Use all DuckDuckGo !bang shortcuts in Firefox
DuckDuckGo introduced !bang shortcuts very early in its life as a way for users to quickly use other search engine website services. Adding !github, !ghacks, or !google in front of a term would redirect the query to the site immediately.
The bang-bookmarks HTML bookmarks file brings thousands of DuckDuckGo !bang shortcuts to the Firefox web browser. All that is needed is to import the file into Firefox to start using them.
Behind the scenes, bang-bookmarks is using keywords, which Firefox still supports but doesn’t really advertise much. Keywords are assigned to bookmarks so that bookmarked pages can be opened using the keyword instead of having to type part or all of the bookmarked address. Search engines in Firefox use keywords, but bookmarks don’t by default.
Is that how it works:
- Start by downloading the latest bookmarks file from the official GitHub repository. The file is compatible with Firefox bookmarks and includes more than 10,000 entries.
- Open the Firefox web browser and select Menu > Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks, or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-O instead to open the bookmark manager.
- Once open, select Import & Backup > Import Bookmarks from HTML.
- Select the downloaded bookmarks.html file from your local system for Firefox to import. The process may take several minutes to complete, depending on the device you are using.
All imported bookmarks are added to Bookmarks Menu > Bang Bookmarks. You can check them there and delete some that you are not interested in.
Once the bookmarks file has been imported, you can start using !bang shortcuts in Firefox. Try something like !github powertoys, !ghacks windows 11, or !ytb firefox to redirect search queries to the listed services.
Tip: Open the bookmark manager in Firefox again and select a bookmark to display its keyword. You can also use the search field to quickly find bookmarks.
Adding the bookmarks and keywords to Firefox bypasses DuckDuckGo and keeps everything local. The downside of adding thousands of bookmarks to Firefox is that you end up with a large number that you may not need. You can add frequently used services to Firefox bookmarks and add keywords for each of them to use in this way. Or, you can import the file and remove any bookmarks you don’t need, but that certainly takes a lot of time.
The import added several broken bookmarks to the Firefox bookmarks. Some keywords looked like this !u03c5u03c4, and some bookmark names like 11ubc88uac00 Search, suggesting that the import had problems or that the base file already had these problems.
Now you: Do you use keywords in your browser of choice or !bangs in DuckDuckGo?
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