Emacs Helm Interface for quick web searches.

Currently helm-google supports Google and Searx

quelpa is at https://github.com/quelpa/quelpa

(quelpa '(helm-google :fetcher git :url "https://framagit.org/steckerhalter/helm-google.git"))

helm-google is on melpa (see there for more info).

Call it with:

M-x helm-google

This will use the default search engine (Google is set by default, for customization see below).

To bind it to a key:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-h C--") 'helm-google)

To use one of the search engines explicitly instead of the default, use the appropriate function:

M-x helm-google-searx
M-x helm-google-google

If a region is selected it will take that as default input and search the web immediately. Otherwise it will start to search after you have entered a term. Pressing RET on a result calls the browse-url function which should open the URL in your web browser.

You can press TAB to view and choose alternative actions or press the appropriate key directly:

If you want use EWW by default you can set it as your default browser like so:

(setq browse-url-browser-function 'eww-browse-url)

If you want to keep the search open use C-z or C-j instead of RET.

The following customizations can also be made via M-x customize-group RET helm-google RET.

Google is the default engine. To make Searx your default use:

(setq helm-google-default-engine 'searx)

I’m using a default Searx instance that does not impose a rate limit. searx.me or searx.info are not usable because of the rate limitation.

I have limited the engines to google because the quality of the other search engines is poor IMO. Sometimes Searx instances fail to get results from Google, so if you don’t get results, try another instance from http://stats.searx.oe5tpo.com/, or add more search engines to the url:

https://searx.dk/?engines=google,bing,yahoo&format=json&q=%s

For additional Searx options see: https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/dev/search_api.html

If you want to tweak a search url, you can modify the alist helm-google-engines.

To do it in elisp use add-to-list, for example to modify the searx url:

(add-to-list 'helm-google-engines '(searx . "https://searx.drakonix.net/?engines=google&format=json&q=%s"))

This will shadow the old value which is the correct way to “modify” an alist entry.

When you stop typing, a search is launched after an idle time of 0.5s by default. You can customize this and set it to 1s for example:

(setq helm-google-idle-delay 1)

helm-google is added as an action to helm-google-suggest (thanks to Dickby). Press TAB and choose Helm-Google or use the shortcut listed there directly.