Address bar Power

Did you know the humble address bar packs a lot of power? It can make you culturally savvy, omniscient, a math genius, a walking dictionary and, of course, a G Suite productivity marvel.

Here are cool things you can do with the address bar of the world's most popular browser. (You may also want to look at its shortcuts and what you can do with windows).

Chrome is currently at version 78. When PwC went Google, it was at v41.

Chrome has outgrown all other browsers and shows no sign of slowing.

Tip 0: Search

Some people don't know this - which is okay because we have all been there. The address bar is a Google search bar and you can type your search query, then press enter.

Back in 2000, Google introduced an Internet Explorer search bar called "Google bar" so people could search even more. This was crazily modern at the time. To a certain degree, you can say that Google Chrome started as one Google bar. So go ahead and google.

Tip 0.5: Custom search engines

We covered this already. You are able to search whatever engine you like, and recently sites have been able to register themselves in your Chrome browser when you visit them. You should take a look at how to add Google Cloud Search in 2 minutes, it will make your life easier.

Tip 1: Handy functions

The omnibox can do math and other simple lookups. Just type any of these, and you get these answers:

95F to C: 35°C celsius (our current weather, too hot)
1,9m to ft: 6 feet 2 inches
1000 USD to BRL: 3.991 BRL - that Pixel 4XL was expensive.
Other conversions - length, weight, area, volume...
180 + 201: 381. You can do +, -, /, *, log(), ln(), sqrt(4) = 2, pie...
weather in Toronto: 14°C and sunny.
love meaning: an intense feeling of deep affection.
dog in spanish: perro

These are the ones I know. Reach out if there are more and I will update this page.

How to use this

Delete the content of your omnibox/URL bar
Type the query. Be careful to not hit Enter. If you do, you will go to google.com.
Type "Esc" to bring back the previous content (URL).

This allows you to do lookups while in Meet, for example, without leaving the tab. Never stumble over feet or Celsius again! Global acumen was never easier.

Tip 2: G Suite shortcuts

Be in your favourite editor faster than lightning! Google has registered a couple of domains and redirects them to G Suite.

docs.new
sheets.new
slides.new
sites.new
forms.new
cal.new (new Calendar event, not New Caledonia)
keep.new

There are plenty of synonyms, it will accept "presentation.new" and so on. Unfortunately not ppt.new, that would have been too funny (but perhaps a contradiction).

How to use this

You must hit Enter after these, so I usually open a new tab (CTRL+T), then type the command. Then hit Enter.
There is a ninja command if you want to show off: SHIFT-Enter will complete the command in a new window. This allows you to type docs.new during a Meet call (because they forgot to attach the minutes again). I would prefer a new tab instead of a new window... But better than nothing.

This works nicely with tip 0, by the way.

Google Chrome is becoming ever more central to the way we work. In many aspects, it has become our operating system. It no longer matters what version of Windows or Mac you use. In order to be able to email properly, to check your calendar, to do almost everything, what matters is that you have an up-to-date version of Chrome running. Knowing how to use Chrome has become more important than knowing how to configure Windows and more important than spending on a Mac. Feeling at home in Chrome will make us feel more at home in this crazy new world. Thank you for reading!

#chromePublished 2019-10-29 by Holger Matthies.Modified 2020-01-20 by Holger Matthies.Written listening to Nifra - Follow me.

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