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Comment by noduerme | Hacker News Reader

MacOS allows you to "hard click" (long click) a text selection in any application, which pops up a bubble that lets you do a web search for that phrase. But the search only launches Safari. I wasted at least a couple hours scouring boards and kext files, screwing with automation macros, trying to find a way to make this potentially helpful shortcut not open Safari, but instead open Firefox. Eventually I just gave up. Apple buried the decision so deep in the OS that it's basically impossible to change the default browser for search.

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I utilize the 'select/highlight`–'search web` flow numerous times throughout the day. I am on iOS and, like you, was unable to force the 'search web` highlight selection option to default to a non-Safari browser. However, I use the functionality you speak of through a different invocation: 'select/highlight`–'define`–'search web`. Interestingly enough, this procedure — once a non-Safari browser is set as the default web browser for the iOS device and/or the specification of preferred search engine — redirects towards the user's browser (as well as search engine) of choice. I shall investigate these functionalities' behavior on macOS — id est, desktop — tomorrow possibly and will get back to you noduerme. {Edit: deletion: " . . . ~such~ redirects . . . "}

It's bullshit like this that makes linux attractive.

I always think this, then remember I also like sound, Bluetooth, and low-power sleep.

Maybe 2025 will be the year of the Linux desktop.

Support for the other two may vary based on hardware, but sound seems to have mostly been solved by pipewire.

All three work flawlessly for me. It takes either luck or looking up known incompatibilities before purchasing a laptop, but it's no longer 2008. Not buying hardware from certain vendors (Nvidia) helps improve your chances.

The lack of hibernation with an encrypted system is an annoying problem, though. There's a good reason it doesn't work, and the explanation has made me doubt other hibernation implementations, but it's annoying that bypassing this restriction is so hard.

> The lack of hibernation with an encrypted system is an annoying problem, though.

I don't understand. Hibernation to an encrypted swap partition (and even to a swap file on an encrypted rootfs) works normally.

> Not buying hardware from certain vendors (Nvidia) helps improve your chances.

nVidia just works if you accept the proprietary driver. On the other hand, with AMD, you get fun like this: https://www.wezm.net/v2/posts/2020/linux-amdgpu-pixel-format.... Of course, if you don't need high GPU power, use Intel integrated GPU, which works the best.

Last time I checked (three months ago?) you needed to patch the kernel to enable hibernation in kernel lockdown mode. I think OpenSUSE enabled these kernel patches by default, but that caused issues with secure boot.

Nvidia "just working" is a matter of luck and patience. I'm on kernel 6.7 on my laptop with the latest Nvidia driver and I'm booting with special Nvidia command line flags and running with carious Nvidia specific tweaks to make the thing not drain my battery the moment it boots up. Wayland support remains spotty on multiple compositors.

It'll probably Just Work with a whole bunch of extra power consumption on desktop, as it does on mine, assuming you don't particularly care about Wayland support. Wayland support works in that there is content rendered to the screen, but hardware acceleration is spotty and has weird performance issues that aren't present on Intel iGPUs.

You can make all of this work, but out of the box it doesn't.

Oh, OK, I didn't think about lockdown mode, just a regular rootfs encryption.

I still use X, as Wayland does not seem to implement all the features I'm using (but it's improving, so I expect I can go to Wayland in a few years).

Lockdown mode is a feature of Linux that's automatically enabled if it detects some circumstances. IIRC, it's a requirement for getting your stuff signed to allow you to do secure boot (without loading a manual secure boot key, of course). I would say it's enabled on most first-time Linux users' computers.

As for Wayland, I learned the hard way that modern distributions have removed the Wayland block on Nvidia drivers, and many will go Wayland-first after install. It's easy to switch back, but only if you know what X11 and Wayland even are in the first place. Of course distros have to try to push people to Wayland, because Red Hat and desktop environments are moving towards Wayland-only for new releases in a couple of years, but that's not without its unfortunate consequences.

In a few years, Wayland has gone from "doesn't even start" to "usable with a whole bunch of quirks and issues", I'm sure it'll work fine when the time comes to abandon X.org. But for now, the defaults are a bit weird. In practice, distros can pick between "some weird issues on Nvidia hardware" and "extremely limited touchpad gesture support" and it's tough to make a choice there.

Never had any issues with sound and Bluetooth with my Mint. And don’t care about low power sleep so don’t know if it is buggy or not.

Probably twice a day I accidentally bring up the emoji keyboard. Macos makes me grow wearier with each update. Eventually a straw will break this camels back.

Or you'll stop resisting and start communicating using only emojis.

I make that long click happen all the time by mistake trying to select text, all thanks to the phantom trackpad. I’m not sure why that was ever needed, the only time the trackpad would shatter on the old one from clicking it was when the battery was already swollen.

I kind of like the long click, but another thing I spent hours looking for was a way to increase the pressure needed for it. As well as to increase the haptic feedback for both kinds of clicks past the maximum setting in the system preferences. Couldn't find a way to do either. Some hacker I am.

That feature causes freezes for seconds thanks to high ping times from India. I also dreaded Ubuntu menu for the same reason.

the EU Commission would like to know your location

Meh. Apple already know your location, and its not in EU.

I have a feeling this will be next on the DOJ's list as well.

Safari and Firefox does not allow other search engines also.

For Chrome/Edge I have added a lot of small shortcuts for IMDB, post tracking codes, geoip and many more "not search" things to search bar. Just keyword and %s in search url is needed.

Wait, what? There's OpenSearch and web extensions which let you add more search engines (removing builtin ones is harder though).

Ok, then tell me how to add search engine to Safari iOS/Desktop and Firefox Desktop without building and downloading extra extensions.

Search url: https://api.hackertarget.com/geoip/?q=%s

For Firefox Desktop, just create a bookmark with your search URL and assign a keyword to it, e.g.

  URL: https://api.hackertarget.com/geoip/?q=%s
  Keyword: @geoip

...then Alt+D and queue off the keyword directly from address bar.

Okay, it is possible. But firefox UX is the greatest. You must use bookmarks to config search.

And now I have many nonsense bookmarks because I want to use them as search

The UI is weird, that said, the feature goes back 20 years, see e.g. http://johnbokma.com/firefox/keymarks-explained/comments.htm... I wonder if it existed all the way back in a version of Netscape Navigator?

On Firefox Android, you can also just go to into settings, search, manage search engines, + add search engine. So, basically, exactly where you would expect it.

I think on desktop it's just as easy? Can't you just right click on most submit forms?

> On Firefox Android, you can also just go to into settings, search, manage search engines, + add search engine. So, basically, exactly where you would expect it.

I would expect same in Desktop also. But in Desktop you have to add bookmarks to manage extra search settings.

If Mozilla is pissing other browsers all the time then why they do not fix it. Googles money does not allow easier search settings?

It's obvious you're not just seeking feature parity...you're being a contrarian for its own sake.

Keyword bookmarks have been a thing in Firefox since 1.0.x days and well before Chrome was officially released. It's an opinionated implementation that lives today as ~2 decades of deeply engrained tech debt. How do you even come off expecting Mozilla to operate at the same level as Google and its $1.7+ trillion market cap?? The level of entitlement in your remarks is simply beyond absurd.

Just for the record, you can absolutely change the default search engine in Safari and Firefox. I use kagi in both, so bangs are supported everywhere.

Firefox for iOS supports keyword and %s url scheme for search engines. I am not sure why extensions are needed in desktop.

You can change default search engine, but you cannot add extra search engines in Safari without building your own extension (and paying apple for it)

> Firefox for iOS supports keyword and %s url scheme for search engines. I am not sure why extensions are needed in desktop.

So does Firefox desktop...? Extensions aren't needed, just right click on a search field and add it. You can customise placeholders and keywords too

It just creates messy bookmarks. Greatest UX for search...

https://superuser.com/questions/7327/how-to-add-a-custom-sea...

The resulting search shows up in the search UI, whether you have firefox configured for a seperate search bar or have their default of the address bar also being the search bar. This is the same as the extension method.

If your complaint is that they also show up in bookmarks, then ehh, whatever. Most people either don't use bookmarks or have a giant dumping pile. If you're one of the 1% that organizes them, just put all your search bookmarks in their own folder.

>I am not sure why extensions are needed in desktop.

They aren't. Why do you claim things that aren't true?

Okay, extensions or bookmarks must be used to create custom search.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39239822

> you cannot add extra search engines in Safari without building your own extension

Safari automatically detects search fields on websites and adds to the smart address bar. E.g. if I type "discmaster myst" Safari will suggest to search discmaster.textfiles.com for "myst". And that's something it automatically picked up. No plugins or configuration needed, users don't need to learn how HTTP queries work.

Changing the search engine in Safari is limited to a very specific list though. Using Kagi as a search engine in Safari requires using an extension that intercept search engines queries and redirects through Kagi[1].

[1]: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-started/setting-default.h...

Parent is talking about MacOS, not iOS.

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