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TUAW First Look: Google Quick Search Box for Mac

by Steven Sande Jun 10th 2009 at 7:30PM


Google released a new tool for Mac users today. With Google Quick Search Box (QSB), you can perform searches of anything on your Mac or the Web with a few keystrokes. After downloading QSB, I installed it and gave it a test drive on my MacBook Air. After a short first look, I can say that QSB is going to be in constant use on my Macs.

The application takes up about 18 MB of space on your Mac hard disk, and once it is installed a small search box hovers on your screen (see above). You can toggle the presence of the box by pressing Control-Space Bar. The keyboard shortcut, as well as the appearance of the search box, can be customized in a very thorough preferences panel.
Once the search box appears on your screen, you can type anything into the box and QSB will immediately search both your computer and Google for items that are close to your search criteria. Want to search something other than Google? There's quite a list of built-in locations (below):

You can even use QSB as an application launcher. Type in the name of a Mac program and it will show up in the list of search results (below). Press the return key, and it launches that application.

There are plugins available for QSB as well. One, for example, makes it simple to send Twitter messages from QSB by typing in your 140 characters of text beginning with a space. Pressing the tab key allows you to choose which Twitter account you want to send the message from (below). Press return, and the message is sent, and a few seconds later a Growl notification appears confirming the tweet.

Want to search your Mail inbox? Google QSB does that, too. Phrases or words in emails will often show up in search results, and highlighting the results and pressing return not only opens Mail, but highlights all of the entries containing the search words.

While I was writing this post, a massive thunderstorm went through, dumping rain and hail. Can you check weather with Google QSB? See for yourself:

Of course, the dark skies, rolling thunder, and marble-sized hail on the ground should have been a clue about the weather.

I could go on for a while about this cool little application, but I think I'd better serve the TUAW audience by saying "go out and download Google Quick Search Box -- now!"


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Google released a new tool for Mac users today. With Google Quick Search Box (QSB), you can perform searches of anything on your Mac or...
 

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Dick

Has anyone used Little Snitch to determine what info about you and your computer QSB sends back to Google?

June 11 2009 at 12:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
turkay

Have you ever heard about Launchbar? IMO it is way more faster and capable than both QS and Google QSB. I can't imagine a Mac without it.

June 11 2009 at 12:02 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
garyfs

@mickeys: I believe what you were trying to say was, "This *is* different than Spotlight" (not 'then'). If you are comparing something, you want to use “than,” while if you are discussing the time at which something occurred, “then” is correct.
I realize no one likes to have their grammar corrected, but it adds more credibility to your comments... helpful as they were.

June 11 2009 at 11:10 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jash Sayani

QuickSilver is the best! I had tested this out in the early beta and it was good! But QuickSilver can do this and more with plug-ins like RTM tasks.

June 11 2009 at 9:26 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Johnzim

Nice to see there's a lifeline for those of us who love Quicksilver but are afraid for its long-term future.

At the moment, GQS isn't really powerful enough so I'll stick to Quicksilver but it's still early days.

GQS is missing things like setting up your own separate key-commands for opening pre-defined searches.

For instance I use CTRL-OPT-S to Search iTunes by track name and then my default action is "Play Next in PartyShuffle/iTunesDJ" making it really easy to queue up music.

June 11 2009 at 5:57 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Lichi

The only thing stopping me from switching from QuickSilver to QSB is customizing keyboard short cut. For example I use CMD + Shift + E to open a Finder window. Scrapping QS means I lose keyboard shortcuts as well

June 11 2009 at 5:37 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
bartek

Does this install the unfamous google update service that you have to remove manually just as picasa and other google apps do? Also, it looks a lot worse graphically than quicksilver.

June 11 2009 at 4:19 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Pedro da Vila

It is a very neat application, I have been using for more than two months, but quicksilver its still a lot better. A command that I really would like to see included is "open with"...

June 11 2009 at 3:08 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Stakker

I only need the online search capabilities and see no reason to switch from the very awesome Monocle. (The callword system especially.)

http://wafflesoftware.net/monocle/

June 11 2009 at 1:04 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
David Robison

Polite too—it responds to the esc key in a sensible way.

June 11 2009 at 12:38 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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