Mimic Firefox address bar behaviour in Chrome
June 9, 2011 7:55 AM   Subscribe

In Firefox I can easily find a site I've already visited by typing part of the URL and I get a list of URLs containing that string in a dropdown beneath the address. Can I get Chrome to do this?

For example, typing "min" into my Firefox address bar is a quick way to find all the URLs I have visited with the word "minecraft" in them - the most visited one at the top.

This does not work in Chrome, or if it does it's very hit and miss because it seems to search the page content, not the URL itself. For example typing "flood" into the address box (omnibox) brings up two totally unrelated sites but not the one URL in my history with the word "flood" in it.

I'd like to use Chrome more, but this really is a dealbreaker - is there any way round this?
posted by jontyjago to Computers & Internet (6 answers total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
In the address bar of Chrome, type "about:flags". Near the bottom of the list is the option:

Enable better omnibox history matching
Enables substring and multi-fragment matching within URLs from history.

Enable this, and Chrome's address bar will be much more Firefox-like.
posted by MagicEightBall at 8:13 AM on June 9, 2011 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Sounds exactly like the sort of thing I need, however it's not in the about:flags list. I'm on OS X if that makes a difference.
posted by jontyjago at 8:20 AM on June 9, 2011


That's a relatively new feature, you'll probably want to make sure you're on the latest version of Chrome. As of writing this it's version 12 (unless you're on a canary, dev, or beta channel)
posted by blue_beetle at 9:17 AM on June 9, 2011


Response by poster: Yup, says it's on the latest version: 12.0.742.91.
posted by jontyjago at 9:23 AM on June 9, 2011


The attributes of the "awesome bar" ought to be standard as far as I'm concerned; it's one of the few things I find that are missing in Chrome. And it's driving me nuts. And I just looked in about:flags and don't see it either, wtf. (I'm also on 12.0.742.91.)
posted by wintersweet at 12:44 PM on June 9, 2011


Those aren't in my dev version of 13.0.782.13 either, so it must be canary (bleeding edge) only.
posted by Magnakai at 4:15 PM on June 9, 2011


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