for “:pre brave”, not the Presearch results.

Operating System and Brave Version: Brave 1.74.50, Windows

2

@chifii that is definitely strange. On my end, I was able to test this behavior and it worked as expected.

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I’m wondering if simply deleting and re-adding the shortcut might do the trick. Please try the following:

  1. In Brave, go to brave://settings/searchEngines
  2. Click the “three dots” icon next to Presearch and select Delete
  3. Now go to Presearch.com and perform any search
  4. Return to the brave://settings/searchEngines, refresh this page, then scroll down to Inactive searches and find the Presearch entry — click Activate
  5. Presearch should now appear in the Site search section — click the “pencil” icon and create the shortcut you’d like to use
  6. Try using the search shortcut again

Let me know if this resolves the issue.

3

Neither deleting the presearch site search entry nor deactivating and reactivating it did anything to resolve the issue. The same behavior persists after both actions.

4

Hmmmm interesting. So just to confirm, at this time, none of the search engine shortcuts you have (including the default ones provided to you) will work?

5

No, the default ones work, but none of the shortcuts I have attempted to add do.

6

Very strange. Can you please try creating a fresh browser profile (Menu --> More tools --> Add profile), close your original profile window (so only the newly created one is open), then try and add Presearch to the new profile and see if the shortcut works for you there?

7

It does not work in a new profile either.

8

@chifii if you click the three dots, does it allow you to put Presearch as your default search? If not, then it kind of would say you might have added it in wrong. I’m mentioning as thinking back to Cannot set a new default search engine - #2 by Saoiray where person hadn’t.

It should show something like:

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With that in, let’s go step by step here.

Step 1: Click on address/search bar. It shows default, which for me is Google.

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Step 2: Type in shortcut, which for me is :p,

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Step 3: Hit space and it changes search on the left:

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Step 4: Type in search query

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#Step 5: Search

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9

I am not able to put Presearch as my default search.

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Here is how I have Presearch set up in site search.

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Steps 1 and 2 are the same for me. When I get to step 3, nothing changes on the left side of the address bar, even after pressing tab or space.

10

@chifii and there’s your issue. Notice what you have for the URL? You have to replace the search query with %s but you didn’t. Yours shows %25s So with an incorrect item there, it’s not being recognized.

Put in https://presearch.com/search?q=%s

11

@Saoiray good catch, that is very likely the issue. That said I’m not sure how it got that way, considering that the % symbol is a special character that needs to be encoded in the URL using the characters %25.

Regardless @chifii please try editing the query by removing the “25” and see if this resolves the issue.

12

Okay, that worked. Which is weird, because I thought the instructions were that you searched for “%s” in the search engine and then pasted that URL.

2 Likes
13

Nah, just got a bit flipped. You do the search for whatever you want. Then you replace. So like if I did the search for Love it would go to https://presearch.com/search?q=love. Then the instructions are to replace whatever we searched, which is Love, with the %s instead.

So would be q=%s and you end up with https://presearch.com/search?q=%s

Anyway, glad to know you got it resolved. And with the above said, hopefully helps for any others you want to add in the future as well.

1 Like