Google Desktop's Ctrl,Ctrl feature on windows?
It's possible to do this with a script for AutoHotkey (Windows automation software). Just open notepad, paste the code below and save it with the .ahk file extension. I could only test it on Windows 7 though. But it opens the search URL on a new tab as expected. The search dialog box looks like this:
global MySearch
Gui, Margin, 9, 10
Gui, Font, s12
Gui, Add, Edit, vMySearch w400 -WantReturn
Gui, Font, c999999 s7
Gui, Add, Text, Y+3, Press <ctrl> twice to hide/show.
GuiEscape:
Gui, Hide
#ifWinActive Google Search
NumpadEnter::
Enter::
submitSearch()
return
#IfWinActive
Ctrl::
KeyWait, Ctrl
KeyWait, Ctrl, D, T0.12
if ErrorLevel = 0
{
if WinActive("Google Search")
Gui, Hide
else
Gui, Show,, Google Search
}
return
submitSearch(){
Gui, Submit
searchURL := "https://www.google.com/#q=" . urlEncode(MySearch)
Run, %searchURL%
GuiControl,, MySearch
}
urlEncode(url){
VarSetCapacity(Var,StrPut(url,"UTF-8"),0),StrPut(url,&Var,"UTF-8")
While Code:=NumGet(Var,A_Index-1,"UChar")
Res.=(Chr:=Chr(Code))~="[0-9A-Za-z]"?Chr:Format("%{:02X}",Code)
return,Res
}
What you could do is create a keyboard shortcut (without using any software!) to launch Chrome. Once you do that, you can hit the shortcut and when Chrome opens, it shows up with its address bar highlighted. Just type and hit enter.
Basically your exact use-case, except no middle-man (just type directly into the browser).
I don't think ctrl+ctrl, specifically, is possible (due to left/right ctrl
s not being distinguished and just being control keys).
Should the link die you can create a keyboard shortcut (without third party software) by;
- creating an ordinary shortcut (type
chrome
into your start menu,rightclick
on the icon ->copy
, thenrightclick
in some folder ->Paste shortcut
) - go into the properties of the shortcut (
rightclick
->properties
), under theShortcut
tab there should be aShortcut key
field. - type a key combination and hit
Ok
. That's it (the shortcut file will need to exist for the keyboard shortcut to continue to work)
As a further note, it turns out the result in the startmenu search for chrome
is a shortcut, so you can skip the first step and just go into the properties of the menu item to add the Key shortcut
field.
It's possible to do something similar to this (among other things) with the Open Source software Launchy.
By default the shortcut to open the bar is Alt + Space (You can change this but I don't think ctrl, ctrl is possible...)
To google search you would type "google" TAB "foo" ENTER.