Safari Omnibar

I am a die-hard Safari user, but I do have Google Chrome installed on my Mac for the occasional need of Adobe Flash, since Chrome has a player embedded within, and I prefer to keep Flash off my machine otherwise.

One of the things I do love about Chrome is its Omnibar — the unified bar that handles addresses and search. Safari still keeps a separate search bar next to the address bar. Thanks to a post by Stephen Hackett, I have found a Safari extension that adds most of the Omnibar functionality to the address bar.

Now, Stephen talks mainly of a SIMBL plugin, which is a little hacky for my liking. In the update, he talks of an extension, which is Apple’s approved method. I’m using the extension.

The extension is available via the Safari extension page. It’s filed under Search Tools and is simply named Omnibar. The developer’s github page has some info on search shortcuts.

The one advantage of the SIMBL plugin over the extension is that the plugin can hide the standard Safari search field, much like Chrome’s look. But I’m still going to stick with the extension, as it sure seems much easier to deal with.

Hopefully Apple will someday hop on the Omnibar bandwagon.