Damian Mee

Unlocalize Google Chrome Omnibar

If you travel a lot or use a VPN, then at some point, Google might start to, wrongfully, think that you’d rather use some outdated local domain.

Steps to fix it:

  1. Go to chrome://settings/searchEngines (copy-paste it into your address bar)
  2. In the Default search settings section find “Google”
    • Rename Google to ex. Google (Annoying) in the 1st field
    • Change google.com to ex. Google.annoying in the 2nd field
    • Copy URL¹ from the 3rd field
  3. Scroll to the bottom of the Other search engines section
  4. Add a new search engine:
    • Put Google into the 1st field
    • Put google.com into the 2nd field
    • Paste the ¹URL from your clipboard into the 3rd field
    • In the pasted URL replace {google:baseURL} with https://google.com/
  5. Set this search engine as a default
  6. Close & Enjoy

Redirect examples:

Thailand Taiwan
screenshot screenshot


China
screenshot-main