Google has changed the way personalized searches work in Google Chrome. Now, you can no longer enter your custom search keyword and press space to search quickly. However, there is an alternative – and a way to recover the old custom search behavior.
What is a personalized search?
Google Chrome has a search feature that allows you to assign “keywords” to personalized searches. For example, after setting it up, you can type “w chickadee” to search Wikipedia for “chickadee” or “h windows” to search How-To Geek for Windows articles.
You can control them in Chrome by clicking the menu> Settings> Search engine> Manage search engines. The “Keyword” field defines the personalized keyword that initiates a personalized search. Add a short to speed things up. (To define a search keyword for a search engine, click the menu button on the right, click “Edit” and enter the keyword in the Keyword box.)
What has changed?
Say you have a search keyword “y” that searches on YouTube. Previously, you could type “y cooking” in the Chrome omnibox and press Enter to search YouTube for videos about cooking.
However, the space bar no longer works that way, thanks to a change made to version 88 of Google Chrome in February 2021.
As a Chrome developer explained on Reddit, Google made this change to prevent people from accidentally triggering personalized searches with the space bar when performing normal searches.
Using Custom Search Keywords with Tab
There’s still a way to easily use your personalized searches – with the tab bar.
To perform a personalized search, place the focus in the Chrome address bar (for example, with Ctrl + L), type your keyword, press Tab, type your search and press Enter.
For example, if you had a YouTube search that you searched for on YouTube when you typed “y”, you now have to type “y”, press Tab, type your search and press Enter.
How to recover the behavior of the old space button
If you are used to the old space bar behavior, you can retrieve it with a flag. As usual, there is no guarantee that these Chrome flags will remain around. Google will likely remove this option someday.
To get started, open the Chrome flag page. Type “chrome: // flags” (without quotes) in Chrome’s location bar and press Enter to find it.
First, type “omnibox keyword” in the search field at the top of the page. When the “Omnibox keyword search button” option appears, click on the “Standard” box and set the option to “Disabled”.
Second, type “omnibox suggestion” in the search field. When the option “Omnibox suggestion button line” appears, click the “Standard” box on the right and set the option to “Enabled”.
You are now ready and can click on the “Restart” button at the bottom of the page to restart Google Chrome. When it restarts, you can use the space bar with your personalized searches again.
Observation: We tested this with Chrome 88 on February 16, 2020. If the options are no longer present in a future version of Chrome, there may no longer be a way to recover the old space bar behavior. You can still use custom searches with the Tab key.
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