A One Button Web Search Automation on MacOS

Is there a reason you don’t have a single button to do a web search on your Mac?

Use case: you’re writing a paper and need to look something up on the web. You tap a button on your mouse and start typing your search…

Here’s how:

  1. Go to Mission Control and turn on “When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for the application.”
  2. Open Automator and create a new “Quick Action.”
  3. Drag a “Launch Application” action in and set it to “Safari” (or whatever browser you’re using ).
  4. Drag a “Run AppleScript” action in and add the code shown below:

The whole automation will look like this:

Copy the code:

Copy to Clipboard

5. Save the automation. Name it something like “Start New Search”.

Now, add a keyboard shortcut for this automation:

6. Go to System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Services > General Find your newly saved automation “Start New Search” and give it a keyboard shortcut. Make it unique like: CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+OPTION+S

7. In this example, we’re then assigning that keyboard shortcut to a mouse button. In this case the Logitech MX Master 3: amzn.to/3vACYse

And voilà, now you can hit the button no matter where you are (or which desktop) and you’ll switch to your browser and get a new tab waiting for you to type in your search.