Q4Search

The majority of info nowadays can easily be found on the web with a few mouse clicks. Sure enough, this needs to be initiated from your web browser. However, alternatives like Q4Search make it easy to look for any bit of text string in your clipboard, using a search engine of your choice.

The application spends most of its time in the tray area. The corresponding icon can be used to bring up the search bar, but an even faster way is to use the assigned hotkey command. Although you can’t change the hotkey, it’s pretty easy to get familiar with, especially since it’s only composed of two buttons.

With the search bar up, all you need to do is fill in the corresponding text field with a word of interest, and select the engine of interest, such as Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, Google Translate, or eBay. Contrary to your expectations, the application doesn’t use your default web browser to return results, but uses its own slim, cool browser.

There’s more to the integrated browser than meets the eye. First of all, new search can be initiated through the upper toolbar search field. Navigation is fully supported, so you can also explore pages in great depth, and return to previous instances. Unfortunately, there’s no history of looked up items, nor the possibility to set favorites, or bookmarks.

On the other hand, you can choose from a much wider variety of search engines than the search bar provides. Organized in categories, multiple sources can be found in personal, images, music, torrents, files, health, translate, finance, coding, movies, books, shopping, analytics, news, and travel, to cover most of your needs and demands.

In conclusion, Q4Search is sure to be of use on a daily basis, especially when research needs to be done with info found on the web. It neatly integrates with your system, quietly sitting in the tray area, revealing a neat little search bar when specific key combinations are pressed. The built-in browser quickly reveals results, and provides even more search engines you can organized for fast info lookup.