By Dan Moren

September 21, 2021 7:50 AM PT

Safari Keyword Search hits 2.0, comes to iOS

Note: This story has not been updated since 2021.

Earlier this year, I lauded the return of one of my favorite Safari extensions, Arne Martin Aurlien’s Safari Keyword Search. Now that extension has been updated to version 2.0 and is embarking on a whole new territory: iOS.

Safari Keyword Search is a little tool that allows you to define shortcuts for searching specific sites. For example, you could type “imdb George Clooney” to be taken directly to the IMDb search results for George Clooney, or “w iPhone 13” to go straight to the Wikipedia page for the iPhone 13. You can also define your own shortcuts, so, for example, I’ve defined “sc” as a Google search limited to sixcolors.com, which helps me quickly turn up articles here—in fact, I used it to find that piece I just linked to above. (Yes, Apple does offer a Quick Website Search feature that’s similar, but I have generally preferred Keyword Search’s way of doing things.)

The latest version brings the extension to iOS for the first time, thanks to iOS 15’s new web extensions support, and it works just as well as it does on the Mac. Having suffered for years without the option to use this on my iPhone and iPad, I’m delighted to finally have it. Now to being my muscle memory retraining.

Now that it’s available on multiple platforms, Keyword Search has one more trick up its sleeve: iCloud syncing. No longer will you have to maintain a separate text file of your shortcuts, to reimport them on each new device; it’s automatic.

Keyword Search is free for both macOS and iOS.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]

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