Bangs (!)

A bang is a shortcut, marked with !, that hands your query to another site's search. The ! means go: a bang is Suede's redirection device, and only that — scoping a search to sites, time ranges, or verticals is the job of @ context.

Suede understands the full DuckDuckGo-compatible catalog — about 13,500 bangs — plus any you add yourself, and it reads them exactly the way DuckDuckGo does, so imported muscle memory just works.

Where a bang can go

The prefix form — ! before the code — fires at any position in the query:

!yt cats
cats !yt
best !g cats

The suffix form — code first, ! after — is recognized only for one- and two-letter codes (cats w!, gi! cats), so a query like history of yahoo! stays a literal search.

Suede removes the bang; the remaining text is the query. Only the first recognized bang takes effect — any later ones pass through literally. An unrecognized trigger is left in place and an ordinary search proceeds, so a bang never breaks a search.

Route bangs — search another site

A few of the most used:

!w byzantine empire       → Wikipedia search for "byzantine empire"
rust hashmap !so          → Stack Overflow search

Add your own route bangs in Settings → Navigation. A route bang is a URL template in which %s (also $1 or {}) is replaced with your encoded query — for example, https://www.example.com/search?q=%s. An advanced route bang may apply a capture-group regular expression to your query and substitute $1, $2, … into the template.

Feeling lucky

Jump straight to the first result with a leading backslash, or a bare ! anywhere:

\openstreetmap wiki
! openstreetmap wiki
openstreetmap wiki !

Quick bangs (no !)

A bang marked as a quick bang fires when it is the first word without the leading ! — convenient for the ones you use constantly. Toggle "quick bang" on a shortcut in Settings → Navigation.

Bang compatibility — your @ codes as bangs

Bang compatibility is a switch on the Bangs page in Settings → Navigation, off by default. Turn it on and your own @ codes — snap codes and view slugs — fire as bangs too, so !docs works like @docs. It exists for DuckDuckGo and Kagi muscle memory. The built-in context codes are never mirrored — there is no !day; time ranges and verticals always take @.

When a bang meets @ context

The route wins. A query that carries both a route bang and @ context is handed to the other site whole, and the context is dropped — an external engine can't honor your snaps, views, or time scopes.