Allow disabling of default search engine hotkeys

Epsilon1123

Epsilon1123 11 Jul 2023, 17:28

Okay, I'm trying to search "z score tables" online and am getting redirected to Amazon. Why on earth would there not be a setting to either disable the hotkeys, or change them? What genius implemented this feature, I must know, as with money comes stupidity.

Either way, this should be moved as a bug, since the "Space and Tab" and "Tab" feature is busted. Absolutely frustrating to deal with, and having nothing done over however many years since this has first been mentioned in any thread.

shinobicat5

shinobicat5 12 Jul 2023, 23:13

Ok, I'm not crazy. This is a thing. I was trying to search the "d scale" for music and it kept sending me to DDG's "scale" search results.

This sucks.
I've had OperaGX for almost a year now, I'm surprised I haven't run into this sooner.

azerdgzgrgrg

azerdgzgrgrg @leocg 7 Aug 2023, 13:03

@leocg every one requested for this to change they can just add a toggle to it so if u use this thing u continue to use it even though no one uses it and if u r normal human being like 99.99% of ppl u will disable it

blt123 · 16 Sept 2023, 17:02

blt123 15 Sept 2023, 23:05

Has there seriously not been a fix for this yet, its been like 2 years

leocg · 17 Sept 2023, 04:39

leocg Moderator Volunteer @blt123 16 Sept 2023, 16:59

@blt123 It's not a bug, so nothing to be fixed. It's a request that they may or may not accept someday.

VitalityVentures · 17 Sept 2023, 04:36

VitalityVentures @blt123 16 Sept 2023, 17:02

@blt123 The only fix for this annoying accessibility issue/poor UI decision is to switch to another browser, which is what I have done.

This functionality is the only complaint I have with the browser, but it's a deal-breaker for me.

blt123

blt123 @VitalityVentures 17 Sept 2023, 04:36

@vitalityventures yeah ive been considering switching as well, ive just ran into to this issue on too many occasions

blt123 · 17 Sept 2023, 04:45

blt123 @leocg 17 Sept 2023, 04:39

@leocg why was such an obscure, unnecessary feature implemented in a way such that it is impossible for people to disable, just feels like such a ridiculous thing to force on all users. Is opera really being paid that much by the other browsers for this feature?

leocg · 9 Dec 2023, 15:42

leocg Moderator Volunteer @blt123 17 Sept 2023, 04:45

@blt123 Don't know, I could speculate that it's part of the agreements to have those (pre-defined) search engines.

Dellengietf2

Dellengietf2 @leocg 9 Dec 2023, 15:42

Sucks that this hasn't been solved yet but a potential temporary fix is if you're going to search something with 1 letter at the start, put "g" and a space before it, because that's the shortcut for the google search engine.
For example if you wanted to search "d pad" type "g d pad" and it will search the google for "d pad". Its still annoying though.

Berk404 · 9 Mar 2024, 18:27

Berk404 27 Feb 2024, 01:49

Okay, this has been legitimately annoying me for a while, and I'm even considering switching because of how often this happens and because it cannot be disabled. Today's problem: I searched for "z index" in the address bar, and it redirected me to Amazon, searching for "index" on it, despite having Google as my default search engine for a reason. If I wanted to search something on Amazon, I'd do it on their website... If I set my default search engine to Google, it's for a reason. How come they didn't add an option to disable this? I literally had to create an account here just to complain about this. One of the Moderators above said "There's nothing to fix". I disagree; this is something that needs to be addressed. It's not a bug, but not everything that needs fixing is a bug.

I expected OperaGX to be reasonable, and when clicking the three dots, a "disable shortcut" option would appear. But guess what? That doesn't happen. The only option that appears is "set as default"...

I don't want to add a "g" in front of everything I search, I don't want to surround everything I search in quotes; I simply want to be able to search for "z index" in my browser without getting redirected to Amazon...

This has to be fixed. Users have been complaining about this for a while, and no one is doing anything. Moderators are defending bad UI design using the logic of "it's not a bug, it's a feature". You can keep your Moderator rank without needing to support every bad UI choice made.

This post has 9.1k views, most of them is people facing the same issue but not being able to answer this post because they didn't want to create an account to reply or support this post.
How come this has been a problem since 2021?...

Let us disable search engine shortcuts, just as you do with normal shortcuts, we are not asking for much.

FrogScientist

FrogScientist @Berk404 9 Mar 2024, 18:27

@berk404 Oh my god, I came to this forum because of your exact same situation. I was searching up z-scores and it automatically redirected me to Amazon. Thought it might have been something with the settings, but my rabbit hole digging led me to this discussion. The ridiculousness of this situation is a sentiment I feel everyone has, and I hope that they allow the disabling of the shortcut soon.

MaggyMage

MaggyMage 12 Mar 2024, 18:56

An extremely easy fix for this would be if they were to just actually make the feature of only having it happen on tab work. They have a setting for keyboard shortcut that can be set to either "Space or Tab" or to "Tab". If you could change that, and it would then only do this behavior when pressing tab, it wouldn't be that big a problem, but for me, despite having changed the setting to "Tab" instead of the default "Space and Tab" it still triggers when pressing space.

Hawkk97

Hawkk97 7 Apr 2024, 11:16

Same for me. I'm just commenting so this keeps getting bumbed up and maybe be fixed sooner!

Natcuber

Natcuber 17 Apr 2024, 10:30

I also just tried to search D major key signature on Opera and... This is terrible.

Bonotix

Bonotix 23 May 2024, 12:05

It still hasn´t been changed, i´m going mad. Every time i type g protein it always deletes the g it is so useless function, if you can´t change it or turn it off.

GerritDamen

GerritDamen 8 Jun 2024, 14:08

Well, I've created an account just to let you know: noone ever used that stupid feature and today noone even knows that yahoo was a search engine back in the day.

So please, give users an option to disable this completely unnecessary feature that just leads to frustration because search prompts are misinterpreted. I'm just here because i tried to Google the computergame Z from 1996 and it drove me mad.

mariogalan · 3 Sept 2024, 22:30

mariogalan 3 Sept 2024, 19:11

I have a different problem but the solution would be the same: I search a lot in Youtube and of course I would like to have the ability to do it by just typing 'y' in front of my search. This is a great feature. Or it would be if it weren't for the fact that Yahoo! reserved that key for their search engine -which I think is used less often by Youtube btw. Please let us disactivate that feature!!!!!!

leocg · 6 Sept 2024, 19:35

leocg Moderator Volunteer @mariogalan 3 Sept 2024, 22:30

@mariogalan I don't think that it would help with your problem.

burnout426 · 5 Sept 2024, 16:28

burnout426 Volunteer 4 Sept 2024, 00:49

What I like to do is goto https://www.youtube.com/, right-click in the search field, choose "Create search engine", set the keyword to yt and choose "create".

Then, I just type yt metallica and press enter for example when I want to search Youtube. Some users like to make the keyword youtube.com so that they can type youtube.com metallica and press enter, which is similar to how Chrome does automatic search engines.