Accessing Search Query Text in Google Chrome Browser with Chrome Extension

Question

I'm building a Chrome extension for myself. I want to access my search bar so that I can feed my queries into my own private ingest server (for realtime processing).

How does one access text entered into the search bar in Chrome? I started here https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/devguide but it's unclear where to actually access the query text.

Answer 1

You can only do so with a custom keyword preceeding the search.

There is chrome.omnibox API that allows you to do it, but you have to specify a keyword that needs to be entered first before you start receiving events.

Google specifically does not want you to spy on all searches.

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Alternatively, you could try and tap into the requests sent as part of search suggestions with webRequest API . I doubt it will be a robust solution though.