Patrick Micka

HowTo: Change the Google Search Box Icon In Ubuntu Linux

How To, Linux, Ubuntu

• 09
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Earlier this month Google unveiled yet another of it’s favicons. Though some disagree, I feel that this version is a lot nicer than any previous iteration, especially the one they released June of last year. Popular productivity blog Lifehacker recently posted instructions on how to replace the old Google icon in the search bar with the newer version. Though they didn’t provide any instructions for Linux users.

Here’s how I changed the Google favicon in the search bar through the command line:

To download the new .xml file which stores the search engine plugin to the desktop, we first need to change the current directory with this command:

cd ~/Desktop

Next, grab the new file with the following command:

wget http://www.mozillalinks.org/download/google.xml

Then, delete, and subsequently replace, the old one by entering the two commands below:

sudo rm /usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins/google.xml
sudo cp ~/Desktop/google.xml /usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins/google.xml

If you get some sort of “no such file or directory” message when trying to delete the old google.xml file use the following command to locate it and modify the steps noted above to reflect the directory which it is located in.

sudo find / -name ‘google.xml’

After you’ve completed the switch successfully simply restart Firefox and enjoy responsibly.