How to do a quick find with forward slash in Chrome?
Try checking out Vimium, an extension which gives you Vim keymappings. This would allow you to type a '/' and then you start typing whatever you're looking for and it dynamically jumps you to the part of the page that matches.
You may just find that the rest of the Vim keybindings are helpful too - for scrolling, navigating tabs, opening new links, etc., all without taking your hands off the keyboard - but you could simply start with the search feature and safely ignore the rest of the functionality if you're not familiar with the other bindings.
A Chromium find-as-you-type extension was recently launched that comes very near to the behavior I want.
There are several problems with the extension:
- does not search in local pages due to restrictions on Chrome extensions (you could hack the extension to make it work though)
- bad performance
In current versions of chrome you can do:
Ctrl + F, <search query>, Ctrl + Enter
Which is a bit more convenient compared to using ESC.
As you realized, Chrome doesn't offer a native way to modify shortcuts. As things stand, you have two options:
- if you are on the beta or developer channel - and are willing to install an extension - there's Shortcut manager to fulfil your remapping desires. BUT, right now, you'll have to contact the developer, since the "Find" browser action is not yet assignable;
- you can use a AutoHotkey script, which will map the "/" in your numeric keyboard pad to "Ctrl-f", only while in Google Chrome:
#IfWinActive, ahk_class Chrome_WindowImpl_0
NumpadDiv::
Send ^f
return