googler - Man Page

Google from the command-line

Examples (TL;DR)

Synopsis

googler [Options] [KEYWORD [KEYWORD ...]]

Description

googler is a command-line tool to search Google (web, news, videos and site search) from the terminal. Google site search works too. googler shows the title, URL and text context for each result. Results are fetched in pages. Next or previous page navigation is possible using keyboard shortcuts. Results are indexed and a result URL can be opened in a browser using the index number. There is no configuration file as aliases serve the same purpose for this utility. Supports sequential searches in a single instance.

Features

 * Google Search, Google Site Search, Google News
 * Fast and clean (no ads, stray URLs or clutter), custom color
 * Navigate result pages from omniprompt, open URLs in browser
 * Effortless keyword-based site search with googler @t add-on
 * Search and option completion scripts for Bash, Zsh and Fish
 * Fetch n results in a go, start at the n<sup>th</sup> result
 * Disable automatic spelling correction and search exact keywords
 * Specify duration, country/domain (default: worldwide/.com), language
 * Google keywords (e.g. filetype:mime, site:somesite.com) support
 * 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, User Agent, TLS 1.2 (default) support
 * Comprehensive documentation, man page with handy usage examples
 * Minimal dependencies

Options

-h,  --help

Show help text and exit.

-s,  --start=N

Start at the Nth result.

-n,  --count=N

Show N results (default 10).

-N,  --news

Show results from news section.

-c,  --tld=TLD

Country-specific search with top-level domain .TLD, e.g., in for India.

-l,  --lang=LANG

Search for the language LANG, e.g., fi for Finnish.

-g,  --geoloc=CC

Country-specific geolocation search with country code CC, e.g. 'in' for India. Country codes are the same as top-level domains.

-x,  --exact

Disable automatic spelling correction. Search exact keywords.

-C,  --nocolor

Disable color output.

--colors=COLORS

Set output colors. Refer to the Colors section below for details.

-j,  --first,  --lucky

Open the first result in a web browser; implies --noprompt. Feeling Lucky?

-t,  --time=dN

Time limit search [h5 (5 hrs), d5 (5 days), w5 (5 weeks), m5 (5 months), y5 (5 years)].

-w,  --site=SITE

Search a site using Google.

-e,  --exclude=EXCLUDE

Exclude site from results.

--unfilter

Do not omit similar results.

-p,  --proxy=PROXY

Tunnel traffic through an HTTP proxy. PROXY is of the form [http://][user:password@]proxyhost[:port]. The proxy server must support HTTP CONNECT tunneling and must not block port 443 for the relevant Google hosts. If a proxy is not explicitly given, the https_proxy environment variable (if available) is used instead.

--noua

Disable user agent. Results are fetched faster.

--notweak

Disable TCP optimizations. Negotiate Transport Layer Security protocol instead of forcing TLS 1.2 (on Python 3.4 and above). Should be used only in case of connection issues.

--json

Output in JSON format; implies --noprompt.

--url-handler=UTIL

Custom script or command-line utility to open urls with.

--show-browser-logs

Do not suppress browser output when opening result in browser; that is, connect stdout and stderr of the browser to googler's stdout and stderr instead of /dev/null. By default, browser output is suppressed (due to certain graphical browsers spewing messages to console) unless the BROWSER environment variable is a known text-based browser: elinks, links, lynx, w3m or www-browser.

--np,  --noprompt

Perform search and exit; do not prompt for further interactions.

-u,  --upgrade

Perform in-place self-upgrade. By default, the latest stable version is used. However, the latest git master is used instead if --include-git is also supplied. This mechanism is not available on Windows (including Cygwin), and if you installed googler with a package manager, this mechanism may have been disabled by your packager at packaging or install time.

--include-git

See --upgrade.

-v,  --version

Show 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 [index|range|a ...]

Open space-separated result indices, numeric ranges (sitelinks unsupported in ranges) or all indices, if 'a' is specified, in the browser. Open the current search in the browser, if no arguments.

O [index|range|a ...]

Works similar to key 'o', but tries to ignore text-based browsers (even if BROWSER is set) and open links in a GUI browser.

g keywords

Initiate a new Google search for keywords with original options. This key should be used to search omniprompt keys (including itself) and indices.

c index

Copy url to clipboard.

u

Toggle url expansion.

q, ^D, double Enter

Exit googler.

?

Show omniprompt help.

*

Any other string initiates a new search with original options.

Googler @T

googler @t is a convenient add-on to Google Site Search with unique keywords. While googler has an integrated option to search a site, it could be simplified further with aliases. The file googler_at (https://github.com/jarun/googler/blob/master/auto-completion/googler_at/googler_at) contains a list of website search aliases. To source it, run:

source googler_at

or

. googler_at

With googler @t, the following command searches Wikipedia for hexspeak:

@w hexspeak

Other googler options can be combined. The shell can be configured to be source the file at start-up for further convenience.

All the aliases start with the @ symbol (hence the name googler @t) and there is minimum chance they will conflict with any shell commands. Users can add new aliases to the file.

Colors

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:
LetterColor/Style
ablack
bred
cgreen
dyellow
eblue
fmagenta
gcyan
hwhite
ibright black
jbright red
kbright green
lbright yellow
mbright blue
nbright magenta
obright cyan
pbright white
A-Hbold version of the lowercase-letter color
I-Pbold version of the lowercase-letter bright color
xnormal
Xbold
yreverse video
Ybold reverse video
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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code for details.

Environment

BROWSER

Overrides the default browser. Ref: http://docs.python.org/library/webbrowser.html

GOOGLER_COLORS

Refer to the Colors section.

DISABLE_PROMPT_COLOR

Force a plain omniprompt if you are facing issues with colors at the prompt.

https_proxy

Refer to the --proxy option.

DISABLE_URL_EXPANSION

Show the domain names in search results instead of the expanded URL.

Examples

  1. Google hello world:

    googler hello world
  2. Fetch 15 results updated within the last 14 months, starting from the 3rd result for the keywords jungle book in site imdb.com:

    googler -n 15 -s 3 -t m14 -w imdb.com jungle book
  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 amazon.com -w ebay.com digital camera

    Site specific search continues at omniprompt.

  10. Alias to find definitions of words:

    alias define='googler -n 2 define'
  11. Look up n, p, o, O, q, g keywords or a result index at the omniprompt: as the omniprompt recognizes these keys 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., one warm color scheme designed for Solarized Dark:

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.

Quote multiple search keywords to auto-complete (using completion script):

googler 'hello w<TAB>

Authors

Henri Hakkinen
Arun Prakash Jana <engineerarun@gmail.com>
Zhiming Wang <zmwangx@gmail.com>

Home

https://github.com/jarun/googler

Reporting Bugs

https://github.com/jarun/googler/issues

License

Copyright © 2008 Henri Hakkinen
Copyright © 2015-2021 Arun Prakash Jana <engineerarun@gmail.com>

License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Info

21 Jan 2021 Version 4.3.2