Hi there, this is my new blog and you are looking at the first post of a series that will introduce you to every scopes (aka Dash search plugins) available in the latest Ubuntu release, 13.10.

Let’s start with a simple one, the Reddit scope.

What does it do ?

It gives you the 10 hottest posts of any public subreddit. You can invoke it directly with the reddit or r keywords, then add the subreddit you want to look at, eg. r:pics

The more it’s used by Ubuntu users, the less you will need to use a keyword, as the Smart Scopes server will learn that some words are subreddits and will automatically sends Reddit results for these searches.

Looking closer

When you click a result, you get basic data about the post : user, text or full title, number of comments, subreddit (which will be handy when full Reddit search is activated) and external source if there is one.

It also fetches the image if available or keep using the low-res thumbnail provided by the Reddit API.

The “View on Reddit” button simply takes you to the Reddit post (as opposed to the external source).

NSFW lock (and unlock)

NSFW results don’t have images by default, just the Reddit alien and are tagged accordingly. You can bypass this lock by adding #nsfw to your query, eg. r:lolcats#nsfw

Where is it ?

This scope is on the Smart Scopes server and is not installed on your device. If you are not so much of a redditor and want to turn it off completely, you can go to the Applications scope, search for reddit and disable it.

That’s pretty much it for the Reddit scope. The next post we’ll be about the Virtualbox one, stay tuned!