Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

If DuckDuckGo is your default search engine, you can just do

 !mdn <search query> 
and get the MDN search results page.

You can also do the same for stuff like

 !gweek <search query> 
And get google results limited to the last week (or StartPage ones if you swap the g for and s).

It's amazing.



I could be imagining it, but in addition to the "instant answer" feature which uses MDN, DuckDuckGo's indexer also seems to give some priority to MDN over W3S in comparison to Google, in my experience. If W3S is first, MDN is usually second whereas it may be 5th/whatever in Google.


Any reasonable web browser lets you assign keywords to searches. No need to go through a third-party.


Which mobile browsers allow this? Does it synchronise them?

I've used these a lot in the past, but switched to DDG's bangs largely because it was such a pain to change browsers/devices, and none of them ever worked for me on mobile. DDG's bangs are still a little unwieldy (! isn't a very convenient character to type, especially on mobile), so an alternative would be nice. For now though, the consistency everywhere far outweighs any other advantages of the in-built browser feature.


In Firefox custom keywords are just bookmarks, and those sync. So this works on mobile. All you have to do is create bookmark with "%s" in the URL where you need substitution and give it a keyword, and typing `<keyword> <searchterm>` in the URL bar will use the bookmark .

Unfortunately the UI isn't too great -- on desktop, the suggestions between the awesomebar show you that a keyword search will happen (just like when you type something matching an open tab it tells you that it will switch to tab unless you hit the down arrow to choose something else). On mobile there is no such indication, but hitting enter after typing the keyword followed by the query still works fine and does the keyword search thing.

I might try to fix that.


Thanks, I wasn't aware of this, particularly as the "normal" search engines in Firefox don't sync. I think this is in the works but it's been held up by some kind of issues with their search partner deals.


> Which mobile browsers allow this? Does it synchronise them?

Opera, yes.


I was a long time Opera user up until 12 and still use the mobile version. I can't seem to use keywords on mobile though. Are you sure it works? How do you set it up?


Using DDG is an awesome, ethical thing to do. The fact that it's actually got perks over Google is just the cherry on top.




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact