Firefox search bar

I think the search bar is fantastic feature of Firefox.  However, I have found that pointing and clicking to change search engines is a real pain.  I’ll show you how you can switch search engines with lightning speed using some simple keyboard shortcuts.

Highlight the search bar

You can highlight the search bar by pressing Cmd-K (Mac)  or Ctrl-K (Win).  Once it’s highlighted type your search terms and hit Enter to perform the search with the selected search engine.

Change search engines

A simple way to change the search engine is to press Cmd-Up/Cmd-Down (Mac) or Ctrl-Up/Ctrl-Down (Win).  This will change the search engine icon to the left of the search field.  It’s quick but it’s sometimes hard to tell what the search engine is just by the icon.  Sure, after a while you’ll remember which is which but I’m not a huge fan.  This is where the next shortcut comes in handy.

Change search engines the lazy and efficient way

If you’d rather do a find-as-you-type style search over the search engines you can press Opt-Up/Opt-Down (Mac) or  Alt-Up/Alt-Down (Win).  This will pop up the list of search engines as if you’d clicked on the search engine icon with the mouse.  Now type the first letter of the search engine you want to change to and it will automatically be highlighted.  If you have more than one search engine that begins with the same first letter just keep pressing the same letter key until you’ve highlighted the one you want.  Press Enter to select and engine.

Search bar with engine list expanded

Reordering search engines. keep most used at the top and least used at the bottom.

It might be helpful to keep your most used search engines at the top of the list for easier navigation.  To reorder the search engine list, click on the search engine icon to expose the drop-down list (or use one of the keyboard shortcuts described above).  Click on Manage Search Engines.  Drag the engines around to arrange them as you like.

Wordpress note

I’m using the Advanced TinyMCE editor in Wordpress and Cmd-K is either bound to some action inside the editor or simply doesn’t work when your cursor is inside the editor field.  Press Tab to change the focus and then press Cmd-K to activate the search bar field.