Chrome is famous for its sleek interface and page loading capabilities. The web browser from search giant Google is the most used browser after Internet Explorer and is stealing new users every day from its competitors such as Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.
Since Chrome has always been an elegant browser, Google has not done much to change its “working” user interface.
As we all know, Chrome’s UI doesn’t include a dedicated search box. The omni bar (commonly known as address bar) is used to search the web. A number of Firefox users who are used to searching the web using the dedicated search box miss the search box while using the Chrome browser.
If you frequently switch between Chrome and Firefox, and would love to have a dedicated search box, you can do so with the help of an extension called SearchBar.
SearchBar for Chrome
The SearchBar extension adds a dedicated search icon to the toolbar area of Chrome browser. Clicking the search icon will open up the search box where you can enter your keyword to search the web. The cool thing about this extension is that you can quickly access the search box by pressing the F4 key (can be changed), meaning you don’t need to click on the SearchBar button on the toolbar to see the bar.
As soon as you start typing in the box you’ll start seeing search suggestions, just how the omni bar operates. To hide the search box, simply press the Esc key. The position of the search box is upper-left of the page with default settings but you can configure the same to appear at top right, bottom left or bottom right.
With default settings, SearchBar searches the web using Google but you can quickly change the search engine under Options. With default settings, SearchBar uses Google.com but you can change the same under Options.
The search history feature, which can be turned off, saves and shows your past searches. An option is available to open search results in a new tab page as well.
Overall a decent extension to add a separate search box to Chrome browser. To install the SearchBar extension, visit the link mentioned at the end of this article, click on the +Free button and then click Add button when you see the confirmation dialog.
Leave a Reply