Bangs broken if used after the query

strogonoff

I posted the relevant rant on HN a couple weeks back, and even though someone was able to convince me they are fixed at the time, it seems like I haven’t tested it properly since the bangs are definitely still not working the way you’d expect coming from say DDG.

The query like something something hn! doesn’t take me to Algolia. It does with DDG, but in Kagi I have to either go through all other possible bang placement options or just manually go to hn.algolia.com and query search there (which I commonly end up doing to save time).

It’s muscle memory by now, so it’s really tough to keep using Kagi as my primary engine (which I’ve been doing for months).

Haven’t tested on mobile, for the time being using Kagi on desktop only.

The bangs I’d expect to work:

<query> bang!
<query> !bang
!bang <query>
bang! <query>

Value7609

Can reproduce !hn something, something !hn and hn! something work for me.
But something hn! does not work.

Deebster

I see the same: if the ! is the final character of the query, the bang search doesn't trigger and you do a normal Kagi search.

Although, I had no idea you could do them as suffixes until today.

strogonoff

Deebster When on DDG, I’ve grown to prefer the suffix approach because:

Occasionally I know what I want to look up and start typing it before I decide what engine to use.
It’s marginally less effort & faster to add the final ! as a combo with Enter, rather than start with it or (worse) alternate between punctuation and letters; this is just due to the way ! is typed on an average keyboard (off the home row & requiring the Shift modifier).

leftium

strogonoff

strogonoff It’s marginally less effort & faster to add the final ! as a combo with Enter

I've made https://bangtastic.vercel.app/ to make typing ! for bang searches easier (on mobile):

Input ! with just the space key (one space if empty; two if other text exists, like . auto-correction).
Prefixing with ! may become preferable when smart bang auto-complete becomes available (for example: bang frecency)
Currently just forwards to Kagi, but eventually it will support a more advanced superset of bang search executed locally (plus search via engine of your choice.)

Originally proposed here: https://kagifeedback.org/d/3115-make-it-easier-to-type-to-start-bang-search/2

nannat

Similarly, if I'm in the Kagi Image Search and alter my search text from foo to foo !gi it will not redirect me to Google Image Search. However, if I'm on the Kagi Text Search page, doing the same thing does redirect me to Google Images.

Edit: tracked here: https://kagifeedback.org/d/3399-bangs-dont-work-anywhere-but-web-searches

Vlad

I think not supporting "query bang!" may be intentional as it may interfere with regular queries often. 'query !hn' should work though

strogonoff

Vlad Typing the exclamation mark is easier at the end (less wrist strain, quicker, etc.), and I’m not sure I can see a power user issuing a query that intentionally ends with an exclamation mark.

strogonoff

Just noticed: this actually definitely is a bug, because <something> w! works whereas <something> hn! doesn’t. (Both work if the bang is in a different location.)

That explains why I was so utterly confused, during the same day I might use g! or w! a few times and reinforce my muscle memory just to get stuck same evening.

I’m 99% sure Kagi backend uses different logic paths when handling custom bangs vs. built-in bangs, which would explain the inconsistency in behaviour.