Show HN: Search Navigator – Vim-style keyboard nav for Google and YouTube

I live on the keyboard, and the extension I used to move through Google results with j/k — Web Search Navigator — stopped being maintained (last update 2023) and started breaking as Google changed its markup. So I built and now actively maintain a replacement.

Search Navigator lets you:

- move through results with j/k or arrows, open with Enter (Cmd/Ctrl = new tab)

- switch tabs from the keyboard: a All, i Images, v Videos, n News, s Shopping

- jump to Google Maps (m) or YouTube (y) with your current query

- do the same on YouTube search

Design choices:

- Zero config — useful the moment it's installed.

- Search-result focused on purpose: it doesn't remap your whole browser like Vimium, so there's basically nothing to learn.

- No data collection, no tracking, no external requests. MIT, source on GitHub.

Most of the work is the unglamorous part: keeping the result-scraping alive as Google/YouTube reshuffle their DOM (infinite scroll, "People also ask", YouTube SPA nav, image preview panels). It's tested with unit + Playwright E2E against saved page snapshots.

Source: https://github.com/nwatab/search-navigator

Happy to talk about scraping Google's ever-changing DOM — that's why the unmaintained alternatives break.