Skip to content
LumaDocs

DocsEveryday browsing

Address bar and search

Type an address or a search, use the floating search, pick your search engine and give sites you search often a nickname.

Click the address bar, or press Ctrl+L (also Alt+D, F6 or Ctrl+E). Type and press Enter. If what you typed is an address, Luma opens it; anything else is searched with your search engine.

  • Alt+Enter opens the result in a new tab instead of the current one.
  • Esc closes the suggestions. Press it again to put the page’s address back and return to the page.
  • Where the bar sits depends on your layout: with the sidebar, in a bar across the top of the window (or at the top of the sidebar, if you choose so); in the toolbar with tabs on top; or in the dock. In compact mode, and with the dock on the left or right edge, there is no address field on screen: Ctrl+L opens a floating one over the page.

Suggestions

As you type, a list of up to eight suggestions opens next to the bar. Choose one with the arrow keys and press Enter, or click it. You see:

  • what you typed, to Open it or to Search with your engine;
  • Luma’s own pages, when you type at least three letters of their name: settings, history, bookmarks, downloads, privacy;
  • matching bookmarks and pages from your history.

These suggestions come from this computer only. Suggestions from the search engine are off by default, because they send every key you type to it. To add them, turn on Settings › Search › Search suggestions. Startpage doesn’t offer any.

The floating search (Ctrl+T)

By default Ctrl+T doesn’t open an empty tab: a search field floats over the page you are on. Type, press Enter, and the result opens in a new tab. Esc closes the field without opening anything. It suggests your bookmarks and history like the address bar.

  • For a new tab with the start page, press Ctrl+Alt+T.
  • To make Ctrl+T open the start page every time, turn off Settings › Tabs › Ctrl+T opens a floating search.
  • In private windows, Ctrl+T always opens a new tab.

Choose the search engine

  1. Open Settings with Ctrl+, and choose Search.
  2. Pick an engine under Search engine: DuckDuckGo (the default), Brave Search, Startpage, Google, Bing or Ecosia.

The same engine is used when you select text on a page, right-click it and choose Search … for “…”.

Nicknames for sites you search often

Any bookmark can have a nickname. Type the nickname alone in the address bar and press Enter to open the bookmark. If the bookmark’s address contains %s, the words you type after the nickname take its place, so the bookmark works as a search shortcut.

  1. Open the bookmarks with Ctrl+Shift+O.
  2. Create a bookmark with New bookmark, or Edit an existing one.
  3. Fill in Nickname, for example gh, and Save.

With the address https://github.com/search?q=%s and the nickname gh, typing gh luma searches GitHub for “luma”.