Setting the Default Search Provider on Chrome via a script - google-chrome

Question

I am attempting to set various Google Chrome preferences via a script (on both OS X and Windows). I can successfully set a number of preferences, and add bookmarks, by editing the Preferences and Bookmarks json files in the user's Application Data folder. However, when i attempt to set a new default search provider, the browser automatically reverts to Google search.
The default search provider node in the Preferences file looks like this:
"default_search_provider": {
"enabled": true,
"encodings": "UTF-8",
"icon_url": "http://www.google.com/favicon.ico",
"id": "2",
"instant_url": "{google:baseURL}webhp?{google:RLZ}sourceid=chrome-instant&ie={inputEncoding}&ion=1{searchTerms}&nord=1",
"keyword": "google.com",
"name": "Google",
"prepopulate_id": "1",
"search_url": "{google:baseURL}search?{google:RLZ}{google:acceptedSuggestion}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}sourceid=chrome&ie={inputEncoding}&q={searchTerms}",
"suggest_url": "{google:baseSuggestURL}search?client=chrome&hl={language}&q={searchTerms}"
}
In order to add my desired search provider, I've simply added it manually (via the wrench menu), viewed the effect of this action on the json file, and then written a script to mimic these changes. However, when I change it via a script, the default search provider is used for the first search, but then resets the next time chrome is started. What am i missing here?

Answer 1

as mentioned, you should edit the 'Web Data' file, which is an sqlite database.
To add a search engine, add an entry to the 'keywords' table.
To change the default search engine, edit the 'Default Search Provider ID' value inside the 'meta' table.

Answer 2

If you want to change the default search provider in Google Chrome you have to modify 'Web Data' file wich is an SQLite file.
On my computer the location where you can find the file is C:\Users\daniel\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default(Windows7).
See the content of file with SQLite Database Browser; you can find one here.

Answer 3

Despite everybody here suggesting to write to Chrome's Sqlite DB, the same can be achieved via JSON based config files (as noted above by https://stackoverflow.com/users/49572/andreas-huber).
The relevant documentation can be found here:
https://www.chromium.org/administrators/policy-templates
https://www.chromium.org/administrators/linux-quick-start
https://www.chromium.org/administrators/policy-list-3#DefaultSearchProvider
For Chrome on Linux putting something like this into /opt/chrome/etc/policies/recommended/duckduckgo.json shoud get you started:
{
"DefaultSearchProviderEnabled": true,
"DefaultSearchProviderName": "DuckDuckGo",
"DefaultSearchProviderSearchURL": "https://duckduckgo.com/?q={searchTerms}"
}
On Windows and OSX and with Chromium the places to set this are different, but are all documented under the above given URLs.

Answer 4

A solution that is working for Chromium and Chrome on Ubuntu can be found here:
https://github.com/andreashuber69/os-setup/blob/master/common/reset-browser-preferences
Besides setting the default search provider, the linked script further customizes Chromium/Chrome to my liking. For Chrome, the part relevant to the question goes like this:
# Modify the preferences relevant to the default search provider
cat ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Preferences | jq '.default_search_provider_data.template_url_data={ "keyword": "duckduckgo.com", "short_name": "DuckDuckGo", "suggestions_url": "https://duckduckgo.com/ac/?q={searchTerms}&type=list", "url": "https://duckduckgo.com/?q={searchTerms}&t=canonical" }' >adapted-preferences.json
mv adapted-preferences.json ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Preferences
This simply adds a new entry to the list of search engines and sets it as default. If you want to select an existing one, things are little more complicated (see script for details). The above requires the package jq, which is not present out of the box on Ubuntu.
Contrary to other posts, it seems no longer possible to set the default in the meta table. It must be done through the Preferences file as shown above.