googler is a power tool to Google (Web & News) and Google Site Search from the command-line. It shows the title, URL and abstract for each result, which can be directly opened in a browser from the terminal. Results are fetched in pages (with page navigation). Supports sequential searches in a single googler instance.

googler was initially written to cater to headless servers without X. You can integrate it with a text-based browser. However, it has grown into a very handy and flexible utility that delivers much more. For example, fetch any number of results or start anywhere, limit search by any duration, define aliases to google search any number of websites, switch domains easily... all of this in a very clean interface without ads or stray URLs. The shell completion scripts make sure you don't need to remember any options.

googler isn't affiliated to Google in any way.

• Features
• Installation
  • Installing from this repository
    • Installing to default or custom location
    • Running as a standalone utility
    • Shell completion
  • Installing with a package manager
    • Tips for packagers
  • Downloading a single file
• Usage
  • Cmdline options
  • Configuration file
  • Colors
• Examples
• FAQ
• Troubleshooting
• Notes
• Developers

• Google Search, Google Site Search, Google News
• Fast and clean (no ads, stray URLs or clutter), custom color
• Open result URLs (or the actual search) in browser
• Navigate search result pages from omniprompt
• Fetch n results in a go, start at the n^th result
• Disable automatic spelling correction and search exact keywords
• Limit search by duration, country/domain specific search (default: .com), language preference
• Supports Google search keywords like filetype:mime, site:somesite.com etc.
• Optionally open the first result directly in browser (as in I'm Feeling Lucky)
• Non-stop searches: fire new searches at omniprompt without exiting
• HTTPS proxy support
• Man page with examples, shell completion scripts for Bash, Zsh and Fish
• Minimal dependencies

googler requires Python 3.3 or later. Only the latest patch release of each minor version is supported.

To download this repository, you may either clone via git:

$ git clone https://github.com/jarun/googler/

or download a source code archive: the latest stable release or the development version.

To install to the default location (/usr/local):

$ sudo make install

To remove googler and associated docs, run

$ sudo make uninstall

PREFIX is supported, in case you want to install to a different location.

googler is a standalone executable. From the containing directory:

$ ./googler

Shell completion scripts for Bash, Fish and Zsh can be found in respective subdirectories of auto-completion/. Please refer to your shell's manual for installation instructions.

• AUR
• Homebrew
• Debian
• Ubuntu
• Ubuntu PPA

googler v2.7 and later ships with an in-place self-upgrade mechanism which you may want to disable. To do this, run

$ make disable-self-upgrade

before installation.

Googler is a single standalone script, so you could download just a single file if you'd like to.

To install the latest stable version, run

$ sudo curl -o /usr/local/bin/googler https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jarun/googler/v2.6/googler && sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/googler

You could then let googler upgrade itself by running

$ sudo googler -u

Similarly, if you want to install from git master, run

$ sudo curl -o /usr/local/bin/googler https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jarun/googler/master/googler && sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/googler

and upgrade by running

$ sudo googler -u --include-git

usage: googler [-h] [-s N] [-n N] [-N] [-c TLD] [-l LANG] [-x] [-C]
               [--colors COLORS] [-j] [-t dN] [-w SITE] [-p PROXY] [--noua]
               [--json] [--enable-browser-output] [--np] [-u]
               [--include-git] [-v] [-d]
               [KEYWORD [KEYWORD ...]]

Google from the command-line.

positional arguments:
  KEYWORD               search keywords

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -s N, --start N       start at the Nth result
  -n N, --count N       show N results (default 10)
  -N, --news            show results from news section
  -c TLD, --tld TLD     country-specific search with top-level domain .TLD,
                        e.g., 'in' for India. Ref:
                        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_domains
  -l LANG, --lang LANG  display in language LANG
  -x, --exact           disable automatic spelling correction
  -C, --nocolor         disable color output
  --colors COLORS       set output colors (see man page for details)
  -j, --first, --lucky  open the first result in web browser and exit
  -t dN, --time dN      time limit search [h5 (5 hrs), d5 (5 days), w5 (5
                        weeks), m5 (5 months), y5 (5 years)]
  -w SITE, --site SITE  search a site using Google
  -p PROXY, --proxy PROXY
                        tunnel traffic through an HTTPS proxy (HOST:PORT)
  --noua                disable user agent
  --notweak             disable TCP optimizations and forced TLS 1.2
  --json                output in JSON format; implies --exact and --noprompt
  --enable-browser-output
                        do not suppress browser output (stdout and stderr)
  --np, --noprompt      search and exit, do not prompt
  -u, --upgrade         perform in-place self-upgrade
  --include-git         when used with --upgrade, upgrade to latest git master
  -v, --version         show program's version number and exit
  -d, --debug           enable debugging

omniprompt keys:
  n, p                  fetch the next or previous set of search results
  index                 open the result corresponding to index in browser
  f                     jump to the first page
  o                     open the current search in browser
  g keywords            new Google search for 'keywords' with original options
  q, ^D, double Enter   exit googler
  ?                     show omniprompt help
  *                     any other string initiates a new search with original options

googler doesn't have any! This is to retain the speed of the utility and avoid OS-specific differences. Users can enjoy the advantages of config files using aliases (with the exception of the color scheme, which can be additionally customized through an environment variable; see Colors). There's no need to memorize options.

For example, the following alias for bash/zsh/ksh/etc.

alias g='googler -n 7 -c ru -l ru'

fetches 7 results from the Google Russia server, with preference towards results in Russian.

The alias serves both the purposes of using config files:

• Persistent settings: when the user invokes g, it expands to the preferred settings.
• Override settings: thanks to the way Python argparse works, googler is written so that the settings in alias are completely overridden by any options passed from cli. So when the same user runs g -l de -c de -n 12 hello world, 12 results are returned from the Google Germany server, with preference towards results in German.

googler allows you to customize the color scheme via a six-letter string, reminiscent of BSD LSCOLORS. The six letters represent the colors of

• indices
• titles
• URLs
• metadata/publishing info (Google News only)
• abstracts
• prompts

respectively. The six-letter string is passed in either as the argument to the --colors option, or as the value of the environment variable GOOGLER_COLORS.

We offer the following colors/styles:

The default colors string is GKlgxy, which stands for

• bold bright cyan indices
• bold bright green titles
• bright yellow URLs
• cyan metadata/publishing info
• normal abstracts
• reverse video prompts

Note that

• Bright colors (implemented as \x1b[90m–\x1b[97m) may not be available in all color-capable terminal emulators;
• Some terminal emulators draw bold text in bright colors instead;
• Some terminal emulators only distinguish between bold and bright colors via a default-off switch.

Please consult the manual of your terminal emulator as well as the Wikipedia article on ANSI escape sequences.

1. Google hello world:

    $ googler hello world
   

2. Fetch 15 results updated within last 14 months, starting from the 3^rd result for the string cmdline utility in site tuxdiary.com:

    $ googler -n 15 -s 3 -t m14 -w tuxdiary.com cmdline utility
   

3. Read recent news on gadgets:

    $ googler -N gadgets
   

4. Fetch results on IPL cricket from Google India server in English:

    $ googler -c in -l en IPL cricket
   

5. Search quoted text:

    $ googler it\'s a \"beautiful world\" in spring
   

6. Search for a specific file type:

    $ googler instrumental filetype:mp3
   

7. Disable automatic spelling correction, e.g. fetch results for googler instead of google:

    $ googler -x googler
   

8. I'm feeling lucky search:

    $ googler -j leather jackets
   

9. Website specific search:

    $ googler -w tuxdiary.com hello world
   

Site specific search continues at omniprompt. Use the g key to run a regular Google search. 10. Alias to find definitions of words:

    alias define='googler -n 2 define'

11. Look up n, p, o, q, g keywords or a result index at the omniprompt: As the omniprompt recognizes n, p, o, q, g or index strings as commands, you need to prefix them with g, e.g.,

    g n
    g g keywords
    g 1
    

12. Input and output redirection:

    $ googler -C hello world < input > output
    

    Note that -C is required to avoid printing control characters (for colored output).

13. Pipe output:

    $ googler -C hello world | tee output
    

14. Use a custom color scheme, e.g., a warm color scheme designed for Solarized Dark (screenshot):

    $ googler --colors bjdxxy google
    $ GOOGLER_COLORS=bjdxxy googler google
    

15. Tunnel traffic through an HTTPS proxy, e.g., a local Privoxy instance listening on port 8118:

    $ googler --proxy localhost:8118 google
    

    By default the environment variable https_proxy is used, if defined.

16. More help:

    $ googler -h
    $ man googler
    

1. How do I integrate googler with a text-based browser, e.g., w3m?

   Set the BROWSER environment variable, for instance,

    $ export BROWSER=w3m
   

   or for one-time use,

    $ BROWSER=w3m googler query
   

   Note that due to certain graphical browsers spewing messages to the console, googler suppresses browser output by default unless BROWSER is set to one of the known text-based browsers: currently elinks, links, lynx or w3m. If you use a different text-based browser, you will need to explicitly enable browser output with the --enable-browser-output option. In that case, please submit an issue or pull request if you believe your browser is popular enough, and we will consider whitelisting it. See the man page for more details about --enable-browser-output.

1. In some instances googler may show fewer number of results than you expect, e.g., if you fetch a single result (-n 1) it may not show any results. The reason is Google shows some Google service (e.g. Youtube) results, map locations etc. depending on your geographical data, which googler tries to omit. In some cases Google (the web-service) doesn't show exactly 10 results (default) on a search. We chose to omit these results as far as possible. While this can be fixed, it would need more processing (and more time). You can just navigate forward to fetch the next set of results.

2. By default googler applies some TCP optimizations and forces TLS 1.2 (on Python 3.4 and above). If you are facing connection issues, try disabling both using the --notweak switch.

1. Initially I raised a pull request but I could see that the last change was made 7 years earlier. In addition, there is no GitHub activity from the original author Henri Hakkinen in past year. I have created this independent repo for the project with the name googler. I retained the original copyright information.

2. Google provides a search API which returns the results in JSON format. However, as per my understanding from the official docs, the API issues the queries against an existing instance of a custom search engine and is limited by 100 search queries per day for free. In addition, I have reservations in paying if they ever change their plan or restrict the API in other ways. So I refrained from coupling with Google plans & policies or exposing my trackable personal custom search API key and identifier for the public. I retained the browser-way of doing it by fetching html, which is a open and free specification.

3. You can find a rofi script for googler here. Written by an anonymous user, untested and we don't maintain it.

1. Copyright (C) 2008 Henri Hakkinen
2. Copyright (C) 2015-2016 Arun Prakash Jana
3. Zhiming Wang

Special thanks to jeremija, shaggytwodope and Narrat for their contributions and efforts in spreading googler.