3 Nifty Browser Tricks That Everyone Will Appreciate

Mainstream browsers like Chrome and Firefox have quite a few features in common. Many useful ones are hidden in plain sight, such as the three listed below.

1. View site history: Click and hold the Back button when you’re on any website to get a dropdown list of pages you have visited before on that website.

2. Get site info: Look for an icon — usually resembling a padlock or a blank page — next to the address bar on a web page. Click on it to bring up a menu with information about the site you’re on, such as its security certificate and the cookies the site has stored on your computer. The information varies from site to site.

3. Search a site directly from the address bar: If you search a specific website often, instead of first navigating to it and then using the search box on the website every time, search directly from the address bar with a custom search engine.

On Chrome you can create a search engine via Settings > Search > Manage search engines. On Firefox, you can add one via Preferences > Search. You can also use an extension like Add to Search Bar instead.

If you want to use Google search to filter results from a particular website, prefix your search query with site: For example, to search Google for the term password tips and retrieve results only from MakeUseOf, type site:makeuseof.com password tips in Google search.

Which browser functionality can’t you do without even when you switch browsers? Is it available by default or does it need an extension to work? Tell us in the comments.