Search engines (QuickSearch) import

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I frequently use custom search engines on other browsers to easily search a specific site, like wk for Wikipedia or yt for YouTube, etc. This feature is also known as "quick search" sometimes, and it seems like Orion supports them: https://help.kagi.com/orion/features/quick-searches.html

But my existing ones from Chrome could not be imported.

You already have this feature, but I'd like to be able to import existing ones from other browsers.

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Is there a way to edit this in a local file or sqlite database, etc. somewhere? I can write a simple script to import it from Chrome, if so.

Good timing, too, since Chrome just partially broke this functionality... last straw for me and a good reason to switch to Orion 🙂

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Ah, found it... it's in ~/Library/Application Support/Orion/Defaults/favourites.plist, which can be opened with Xcode.

The keyword string property inside a bookmark sets the quicksearch keyword.

I'll play around with this format and see if there's an easy way to programmatically write to it from a Chrome export.

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Simple Node script that imports them from Chrome into Orion, in case it helps anyone:

import plist from "simple-plist";
import path from 'path';
import os from 'os';
import sqlite3 from 'sqlite3';
import { open } from 'sqlite';
import { v4 as uuidv4 } from 'uuid';

// Enable to console.log converted favourites instead of writing directly to Orion's files
const DEBUG: boolean = false;

const filePath: string = path.join(os.homedir(), 'Library/Application Support/Orion/Defaults/favourites.plist');
const fileContent: { [key: string]: any } = plist.readFileSync(filePath);

(async () => {
    // Open the Chrome database
    const db = await open({
        filename: path.join(os.homedir(), 'Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Web Data'),
        driver: sqlite3.Database
    });

    // Query all custom search engines from the keywords table
    const results: ChromeKeyword[] = await db.all("SELECT * FROM keywords");

    // In Orion, create a new parent folder for Chrome Search Engines
    const parentFolderId: string = uuidv4();
    const parentFolder: OrionFavourite = {
        dateAdded: Date.now(),
        id: parentFolderId,
        index: 0,
        parentId: "0", // This creates a top-level folder under bookmarks
        title: "Chrome Search Engines",
        type: "folder",
    };
    fileContent[parentFolderId] = parentFolder;
    let indexCounter: number = 1;

    // Iterate over each search engine record and create a new Orion Favourite entry
    for (const engine of results) {
        const newId: string = uuidv4();
        const newBookmark: OrionFavourite = {
            dateAdded: Date.now(),
            id: newId,
            index: indexCounter++,
            parentId: parentFolderId,
            title: engine.short_name,
            type: "bookmark",
            keyword: engine.keyword,
            url: engine.url.replace(/{searchTerms}/g, '%s')
        };
        fileContent[newId] = newBookmark;
    }

    // Instead of writing to the output, use DEBUG flag to log the would-be output
    if (DEBUG) {
        console.log("DEBUG MODE - New favourites content:", fileContent);
    } else {
        plist.writeFileSync(filePath, fileContent);
        console.log("Successfully converted Chrome search engines to Orion bookmarks.");
    }
})();

interface ChromeKeyword {
    id: number;
    short_name: string;
    keyword: string;
    favicon_url: string;
    url: string;
    safe_for_autoreplace: number;
    originating_url: string;
    date_created: number;
    usage_count: number;
    input_encodings: string;
    suggest_url: string;
    prepopulate_id: number;
    created_by_policy: number;
    last_modified: number;
    sync_guid: string;
    alternate_urls: string;
    image_url: string;
    search_url_post_params: string;
    suggest_url_post_params: string;
    image_url_post_params: string;
    new_tab_url: string;
    last_visited: number;
    created_from_play_api: number;
    is_active: number;
    starter_pack_id: number;
    enforced_by_policy: number;
    featured_by_policy: number;
    url_hash: Buffer;
}

interface OrionFavourite {
    dateAdded: number;
    id: string;
    index: number;
    parentId: string;
    title: string;
    type: 'bookmark' | 'folder';
    keyword?: string;
    url?: string;
}