SearchAdder is a simple tool to add custom search engines to your browser.
The following instructions are for Google Chrome on Android. Other browsers will be largely the same.
- Set the Name and URL of your custom search engine (replace the query with
%s) - Click "Add"
- Click the radio button next to your search engine
- Enter a query into the search bar on SearchAdder
- Click "Search!"
- Click one of the results on the results page &emdash. This is required for Google to consider it "recently used."
- Set the search engine in Chrome Settings > Search Engine > Recently Visited.
If it doesn't appear, chances are Google changed something ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Google Chrome is very picky when it comes to showing new search engines under recently used.
To change your search engine you will only need to add and select it on SearchAdder.
- Google AI Mode https://searchadder.ywk.workers.dev/#Google%20AI:https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=50
- Ecosia AI Search https://searchadder.ywk.workers.dev/#Ecosia%20AI:https://www.ecosia.org/ai-search?q=%s
- Brave Ask https://searchadder.ywk.workers.dev/#Brave%20Ask:https://search.brave.com/ask?q=%s
Google Chrome on Android doesn't provide any way to set a custom search engine. I previously used essentially a static version of this with a hardcoded OpenSearch XML. However, having to deploy a new Cloudflare Pages website for every search engine I want to add to Chrome is rather cumbersome. So I made this.
Chrome on Android is very fussy about showing custom search engines. Sometimes the search engine will disappear and randomly reappear. Additionally, Chrome seems to only allow one custom search engine entry per domain. Setting a new search engine on SearchAdder will replace the existing entry automagically (unfortunately without updating the name).
SearchAdder is designed to be deployed to Cloudflare Pages.
npm run deploy
Search engines use a specification called the OpenSearch description format to tell your browser what search engines are on the page. Your browser will use this specification to show them to you in your search settings. You could try to generate this specification client-side and shove it into a data URI, however at least in the case of Google Chrome this won't actually work. As far as I can tell, the OpenSearch description must be served on a valid (HTTPS?) domain. To get around this, SearchAdder uses a Cloudflare Pages function to dynamically generate and serve the OpenSearch descriptions.
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This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.