In Chromium or Chrome browsers navigate to chrome://settings/searchEngines. The page looks something like this. Here I'm showing what Chromium Version 134.0.6949.0 (Developer Build) (64-bit). On Linux.

Notice that ".(Default)".

That . is the default search engine I set. To default. No Google Search as default search engine. You can also notice I've deactivated the Gemini Search engine.

How did I do that?

See that "Site search" section, with the big 'ole "Add" button?

Click that and write out the search engine you to use - instead of the deafult Google Search engine.

These are the fields in the UI when that "Add" ("Site search") button is clicked

This is how I fill out the fields for my "." search engine.

Then I set my "Site search" search engine to the Default search engine.

What is my "." search engine?

It's just a URL that sends search queries to the chrome://newtab page, which in my case is a Web extension page.

It's just an HTML page. I don't do any search queries. When I type a non-URL in the Omnibox I just get redirected to my Web extension custom new tab page. As described in detail here Override Chrome pages

New Tab

The page that appears when the user creates a new tab or window. You can also get to this page by entering the URL chrome://newtab.

A simple manifest.json

{
  "name": "tab",
  "version": "1.0",
  "manifest_version": 3,
  "chrome_url_overrides": {
    "newtab": "./tab.html"
  }
}

A simple HTML file

<!doctype html>
<html>
<body style="height:calc(97.5vh);background:url(./darkest-in-the-world.png) no-repeat;background-size:cover;">
<video autoplay loop muted width="300" height="200" src="./liberian_girl.webm" style="position:fixed;top:calc(70vh);left:calc(70vw);"></video>
</body>
</html>

stored in a folder named tab.

Relevant part of the shell script I use to launch Chromium browser, either from the command line or native program launcher icon

#!/bin/sh
$HOME/chrome-linux/chrome \
--load-extension=/home/guest271314/tab

An added side-effect of the above procedure is that also gets rid of the "Search with Lens" search box embedded in the right-side of the Omnibox. Nowadays there the "Customize Chromium" "Toolbox" where Google Lens search can also be disabled. I have encountered the removal of that box not working previously, so now, when I start up Chromium for the first time I do the process above so I don't even get that "Search with Lens" bubble once.

Now, when I type anything in the address bar (Omnibox) I'm redirected to my custom new tab page. Because that's my preference.

There. I've demonstrated how I set a the default search engine to my own custom search engine, that doesn't search for anything.

guest271314/no-monopoly.md

How did I do that?

What is my "." search engine?