Tip: More omnibox power tools

We've already seen a few things you can do with the omnibox, but it turns out there are even more capabilities you might not have known about.

First, you can create a desktop shortcut for the page you're on by simply highlighting the text in the omnibox, and then dragging that text onto your desktop.

If this is too fussy for you, you can drag the Star button next to the omnibox to the desktop to do the same thing (Note: this only applies to Google Chrome for Windows).

Second, if you've gotten a web address in an email or other document, and it isn't actually clickable, you can easily open it in the omnibox. Just select the link (even if it's broken across multiple lines!), copy it to your clipboard, and then right click (or on the Mac, ctrl-click) on the omnibox and select "Paste and go".

This will navigate to the link immediately. It works for things other than links too -- if you have some text on your clipboard, you can "Paste and search" to do the same thing as dragging the text to the omnibox.

Posted by Peter Kasting, Software Engineer