How-To Geek
How to Enable Google Instant Search in Google Chrome
Google Instant was released last week, adding instant search results to the page before you even finish typing. Here’s how to enable Google Instant search directly in the Google Chrome browser—though it’s still very rough.
You’re going to need to be running the Dev Channel version of Google Chrome to get this to work. Head over to the Early Access Releases page and download the Dev Channel installer to upgrade your current version to the Dev channel.
How it Works
Here’s a video that shows Google Instant search in action in Chrome. You’ll notice that the results load instantly on the bottom half of the page while you’re searching.
The Problem, At Least Right Now
If you heavily use Google Search in Chrome, you probably won’t want to enable this right now. Why? Because Google doesn’t like you, and you’ll trigger the automatic request error eventually.
We have to assume they’ll eventually figure this out, and it’ll all work.
Enable Google Instant Search
Right-click on the shortcut and choose Properties, or if you’re using Windows 7 and have it pinned to the taskbar, you can right-click the button to get the Jump List, and then right-click on Google Chrome and choose Properties from there.
Once you’ve got the properties window open, you will need to add the following to the end of the Target field, making sure to add a space between chrome.exe and the switch.
--enable-match-preview
Click OK, close out of every single Chrome window, and then open it again using this shortcut.
Using Instant Search in Chrome
Now that you have it enabled, you can simply start typing to see it in action—if you Google for something that you haven’t searched for before, you’ll notice that it loads up in a Google page, like this search for weather.
In some cases it’ll load the page directly, especially if there’s a single match and you’ve been to the page before. You can also move up and down in the list with the keyboard, and load the pages immediately.
It’s really fairly rough, and loading the entire page can be a little weird, especially if it tries to load a page with a lot of data on it. But, it’s progress!
Thanks to Shawn for the tip!
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Comments (19)
Programmer by day, geek by night, The Geek, also known as Lowell Heddings, spends all his free time bringing you fresh geekery on a daily basis. You can follow him on Google+ if you'd like.
- Published 09/12/10
And now i want this as addon on my firefox!
That is awesome! But I can imagine how this feature can yield embarrassing results :)
Just tried it, doesn’t quite work in Canada yet, can someone verify?
In Spain it doesn’t work!
in poland on chromium 7 win32 works :)
Germany, Firefox 3.6.9, OS X 10.6.4:
works great ;)
what about on OSX?
No can do Chief in Chrome Vista can’t do it.
doesn’t work in Belgium.
What are you talking about???
I’ve been using this on Chrome since launch day and it has been working fine without changing anything.
Israel, doesn’t work…
I really appreciate your How-To emails. Hope you don’t take any of my ignorance below as a criticism.
Where does the Dev channel fit between a beta and a released version?
Wouldn’t the Dev possibly include bugs in many new features not in the current release?
If so, I might be exchanging one neat thing for many other problems.
As the only help from Google comes from their Forum
– the blind leading the blind imho –
I don’t wish to encounter more problems than the ones I’m still waiting answers for.
Yes, Me too Fanny. It works like a charm for me too and I did NOTHING! Technology is great when it works.
Czech Republic (6.0.472.55) doesn’t work.
how do you do this on a mac?
Windows XP SP3 Chrome Canary 7.0.524.0 Netherlands doesn’t work at all!
Eventually I got a Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. Please try your request again later!
Caused by Google’s own software! hahaha
suddenly stopped working, how to turn it?
how do i fix my errors on computor as i have no access to another machine and i have 391 plus errors i do need your help it also didnt say how much it woul cost.