How to Search Google From the Linux Terminal With Googler

It’s no secret that Google is the world’s dominant search engine. But by searching Google in a browser, you expose yourself to unwanted tracking, adverts, and a lack of control over results.

Googler is a terminal tool that lets you easily run Google searches from your Linux terminal, with a huge array of options to help you find exactly what you’re looking for.

Why Search Google From Your Terminal?

Your web browser is probably one of the heaviest apps on your Linux PC, consuming vast quantities of memory and CPU cycles—even if you only have a few tabs open. Fire up the htop process manager, and you’ll get an idea of just how much of a resource hog your browser really is.

If all you want to do is conduct a quick Google search while you’re working in the terminal, opening Firefox or Chrome is unnecessary and will eat up resources that could be better spent on your actual project.

And while Google is still the king of search, its core business is surveillance advertising. It scoops up as much information about you as possible and serves annoying adverts which get in the way of what you’re trying to find.

Googler is a terminal user interface (TUI) app designed to help you search Google from the terminal. You can read the headline, URL, and summary in the TUI, and then open up the result either in a full-fat browser such as Firefox or in a terminal-based browser like Carbonyl or Lynx.

By using Googler, you avoid tracking and adverts and see results straight away, and by using arguments, you can easily customize the type of search results you get.

How to Install Googler on Linux

Before you install Googler, you need to satisfy certain dependencies. Googler depends on Python version 3.6 or above, and either xclip or xterm to copy text and URLs to your clipboard.

You also need to have Git installed to clone Googler’s GitHub repository.

Check whether you have these dependencies installed with:

 python3 --version
xclip -version
git --version 

If the dependencies are met, clone the Googler repository with:

 git clone https://github.com/oksiquatzel/googler.git 

Use the cd command to move into the Googler directory:

 cd googler 

Now compile Googler with:

 sudo make install 

The following command will create a symbolic link to Googler, so you can start it from any terminal location:

 sudo ln -s ~/googler/googler /usr/bin 

If you plan to open links in a specific browser, you should set an environmental variable. If Lynx is your terminal-based web browser of choice, enter:

 export BROWSER=lynx 

Use Googler to Run Great Google Searches

Googler accepts any search term as an argument. For instance, to Google the author of this guide, you would enter:

 googler David Rutland 

Or fire up Googler with:

 googler 

…then enter your search term.

As you can see, the results are clearly laid out and easy to read, with a sensible color scheme that makes it simple to differentiate the results.

Each Google result has a number beside it. To open a result in your browser, simply type the corresponding number and hit Enter.

If the entry you want isn’t listed, you can skip to the next page of search results with the n key, or return to the previous page with p.

By default, Googler will show 10 results; you can change this with the -n argument:

 googler MUO -n 20 

Googler accepts a huge range of arguments. Some of the most useful are laid out below:

You can also press ? from within the TUI for help or type googler –help for a more complete list of commands.

Open Terminal-Based Search Results in a Modern Terminal Browser

Googler allows you to easily conduct Google searches without leaving your terminal, and it seems a shame to open the results in a GUI browser.

If you want to continue in your terminal, but feel that Lynx is a relic of the past, use Carbonyl—a graphical web browser for your Linux terminal.