web-search.fish

web-search.fish – Quick Web Search from the Fish Shell #

web-search.fish is a simple plugin I made for the Fish shell to open web searches directly from the terminal. It started as a way to speed up repetitive searches without reaching for the mouse—just type and go.

Inspired by the web-search plugin from oh-my-zsh, this version is lightweight, built specifically for Fish, and doesn't require anything fancy—just xdg-open to launch the browser.

You can search with:

web-search google your query here

Or set up short aliases for even quicker access:

alias github="web-search github"
alias duck="web-search duckduckgo"

It supports a good number of search contexts by default, like Google, DuckDuckGo, GitHub, StackOverflow, YouTube, Brave, and many others. You can also define your own by setting an environment variable with the WEB_SEARCH_ prefix. No need to touch the code—just update your config.fish.

How to Install #

With Fisher:

fisher install veirt/web-search.fish

Or manually:

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Veirt/web-search.fish/main/install.fish | fish

Why? #

Mostly just to make terminal life a bit smoother. I often found myself switching between the terminal and browser just to do quick lookups, and this plugin helps avoid that. It's not trying to be much—just a small tool that fits nicely into a terminal-first setup.

Credits #

Built with ideas from oh-my-zsh/web-search. That plugin made things easier on Zsh—I just wanted something similar for Fish.