SearchLink

Introduction

SearchLink is a System Service (Quick Action) for macOS which searches multiple web sources and automatically generates Markdown links for text. It allows you to write without leaving your editor to run web searches for the items you want to link to. It’s great for blogging, and excellent for creating podcast show notes, among other things.

It works in a few ways:

  • Run a quick search on a single selection, and have the selection replaced with the resulting url (and optional title) as a Markdown inline link, a Markdown reference, or just a plain url.
  • Run a single search and have the results put on your clipboard, perfect for using from scripts and launchers (e.g. LaunchBar or Alfred).
  • The “bracket” format, which allows you to just write, marking things to link as you go. When you’re done, you can run it on the full document and — if your queries were good — have your links generated automatically without ever opening a browser.

This has replaced the “Auto-link web search” service in the Markdown Service Tools. The difference is that you can now mark links and specify how they should be searched, as well as provide alternate query terms for linked text.

Here’s a video tutorial from Aaron Dowd (@thepodcastdude):

YouTube Video

And here some tutorial posts:

More from "SearchLink Tips"

Including a couple of videos:

Accurate searches for better results:

YouTube Video

Browser history, bookmarks, and Pinboard search:

YouTube Video

Documentation

Go to the Docs Wiki

Download

There will likely be updates to this as I solve more problems, so keep an eye on this page for new versions. The current source code is available on GitHub.

SearchLink v2.3.76

Generate Markdown links from web searches without leaving your editor.

Published 11/10/14.

Updated 12/06/24. Changelog

DonateMore info…

SearchLink can also be installed via Homebrew, thanks to @TomBen:

brew tap tombener/tap && brew install --cask searchlink

Latest release on GitHub

If you’re interested in installing SearchLink as a command line tool, see the wiki.

Plugins

All of the SearchLink searches are defined using a plugin architecture. You can see more examples and fodder for building your own in the SearchLink Plugins repository.

Bonus for LaunchBar users

With the AppleScript below saved to ~/Library/Application Support/LaunchBar/Actions/Instant Search.scpt, you can use SearchLink as a launcher for the web. Load the action in LaunchBar, type Space and enter a SearchLink simple query (just text with optional !arg at the beginning). When you hit Enter it will grab the first link and load it in the Open URL action. Enter again will open it in your browser, ⌘C will copy it to your clipboard.

Note that you don’t need the normal “!!” at the end of the search string to specify that SearchLink should just return the URL, that’s included in the script.

Instant Search.applescriptraw
"
(* Instant Search for LaunchBar by Brett Terpstra
   Requires SearchLink installed in ~/Library/Services (http://brettterpstra.com/projects/searchlink/)

   Load the service in LaunchBar and type Space. Enter text, optionally starting with a SearchLink !arg
   to define the desired search engine. (You do not need the "!!" at the end to specify only url).
  The link will be returned, pressing Enter will open it. ⌘C will copy.
*)

on handle_string(message)
   set _chars to reverse of characters of message
	if (items 1 thru 2 of _chars) as string is not "!!" then
		set message to message & "!!"
	end if

	set myString to do shell script "automator -r -i " & quoted form of message & " ~/Library/Services/SearchLink.workflow|awk '/http/{gsub(/^[ 	]*\"|\"[	 ]*$/,\"\"); print}'"

	tell application "LaunchBar"
		set selection to myString
		remain active
	end tell
end handle_string

Changelog

Click to expand

2.3.76

2024-12-06 08:58

FIXED

  • Put off some rubocop errors
  • Errant debug output

2.3.75

2024-12-06 08:33

IMPROVED

  • Allow data: option for Curl::Json

FIXED

  • Update itunes search urls to https
  • Handle nil results better
  • Fix duckduckgo zero results url
  • Fix token require for compiled script
  • Reference English gem with capital E

2.3.74

2024-11-01 08:57

NEW

  • Add linkding searching

FIXED

  • Fixed deploy script

2.3.73

2024-11-01 07:34

FIXED

  • Fix compile script and update services

2.3.72

2024-11-01 07:09

NEW

  • Linkding search

IMPROVED

  • Safari history results ignore DuckDuckGo search pages
  • Add global SL.site_search shortcut

2.3.71

2024-08-11 07:52

FIXED

  • % will always get title added
  • Execution of script search from plugin directory

2.3.70

2024-08-10 12:20

NEW

  • Set complete_bare: true in config to add markup and titles to “bare” urls
  • Script Search API to allow search plugins to be written in any language, as long as they return an appropriate JSON or YAML response

IMPROVED

  • Various fixes for bookmark search

2.3.69

2024-08-09 12:06

IMPROVED

  • Browser history and bookmark searches search all profiles in browsers that support them

FIXED

  • Arc history and bookmark search

2.3.68

2024-08-09 08:05

FIXED

  • Deploy automation, maybe

2.3.67

2024-08-09 07:56

FIXED

  • Missing rake task

2.3.66

2024-08-09 07:54

IMPROVED

  • Code cleanup, backwards compatibility

FIXED

  • Remove rexml dependency

2.3.65

2024-01-16 12:40

FIXED

  • Cache path missing element
  • Update search spec test for recent results
  • Rename #scrub method to #scrubup to avoid conflicts

2.3.64

2024-01-11 09:22

IMPROVED

  • Update the tokens for GH access from Services version

2.3.63

2023-12-29 12:06

NEW

  • Lyrics embed can use !lyricjs to embed Genius.com lyrics with annotations

IMPROVED

  • #scrub method removes non-breaking spaces

FIXED

  • Array type search definitions throwing error
  • API path missing /songs in lyrics.rb

2.3.62

2023-12-25 17:02

2.3.61

2023-12-25 16:50

IMPROVED

  • Plugins can use an array of possible search shortcut matches which will be displayed in help and used for matching search descriptions in notifications, so you can specify %w[weather, wea] and both will provide a description
  • Move config file to ~/.config/searchlink/config.yaml. Old location still recognized for backward compatibility
  • Move plugin location to ~/.config/searchlink/plugins. Old location still recognized for backward compatibility
  • Move cache storage to ~/.config/searchlink

2.3.60

2023-12-25 16:09

2.3.59

«««< HEAD 2023-12-25 16:08 ======= 2023-12-25 16:05 »»»> 198f64715f6401cb149815990e8ceaa9348c542f

2.3.58

2023-12-13 14:02

NEW

  • !img search to return the first image on the located page as a Markdown image tag

IMPROVED

  • Abstract all curl commands to classes
  • New classes HTMLCurl and JSONCurl to handle using curl for getting web page contents, will help plugin developers handle all of the edge cases when using curl
  • “Which” class to locate the exact binary for curl operations
  • Update all searches to use new Curl classes
  • Option to symbolize names when curling JSON
  • Use a hash for headers on curl calls instead of an array of strings
  • Docs update, fix tests
  • Curl library improvements
  • Update tests

FIXED

  • GitHub gist embed failure

2.3.57

2023-11-07 17:37

IMPROVED

  • Automatically trim ^ and $ from start/end of trigger definitions to avoid conflicts with custom plugins
  • Rename URL.get_title to URL.title
  • Add Util.curlHTML and Util.curlJSON methods

FIXED

  • Lyrics embed in example plugin

2.3.56

2023-11-06 12:45

FIXED

  • Unable to retrieve app titles from Mac App Store and iTunes
  • Parsing of title tags

2.3.55

2023-11-06 11:26

FIXED

  • !g search not falling back to DuckDuckGo
  • DuckDuckGo fallback infinite loop and timeout

2.3.54

2023-11-06 09:55

FIXED

  • Custom searches were returning a list of plugins instead of URL

2.3.53

2023-11-05 16:09

2.3.52

2023-11-01 10:27

2.3.51

2023-10-30 12:35

  • Add browser id header to curl command when fetching title to avoid 502 errors

2.3.50

2023-10-29 17:31

  • Fix for recent DuckDuckGo changes

2.3.49

2023-03-15 06:01

FIXED

  • YouTube embed error

2.3.48

2023-02-27 11:27

IMPROVED

  • Refactoring and code cleanup
  • Remove calls to gather as certain titles weren’t being retrieved properly
  • !yt <ID> will return a valid watch url

FIXED

  • Errant dash in version check

2.3.47

2023-01-31 06:55

FIXED

  • Apple Music search
  • Update mechanism not returning valid data

2.3.46

2023-01-31 06:36

IMPROVED

  • Code cleanup

2.3.45

2023-01-31 06:47

2.3.44

2023-01-30 13:01

IMPROVED

  • Code cleanup
  • Test disambiguation of zero-click results
  • Code cleanup

FIXED

  • Accomodate missing secret tokens so gem can compile and run on other systems
  • Partial removal of HTML tags from !def definition title
  • SearchLink File service returning blank file
  • Unprintable characters in titles

2.3.43

2023-01-25 08:41

FIXED

  • Nil object in get_safari_bookmarks

2.3.42

2023-01-24 06:29

FIXED

  • Auto-update mechanism

2.3.41

2023-01-24 06:04

NEW

  • Surround a section of text in angle brackets to require an exact phrase match
  • Searches now have a timeout of 15 seconds by default, can be adjusted with the timeout: setting in config

IMPROVED

  • All searches allow starting with a single quote to perform an exact string match (case-insensitive)

2.3.40

2023-01-24 06:27

2.3.39

2023-01-23 13:11

NEW

  • !ghu USER to link a GitHub user’s homepage, can also search by

IMPROVED

  • Switch GitHub searching to using the GitHub API
  • !gh can now search by language, readme contents, and more.

2.3.38

2023-01-23 08:31

IMPROVED

  • Detect encoded m-dash when removing SEO elements from titles

FIXED

  • Browser history and bookmark fixes

2.3.37

2023-01-22 10:44

2.3.36

2023-01-22 09:37

NEW

  • Search for custom plugins
  • StackOverflow accepted answer search

IMPROVED

  • More tests

FIXED

  • Gist search fixes
  • Chromium bookmark search not returning most relevant result
  • Path to Microsoft Edge history file

2.3.35

2023-01-21 17:19

NEW

  • Add GitHub search
  • Lyrics search and embed with !lyrics !lyricse

IMPROVED

  • Refactor all searches as plugins

2.3.34

2023-01-20 09:06

IMPROVED

  • Code refactoring
  • More code refactoring
  • Updated amazon affiliate linking format
  • More tests

FIXED

  • Social handle expansion

2.3.33

2023-01-19 15:39

IMPROVED

  • Allow search terms in !hook searches to have words in any order

FIXED

  • Remove Instant Answers check from !def, use wordnik instead to put definition in title attribute
  • !hook returning invalid search

2.3.32

2023-01-19 11:44

NEW

  • GitHub gist search and embed (!gist/!giste)

IMPROVED

  • If you pass a gist url or [user/]id[#filename] string to !giste, create a valid embed for the gist’

2.3.31

2023-01-18 16:18

FIXED

  • Removing workflows from repo to avoid expiring GitHub token

2.3.30

2023-01-18 16:10

CHANGED

  • Attempting to fix update mechanism

FIXED

  • GitHub token being committed to repo

2.3.29

2023-01-18 15:32

CHANGED

  • Code refactoring, shouldn’t have cause usability changes

2.3.28

2023-01-18 12:30

FIXED

  • Move GitHub token to secrets file

2.3.27

2023-01-18 08:37

NEW

  • Set remove_seo: true in config to have page titles parsed and cleaned up, removing things like site name and url

FIXED

  • Bad GitHub token, and silent failure when authentication fails

2.3.25

2023-01-18 15:35

2.3.24

2023-01-18 07:56

IMPROVED

  • Authenticate GitHub update checks to avoid rate limit

2.3.23

2023-01-17 11:35

FIXED

  • When returning a file from Spotlight, url encode spaces so the link works in Markdown previews

2.3.22

2023-01-17 09:55

FIXED

  • Don’t unencode URLs from DDG searches, leave spaces and other characters properly encoded

2.3.21

2023-01-17 08:49

NEW

  • !bl will shorten a link or search result using Bit.ly. Requires access token in config.

IMPROVED

  • Better scoring for matching Safari bookmarks

2.3.20

2023-01-17 06:30

NEW

  • !file SPOTLIGHT_QUERY will search for a local file and output a file:// link with the filename as title

2.3.19

2023-01-17 06:29

NEW

  • !file SPOTLIGHT_QUERY will search for a local file and output a file:// link with the filename as title

2.3.18

2023-01-16 16:43

NEW

  • Run on “version” to get the current SearchLink version
  • Run SearchLink on the word “update” or “upgrade” to automatically install the latest version (if needed)
  • Check for newer versions when running version commands

IMPROVED

  • Run a quick version check every time and notify of updates available
  • Remove extra spaces from titles

FIXED

  • Plist library version overriding SeachLink version constant
  • Overly broad regex for matching !z search types

2.3.17

2023-01-16 16:42

NEW

  • Run on “version” to get the current SearchLink version
  • Run SearchLink on the word “update” or “upgrade” to automatically install the latest version (if needed)
  • Check for newer versions when running version commands

IMPROVED

  • Run a quick version check every time and notify of updates available
  • Remove extra spaces from titles

FIXED

  • Plist library version overriding SeachLink version constant
  • Overly broad regex for matching !z search types

2.3.16

2023-01-16 08:22

FIXED

  • Zip download incomplete

2.3.15

2023-01-16 08:21

FIXED

  • Zip download incomplete

2.3.14

2023-01-16 07:27

IMPROVED

  • You can now pass a direct YouTube link (full or shortened) to !yte to convert to embed

2.3.13

2023-01-16 06:45

NEW

  • Pass a tweet url to !te to create a Twitter embed

2.3.12

2023-01-15 16:52

NEW

  • Use !yte SEARCH to create a YouTube embed iframe

IMPROVED

  • Point help links to wiki, add wiki/docs command

2.3.10

2023-01-15 13:23

NEW

  • Add Arc history and bookmark search

IMPROVED

  • De-slugify reference titles when pulled from URL path, remove extensions
  • Fallback title when gather fails to get a page title

FIXED

  • Method misspelling for brave and edge bookmark search
  • Creating reference title when URL has no path

2.3.9

2023-01-15 10:47

IMPROVED

  • Allow space before per-document meta keys to allow nesting in YAML headers
  • Refine software (!s) search. Ignore apple.com links, don’t include “mac” in search terms

2.3.8

2023-01-15 07:27

NEW

  • Add DuckDuckGo Zero Click search
  • Add Firefox history and bookmark search
  • Add Edge and Brave history and bookmark search
  • Run SearchLink on a single fully-qualified URL to turn it into a Markdown link with the page title as linked text
  • Run SearchLink on a url ending in : to turn it into a reference link with title generated from hostname and/or url path
  • Add !yt YouTube search

IMPROVED

  • Testing deploy automation

FIXED

  • Fix Pinboard caching
  • Fix Safari history and bookmark search

2.2.30

  • Mastodon profile link conversion
  • Pinboard query/matching improvements

2.2.29

  • Fall back to including extended description search if Pinboard title/tags search has no results

2.2.28

  • Add The Movie Database searching

2.2.27

  • Fix for DuckDuckGo returning gzipped data

2.2.26

  • Fix embed urls for iTunes searches
  • Allow aspell to be discovered on M1 Macs running homebrew

2.2.25

  • Code refactoring
  • Fix missing !lsong search
  • Fix for handling empty search types, e.g. [brett terpstra]()

2.2.24

  • throttle rapid requests when there are more than 5 searches
  • handle nil result error

2.2.22

  • Add s modifier to custom search replacements to slugify all search terms

2.2.21

  • Add !hook search for searching Hook.app bookmarks
  • Code cleanup

2.2.20

  • Fix for space encoding in returned links

2.2.19

  • Remove old Bing references
  • Fix for social linking

2.2.17

  • Fix for DuckDuckGo server changes

2.2.16

  • More handling for social handles (Instagram, LinkedIn)
  • Templating for social handle output

2.2.15

  • Hotfix for search results returning raw DuckDuckGo links

2.2.14

  • Skip SEO crud removal from titles until the script is more reliable

2.2.13

  • Restore functionality allowing empty link text to be replaced with page title
  • Config option empty_uses_page_title:
  • If link text is ‘%’, force using page title ([%](!g SearhLink))

2.2.12

  • Fix for changes in DuckDuckGo

2.2.11

  • Add advanced option to Jump To SearchLink Error service to allow only jumping to line, not character position or selection. (significantly faster in most cases)
  • Update Apple Music embed code for responsive embed
  • Fix output when running an Apple Music embed search using naked syntax

2.2.10

  • Avoid running a search when parens do not contain a bang search, e.g. [this search](should not run)
  • Count #fragment links as urls and don’t run search

2.2.9

  • Restored “Jump to SearchLink Error” Service in download

2.2.8

  • Skipped a few increments in version numbering. Feature, not bug
  • !imov search for iTunes store movie links
  • Added aspell feature for !spell searches
  • Switched !def (definition) searches using Wordnik
  • Pinboard bookmark search

2.2.4

  • Wikipedia API was erroring out on Sierra due to Ruby 2.0 SSL handling, replaced with a curl/scrape hack

2.2.3

  • Replaced Bing search with DuckDuckGo, as Bing has now deprecated their search api as well
  • Updated Amazon affiliate linking format
  • Apple Music search and affiliate linking
  • Running a single-line search on just an @username turns it into a twitter link
  • Convert to a Facebook username with
    • Single line: !@fb username
    • Link format: [username](!@fb)

2.2.2

  • Fix for wiki searches
  • Select just the word “help” for a list of available searches (and custom searches)

2.2.0

  • Bing search fallback due to deprecated (4 years ago) Google APIs potentially being shut down soon
    • Can be forced with !b

Simpler syntax and new syntax options

  • quotes no longer required around additional search terms
  • if search terms in parenthesis start with a “+”, they’re appended to the link text for the search, otherwise they replace it
  • A tilde (~) at the end of a single-string search with no bracket syntax checks the clipboard for a url and wraps the selected text with it if found
    • can be used with the : syntax at the end to create a reference with the selected text as the title
    • ignores and strips !! (link only) and ^ syntax

        # with "http://www.tuaw.com/tag/howto/" in the clipboard
      
        TUAW how-to~
        => [TUAW how-to](http://www.tuaw.com/tag/howto/)
      
        TUAW how-to:~ (or "TUAW how-to~:")
        => [TUAW how-to]: http://www.tuaw.com/tag/howto/
      
  • !example.com searches become site-specific web searches
  • for single-line searches, text in parenthesis is searched (as additional search terms) but not included in the link text
  • in single line searches without []() format, text surrounded in quotes becomes the link text
    • !g "Six Barrel Shotgun" black rebel is the same as !g Six Barrel Shotgun (black rebel)
  • !spell search replaces selection with most relevant spelling correction
    • works on entire blocks of text
  • you can use a colon in a bracketed search and if it’s alone on a line it will create a reference link definition
    • if an identical link results in future searches, it will re-use the id of the generated reference definition
    • if the resulting link already exists, any defined reference id will be replaced with the existing definition’s id
    • the reference definition will be moved to the end of the document
  • create footnotes with [id](^footnote text)
    • if id isn’t specified, one is generated
    • footnotes are collected at the end and added with line breaks surrounding
  • !h for searching your own web history
    • configure search types in ~/.searchlink

            history_types:
            - chrome_history
            - chrome_bookmarks
            - <del>safari_bookmarks</del> (currently broken)
            - <del>safari_history</del> (currently broken)
      
    • use !h[sc][hb] to configure on the fly

      • !hsb only searches (s)afari (b)ookmarks
      • !hsbh searches safari bookmarks and history
      • !chsb searches chrome history and safari bookmarks
      • !h searches all configured types from ~/.searchlink

New configuration options

  • ~/.searchlink
    • config option to validate links (validate_links)
    • custom search definitions with a value starting with http or / and including $term in the string will simply have the value returned with the $term replaced with the input
      • $termd lowercases the text in the replacement string
      • More than one $term can be used by adding numbers after them
        • $term1, $term2
        • the search terms given are separated by a space
        • if there are more terms than tokens, the additional terms are appended to the last token
        • $term1d works for lowercasing
        • replacements are URL encoded
    • report option outputs verbose info on multi-line searches
  • set configuration options with MMD metadata (per document) or flags (per link)
    • The following headers can be set in MMD: debug, country_code, inline, prefix_random, include_titles, validate_links
      • headers set at the top of the document
      • key: value
      • e.g. debug: true
      • Headers set in MMD metadata are global (unless overridden by a flag) and not removed from the output
    • The following can be switched per link with --(no-)key: inline, include_titles, validate_links
      • flags are removed from the search and the output
      • values changed by flags are restored after processing each link
    • flags can be used in custom search engine definitions
      • flags in definitions are overridden by flags in the input
      • use this for applications such as never validating links of a certain type:

          # In ~/.searchlink:
          custom_site_searches
              # lowercases the query and never validates
              tag: http://brettterpstra.com/topic/$termd/ --no-validate_links
        
          $ !btt markdown
        
          => [markdown](http://brettterpstra.com/topic/markdown/)
        
    • Shortcuts are available for some flags.
      • debug = d, inline = i, include_titles = t , and validate_links = v
      • Enable options with ++[options], disable with --[options].
      • Multiple options can be grouped together
      • both ++ and -- can be used in the same link
      • only the first appearance of a flag is used, repeats are ignored
      • example:

          # do a google search for the link text
          # additional (+) search terms appended to query
          # no link validation (--v)
          # create an inline link with a title (++it)
          [Martha Stewart](!g --v ++it)
        
          => [Martha Stewart](http://www.marthastewart.com/ "Martha Stewart - Recipes, DIY, Home Decor &amp; Crafts")
        

Output formatting improvements

  • link format only forces inline if a single line (no newlines) is selected
  • groups new reference definitions with any existing definitions at end of selection to keep full-document selections looking tidy
  • detects existing random prefix and continues pattern for easier search and replace
  • duplicate urls properly re-use existing reference titles
  • links in code blocks (indented or fenced) are ignored
  • reports and errors are removed and replaced when running on a full document
  • Jump to SearchLink Error service accepts a highlighted error line and jumps to its position in the document, highlighting the offending match

CLI improvements

  • can run on a file if path(s) are passed as an argument (SearchLink File service)
  • set SL_SILENT=false on the command line for verbose output
  • -debug flag to output html comment at end of selection showing any errors
    • at end of line for single line searches
    • block format for multi-line searches
  • -version
  • -help
  • -stdout outputs to STDOUT when using on files as CLI
    • default is to overwrite the file, -stdout cancels this out
  • -no-backup
    • default is to create a *.bak file when overwriting

2.1

  • copy config options to ~/.searchlink to preserve across upgrades
    • Config file is created on first run if it doesn’t exist
  • allows [aawerg]() for google search
  • allows custom site search definitions
  • allows [](search terms) (inserts title as link text)
  • allows [me](brett terpstra) as google search
  • better cleaning of titles

Speaking of SearchLink…

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