How do I get a similar awesome bar (from Firefox) in Chrome?

Question

Before switching to Chrome, I always used Firefox, and I always really liked how you could type into the address bar and it would search (a fuzzy search!) for pages that were in the history that matched.

In Chrome, the "results" are just a bunch of search suggestions from Google that I really don't care about (if I want to use a search engine, I'll just go to Google). Is there any way to get Firefox-like address bar searching in Chrome?

Solution 1

You indicated in one of your comments that you want to turn off the search suggestions feature. To do that:

1. Click the Wrench menu.
2. Go to Preferences.
3. Go to the Under the Hood tab.
4. Uncheck Use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLs typed into the address bar.

Chrome will now only suggest results from your browsing history when typing in the address bar.

Solution 2

Fauxbar makes Chrome's New Tab page act like Firefox's Awesome Bar:

• Quickly find the history page, tab or bookmark you're after
• Results are ranked using Mozilla's frecency algorithm, just like Firefox
• Alter the frecency algorithm's scoring if desired

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/fauxbar/hibkhcnpkakjniplpfblaoikiggkopka

If you want to stick with Chrome, you can also uncheck "Use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar."

I’m not sure but I think that https://code.google.com/archive/p/fauxbar/issues is shutdown.

Someone forked it to Github here:

https://github.com/ChrisNZL/Fauxbar

---

Easy History is another newer alternative.

https://github.com/nikhilgupta1211/Easy-History

Visit webpages by just entering a simple Keyword and Search the history with a fast and clean Interface

The whole extension is built on the idea to minimise mouse usage.

By simply pressing two keys access the Easy History Extension(Default keys: Ctrl+Space).

With the help of Easy History you can also easily navigate though your Browser history with a very clean interface.

You can also choose whether you want the history to be sorted according to the time or your visits to the link.

Time: History will be arranged in a manner such that the last visited link will be on the top.

Visits: History will be arranged in a manner such that the most visited link will be on the top

Comments

[Dennis Williamson]

For me in Chrome, I get a mix of suggestions and history by default.

[JustcallmeDrago]

This is what I want to avoid. I don't want suggestions, just history. And a better searcher for the history at that.

[Johannes Schaub - litb]

That's annoying me to death. I really like firefox' address bar, and I really hate chrome ones :( You need to wait several seconds until the address dropdown box shows some history URLs.

[sinni800]

I love how Opera already did this for AGES :P. Using the address bar searches the history, bookmarks, notes, etc, but not the search suggestions... This is done with the search bar next to it...

[Mokubai]

possible duplicate of Make Chrome's Omnibar behave more like the Firefox AwesomeBar

[Aleksei Zabrodskii]

OmniTab looks okay.

[Dan Dascalescu]

In addition to searching in the history, I would also like Chrome to search among its already opened tabs, like Firefox.

[JustcallmeDrago]

Actually, I've already done this. This question was posted long enough ago that I don't remember if I did so because of a response to my question. The address bar is still not very good. It still doesn't search instantly, and it's fuzzy search isn't very good (or maybe I perceive it that way because it isn't instant)

[Patches]

I have search suggestions turned on and use a rather slow mobile broadband Internet connection and it only takes about a second or two for everything to appear. With search suggestions turned off history results appear instantly. I'm using the beta version of Chrome though, so perhaps they've improved this in prerelease versions.

[Josh]

The setting is now located here: chrome://settings/syncSetup?search=autocomplete