duckduckgo vs safari iphone

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We tried eight other iphone browsers so you don't have to.

Apple's Safari browser for the iPhone is fast and secure, but other browsers have more privacy features and greater customization options.

The easiest  iPhone  browser choice is Safari, which  Apple  pre-installs, but there are plenty of alternatives, and there are at least eight that deserve a closer look for anyone seeking something a little bit different. Because while Apple frequently touts its focus on privacy, some third-party browsers claim to do even more. Another common thread from other browsers is compatibility with the desktop app and unique user interface features.

With many websites having dedicated apps, some users no longer rely upon a web browser for daily activity. Every major social media, shopping and most financial companies use apps to enhance security while making it quicker and easier to log in with a glance (Face ID) or a press of the finger (Touch ID). Google and Bing searches are even possible via apps, eliminating opening a browser when looking up information online. Something that most apps lack, however, is the ability to open tabs and that convenience and control are hard to beat.

Related: Can You Move The Search Bar On iPhone?

The iPhone's Safari app is perfectly okay to use as a web browser without looking elsewhere. It's fast, secure, and well-integrated with the rest of Apple's ecosystem, making it an excellent default choice for the iPhone. There are, however, good reasons to shop around, with the most obvious being desktop browser compatibility. For iPhone owners that also use a Mac or MacBook, website passwords and bookmarks, tab groups and shipping addresses carry over from one device to the next via Apple's Continuity features . It's a different story for Windows PC owners since Apple doesn't make Safari for Windows. For that matter, Safari won't work with a Chromebook or Linux computer either. However, if the mobile app matches the installed desktop browser, synchronization data between the two is still possible. For those using Google Chrome on a computer, it might make the most sense to use it on the iPhone as well. The same is true of Mozilla's Firefox and Firefox Focus, Microsoft's Edge, DuckDuckGo, Opera and Opera GX, as well as the Brave browser.

Google Chrome For iPhone

Google Chrome is the world's most popular web browser on the desktop and smartphones. Its share of users on the iPhone is small compared to Safari usage, but  plenty of people use and prefer Chrome . Moreover, it's pretty convenient when also using a device that runs Android. Copy a link and bookmark it in Chrome on the iPhone, and it will be there on the Android phone as well, and vice versa. Chrome also works on Windows, a Mac and a Chromebook, bridging the divide between platforms.

Mozilla Firefox & Firefox Focus For iPhone

Mozilla's browser has been around for longer than almost any other browser, preceding Safari and Chrome. As a veteran of the early internet, Firefox has a loyal following of web developers that came to rely upon its advanced JavaScript debugging controls on the desktop. Unfortunately, the mobile browser is required to use Apple's WebKit rendering, meaning some of what makes Firefox unique is lost on the iPhone. The same is true of Google Chrome and every other iPhone browser. Apple considers it a security risk to allow another backend solution. That said, Firefox is an excellent browser with a big following.

Mozilla also makes another web browser for the iPhone called Firefox Focus, and it's designed to keep things simple. A somewhat debatable 'feature' is a total lack of tabs. Users can open only one web page at a time. After  Firefox Focus  is installed, a Safari extension with content blocking controls becomes available, providing an extra incentive to get this app. A trash can icon at the bottom of the screen can quickly dump browsing history and close the open page.

Microsoft Edge For iPhone

Microsoft Edge is the default browser for Windows PCs, making this a good choice for iPhone owners that work or play on Windows computers. Edge is quite different from the old Internet Explorer browser that crumbled under the combined force of Chrome, Firefox and Safari, which adopted modern web standards much sooner. By comparison, Edge feels quick and light, allowing users to earn Microsoft Rewards while browsing. Edge also provides unique tools to help with comparison shopping, such as collections and coupons.

DuckDuckGo For iPhone

As silly as the name sounds, DuckDuckGo is a real web browser made by the same company behind the increasingly popular search engine by the same name. Naturally, every search made in this iPhone browser gives the results from the DuckDuckGo search engine, so fans of this alternative to Google and Bing will want to check out this web browser. DuckDuckGo also includes a special Fire button at the bottom, which allows quickly 'burning' all tabs and browsing data , so no evidence remains on the iPhone.

Opera & Opera GX For iPhone

Opera is another web browser that has been around for decades but always seems to be innovating to add value . Opera Flow is an excellent example of this. It connects an iPhone or Android phone to a Mac or Windows computer to allow more than just syncing bookmarks. Flow provides a short-term shared online space for encrypted file transfers between devices. With a quick QR code scan on the computer screen, the setup is complete, and users can move files back and forth with ease. Opera also can be told to dismiss those annoying cookie permission popups automatically.

A variation on Opera called Opera GX has a smooth gaming flavor with custom theming to showcase favorite games or screenshots and a gaming news feed called GX Corner that appears on each new tab. In addition, the Fast Action Button allows super-fast, one-handed browsing with the swipe of a thumb. It's one of the most distinctive browsers available and worth a look.

Brave For iPhone

Brave is another privacy-focused browser. A key feature that distinguishes it from others is the ability to lock the browser, so Face ID or Touch ID is required to use it even if the iPhone is already unlocked. This protects browser information if the device is snatched out of the user's hand while in use, which sadly has been known to happen. DuckDuckGo and Firefox Focus are the only other browsers with this degree of protection.

With so many excellent browsers available on the iPhone, it might be challenging to choose which to use. Safari is an easy and obvious pick and works well. There is absolutely nothing wrong with staying right there . For more advanced privacy controls that lock down the browser and quickly zap away browsing data, Brave and DuckDuckGo are excellent choices. For compatibly with Android and Windows, it's hard to beat Chrome or Firefox and Edge, although Opera is a multi-platform browser as well with some unique capabilities. The  iPhone  can handle multiple web browsers. The default browser can be changed easily, so it might be best to install any of these interesting free apps and explore the possibilities.

Next: How To Replace Safari With Different Browser App On iPhone

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If You Care About Privacy, It’s Time to Try a New Web Browser

A new crop of internet browsers from Brave, DuckDuckGo and others offer stronger privacy protections than what you might be used to.

By Brian X. Chen

Most of us use web browsers out of habit.

If you surf the web with Microsoft Edge, that may be because you use Windows. If you use Safari, that’s probably because you are an Apple customer. If you are a Chrome user, that could be because you have a Google phone or laptop, or you downloaded the Google browser on your personal device after using it on computers at school or work.

In other words, we turn to the browsers that are readily available and familiar. It’s easy to fall into browser inertia because these apps are all fast, capable and serve the same purpose: visiting a website.

So if the differences are minimal, why bother looking for something else?

By the end of this column, I hope to persuade you to at least try something else: a new type of internet navigator called a private browser. This kind of browser, from less-known brands like DuckDuckGo and Brave, has emerged over the last three years. What stands out is that they minimize the data gathered about us by blocking the technologies used to track us.

That’s generally better than what most mainstream browsers, especially Chrome, do. While some browsers like Safari and Firefox also include tracking prevention, the smaller brands have been focused on even more privacy protections.

We have also reached an inflection point in digital privacy. The online advertising industry is on the brink of ceasing to use web cookies, pieces of code planted in browsers that follow us from site to site and help target us with ads. Google, whose Chrome browser is the world’s most popular, has been trying to develop a new way to target us with ads without the cookie.

Let’s not wait for that. You can decide now that you don’t want to be tracked.

“We’re at a fork in the road,” said Gennie Gebhart, a director at the digital rights nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, who follows privacy issues. “Companies that keep the lights on by advertising to users, Google included, are scrambling to see what’s the next play. It’s also a time for users to be informed and make a choice.”

Unlike mainstream web browsers, private browsers come in many forms that serve different purposes. For about a week, I tested three of the most popular options — DuckDuckGo, Brave and Firefox Focus. Even I was surprised that I eventually switched to Brave as the default browser on my iPhone. Here’s how it happened.

What is a private browser?

It’s important to know what private browsers do, and what they don’t. So let’s look under the hood.

Private browsers generally incorporate web technologies that have been around for years:

They rely on something called private mode, also known as incognito mode, which is a browsing session that does not record a history of the websites you have visited. This is useful if you don’t want people with physical access to your device to snoop on you.

Private browsers also use tracker blockers, which can often be downloaded as an add-on for a browser. The blockers depend on a list of known trackers that grab information about your identity. Whenever you load a website, the software then detects those trackers and restricts them from following you from site to site. The big downside of this approach is that blocking them can sometimes break parts of websites, like shopping carts and videos.

Privacy-focused browsers typically turn private mode on by default, or automatically purge browsing history when you quit the browser. The browsers also have tracking prevention baked in, which lets them aggressively block trackers using approaches that minimize website breakage.

But private browsers do not prevent your internet provider from seeing what websites you visit. So if you are on vacation and using a hotel’s Wi-Fi connection, a private browser will not keep your browsing information private from the hotel’s internet provider. For that type of protection, you still need to connect to a virtual private network , a technology that creates a virtual tunnel that shields your browsing information.

Meet the private browsers

Firefox Focus, DuckDuckGo and Brave are all similar, but with some important differences.

Firefox Focus, available only for mobile devices like iPhones and Android smartphones, is bare-bones. You punch in a web address and, when done browsing, hit the trash icon to erase the session. Quitting the app automatically purges the history. When you load a website, the browser relies on a database of trackers to determine which to block.

The DuckDuckGo browser, also available only for mobile devices, is more like a traditional browser. That means you can bookmark your favorite sites and open multiple browser tabs.

When you use the search bar, the browser returns results from the DuckDuckGo search engine, which the company says is more focused on privacy because its ads do not track people’s online behavior. DuckDuckGo also prevents ad trackers from loading. When done browsing, you can hit the flame icon at the bottom to erase the session.

Brave is also more like a traditional web browser, with anti-tracking technology and features like bookmarks and tabs. It includes a private mode that must be turned on if you don’t want people scrutinizing your web history.

Brave is also so aggressive about blocking trackers that in the process, it almost always blocks ads entirely. The other private browsers blocked ads less frequently.

For most people, not seeing ads is a benefit. But for those who want to give back to a publisher whose ads are blocked, Brave hosts its own ad network that you can opt into. In exchange for viewing ads that do not track your behavior, you earn a cut of revenue in the form of a token. You can then choose to give tokens to websites that you like. (Only web publishers that have a partnership with Brave can receive tokens.)

Battle of the browsers

I tested all three browsers on my iPhone, setting each as my default browser for a few days.

All have a button to see how many trackers they blocked when loading a website. To test that, I visited nypost.com, the website of The New York Post, which loaded 83 trackers without any tracking prevention. With DuckDuckGo, 15 of the nypost.com trackers were blocked. With Brave, it was 22. And Firefox Focus blocked 47.

But numbers don’t tell the whole story. Firefox Focus sometimes broke elements of websites. On some sites, videos failed to load and ad windows could not be closed.

Selena Deckelmann, an executive at Mozilla, which makes Firefox, said that the strict privacy protections in Firefox Focus could sometimes cause websites to break and that the company worked with web publishers so their sites could load properly.

I didn’t experience major issues when using Brave or DuckDuckGo, though there was an occasional hiccup. In one case, when using DuckDuckGo to scroll through Wirecutter , our sister publication that tests and recommends products, the names of some products did not fully load. While the site was still functional, it looked odd.

In the end, though, you probably would be happy using any of the private browsers. Even if you don’t make one your default browser, it is useful for certain situations, like a sensitive web search on a health condition.

For me, Brave won by a hair. My favorite websites loaded flawlessly, and I enjoyed the clean look of ad-free sites, along with the flexibility of opting in to see ads whenever I felt like it. Brendan Eich, the chief executive of Brave, said the company’s browser blocked tracking cookies “without mercy.”

“If everybody used Brave, it would wipe out the tracking-based ad economy,” he said.

Count me in.

Brian X. Chen is the lead consumer technology writer. He reviews products and writes Tech Fix , a column about solving tech-related problems. Before joining The Times in 2011, he reported on Apple and the wireless industry for Wired. More about Brian X. Chen

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Apple considered ditching google for duckduckgo in safari’s private mode, but apple exec argued duckduckgo wasn't as private as believed..

Samuel Axon - Oct 5, 2023 9:17 pm UTC

In iOS 17 , Apple recently made it easier to use alternatives to Google search in the Safari web browser's private browsing mode—but the company considered going even further by making DuckDuckGo, which is marketed as a more private alternative, the default choice in that context.

As reported by Bloomberg's Leah Nylen, the information came to light when Amit Mehta, the US District Judge who is handling the US antitrust trial over Google search, unsealed transcripts of testimonies by DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg and Apple SVP of machine learning and AI strategy John Giannandrea. Giannandrea worked as Google's head of search before his current role at Apple .

Further Reading

Giannandrea had a different take, though. He was heavily involved in Apple's discussions about its future with search, and he dismissed a switch to DuckDuckGo, partly because he felt that DuckDuckGo's "marketing about privacy is somewhat incongruent with the details" because DuckDuckGo relies on Bing in some areas. He said he would have wanted to do "a lot more due diligence with DuckDuckGo" should the switch have happened. He previously argued against switching to DuckDuckGo in an internal company email.

These conversations happened in the wider context of the antitrust trial over Google search, which, by some estimates, accounts for 90 percent of the market. Apple famously has a highly lucrative deal with Google to use the latter's search engine as the default option in Safari, which is the default web browser on iPads, Macs, and, most importantly, iPhones.

Previous trial testimonies revealed that Apple and Microsoft considered a wide-ranging partnership or even acquisition that would lead to Microsoft-developed search engine Bing becoming the default for Apple devices. Apple reportedly believed at another point that the only viable alternative to Google would be to develop its own search engine—which it didn't, perhaps because the Google deal was so lucrative.

Judge Mehta is looking closely at Google's deal with Apple as the trial weighs whether the search giant's dominance is anti-competitive in the US.

For DuckDuckGo's part, a company spokesperson was quoted in Bloomberg saying that the search engine takes measures to prevent "hosting and content providers from creating a history of your searches," in contrast to Giannandrea's statement that DuckDuckGo wasn't as comprehensively private as it claimed.

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How to use DuckDuckGo: Everything you need to know

What DuckDuckGo is, and isn't, good for

If privacy is what you're after and you want to get away from using Google, DuckDuckGo is a great alternative. The service focuses on putting privacy first, from internet browsing to email forwarding . However, the results aren't as relevant or robust, so you may not always find exactly what you're looking for. 

Thousands of privacy-conscious users have already made the switch from messaging platforms like WhatsApp to more secure-seeming options such as Signal and Telegram . 

At the same time, many people may be opting to use DuckDuckGo instead of Google or Bing for web searches, likely because the lesser-known search engine does not collect user data or track what you search. 

DuckDuckGo has seen more than 4 million users install its apps and browser extensions, making it their default search engine, and you can too.

Here's how to switch to — and use — DuckDuckGo. 

How to add DuckDuckGo to your browser

If you simply want to try out DuckDuckGo, type duckduckgo.com into your browser's address bar and enter your search query. Use it for a while and see if you like it. Once you're ready to make the switch, you can either select DuckDuckGo as your default search engine or add the appropriate app or extension to your browser. 

Adding DuckDuckGo to Chrome

Chrome users have two options for using DuckDuckGo on the desktop. The simplest option, if you're looking only for the private search function, is to make DuckDuckGo the default search engine.

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Go to Settings (the three vertical dots at the top right of your browser bar) > Search engine > Manage search engine. Click the vertical dots next to DuckDuckGo and select Make default. This will make DuckDuckGo the default search engine in your address search bar as well. 

An alternative for extra privacy is to install the DuckDuckGo Chrome extension . This will block hidden trackers and connect you to encrypted versions of websites if available. 

If you change your mind about DuckDuckGo, both the default setting and the browser extension can be disabled in Chrome's settings. 

Adding DuckDuckGo to Firefox

To make DuckDuckGo your default search engine in Firefox, toggle open the Settings options with the three horizontal lines to the far right of your address bar. Click Preferences and open the Default Search Engine drop-down menu to select DuckDuckGo. This will change the settings for search in your address bar.

To make DuckDuckGo your homepage in Firefox, drag this link to the Home icon and select Yes in the pop-up window. 

Like Chrome, Firefox has an add-on called DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials that has extra privacy features. 

Adding DuckDuckGo to other browsers

Safari users can simply tap the magnifying glass in the search bar, which will bring up a drop-down to select the default search engine. You can also add the DuckDuckGo extension from the App Store. 

With Brave, open the hamburger menu at the top right and go to Settings > Search Engine. Open the dropdown menu at the top of the page and select DuckDuckGo as your default. 

In Edge, click the three horizontal dots (they look like " … ") in the top right and select Settings. On the next page, click the three stacked lines in the top left and select > Privacy, Search and Services. 

Scroll all the way down the page and, under the Services heading, click Address Bar and Search. Open the dropdown menu next to Search Engine Used in the Address Bar and select DuckDuckGo. You can also get the Privacy Essentials add-on . 

Adding DuckDuckGo on mobile

DuckDuckGo has browsing apps for both iOS and Android . If you prefer to use DuckDuckGo as your default search engine within Safari, Firefox, or Brave, follow the steps on DuckDuckGo's help pages. 

How to use DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo isn't all that different from any other search engine. Type your query into the search bar and get your results. As with Google, you can narrow your search to images, videos, news, maps and shopping.

DuckDuckGo's results pages look fairly similar to Google's, with knowledge panels, news carousels and related searches. However, you'll get more with Google search results, such as recent tweets, People Also Ask and videos, than you'll get with DuckDuckGo. 

Google also returns different, and perhaps more relevant, results, depending on your perspective. When we searched for "Sundance Film Festival," Google's first four results (punctuated by People Also Ask and tweets from @SundanceFest) were from different pages on Sundance.org. 

With DuckDuckGo, we got only one link, to the main festival page. The second result was from Wikipedia. 

Microsoft's Bing splits the difference between the two, with results similar to DuckDuckGo but more robust knowledge panels. 

It's also worth noting that DuckDuckGo uses Apple Maps (with pretty mediocre results) and Yelp reviews. Google obviously shows Google Maps and Google reviews. Bing runs on OpenStreetMap and TripAdvisor. 

All that is to say, DuckDuckGo isn't anything special once you get beyond the privacy features. However, it can be a useful alternative if you're looking for a new search engine.

Anthony Spadafora is the security and networking editor at Tom’s Guide where he covers everything from data breaches and ransomware gangs to password managers and the best way to cover your whole home or business with Wi-Fi. Before joining the team, he wrote for ITProPortal while living in Korea and later for TechRadar Pro after moving back to the US. Based in Houston, Texas, when he’s not writing Anthony can be found tinkering with PCs and game consoles, managing cables and upgrading his smart home. 

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admin said: DuckDuckGo is a famously privacy-conscious search engine. Here's how to set it up and use it. How to use DuckDuckGo: Everything you need to know : Read more

• bobc4012 This site needs to do a better job for posting comments. It keeps sending me to this comment for my own comment. This article is generally about you can have DuckGoas an add-on for some browsers. It does not discuss how to use DuckGo to do searching, At least I can find the various search techniques for Google, but not for DuckGo, which I was expecting to find in this article, instead of making it an add-on. Either rename the article or include how to various types of searching using DuckGo Reply
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How-To Geek

How to switch to duckduckgo, a private search engine.

Have you tried DuckDuckGo yet? If you're sick of online tracking and ad targeting, give it a try. Switching from Google is easy---here's how.

Quick Links

Most browsers already include duckduckgo as a search option, install the duckduckgo browser extension, use duckduckgo for media, news, maps, and directions, get answers just like with google, use bangs to search specific websites, don't forget the duckduckgo mobile app, better privacy while browsing the web.

DuckDuckGo is a privacy-focused search engine that's been online since 2008. Find websites, maps, videos, news, and more---without tracking your searches and serving you targetted ads. Here's how to make the switch from Google, Bing, or any other search engine.

DuckDuckGo has been gaining ground for over a decade, finally breaking through to the "mainstream" in September of 2014 when Apple offered it as a default search engine option in Safari for iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite. Later, in November of the same year, Mozilla added it to Firefox 33.1.

Related: What Is DuckDuckGo? Meet the Google Alternative for Privacy

Since then, almost every major browser has recognized DuckDuckGo by making it an optional default search engine. This includes Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Opera.

Google Chrome

Launch Chrome, click on the "three dots" menu icon in the top-right corner of the window, and click "Settings."

Choose "Search engine" in the list on the left of the screen. Click on the drop-down box next to "Search engine used in the address bar" and choose DuckDuckGo.

Mozilla Firefox

Launch Firefox, click on the "three lines" hamburger menu icon in the top-right corner of the window, then click "Preferences."

Click on "Search" in the menu to the left of the screen, then under "Default Search Engine," click the drop-down box and choose DuckDuckGo.

Microsoft Edge

Launch Edge and click on the "three dots" menu button in the top-right corner of the window, then select "Settings." Click on "Privacy, Search and Services" in the menu that appears on the left, and scroll down to the "Services" menu and choose "Address bar and search."

From here, click the dropdown menu next to "Search engine used in the address bar" and choose DuckDuckGo.

Apple Safari

On a Mac, launch Safari, click "Safari" in the menu bar at the top of the screen, then click "Preferences." You can also use the Command+, shortcut to quickly bring up Safari's Preferences. Click on the Search tab, then choose DuckDuckGo under the "Search engine" drop-down box.

In Safari for iPhone and iPad, launch the Settings app and tap "Safari." Tap "Search Engine" and choose DuckDuckGo from the list.

Launch Opera, then click on the Settings "cog" button in the sidebar on the left of the screen. Under "Basic" settings, scroll down until you see "Search engine" and a drop-down box. Select DuckDuckGo from the list.

Using Another Browser?

DuckDuckGo is available as a search engine option in a broad range of niche browsers .

If simply switching your search engine to DuckDuckGo isn't enough, you can go a step further and install the DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials browser extension instead. The extension is available for Chrome , Firefox , Safari , Edge , and Opera .

The extension blocks tracker networks by default, so advertisers will have a much harder time tracking you across the web. You'll also get an idea of who is trying to track you. The extension forces websites to use an encrypted connection (denoted by https:// in the address bar ) where possible to help hide your browsing habits from ISPs and other snoopers.

The extension also offers to make your default search engine DuckDuckGo (if you haven't done that already) and awards a privacy score to websites you visit through a collaboration with Terms of Service Didn't Read .

Just like Google and other big search engines, DuckDuckGo allows you to filter results by type, including videos and images. After you've searched for something, you can click on the various filters at the top of the page, just like you would in Google.

In addition to media searches, DuckDuckGo can also show you news results, recipes, and places. You can search for "pizza near me," then share your location to get localized results on a map. You can also just use DuckDuckGo as a mapping tool for directions or reference thanks to Apple's MapKit integration.

To do this, either search for "map of Australia" (replacing Australia with wherever it is that you're searching for) or search for the place name, then click on Maps. Though DuckDuckGo uses Apple's map API, no identifying information is shared with Apple, so your privacy remains unaffected.

Since this is the same mapping solution built into macOS and seen on the iPhone and iPad, you can use it to get directions, view satellite imagery, or see businesses on a map. Click on the map pin in the top-right corner of the page to share your location (DuckDuckGo promises not to store this data).

When you ask Google a question, you often get a reply in the form of a snippet of relevant information at the top of the search results. DuckDuckGo performs a similar task, so try asking questions to get what the search engine calls Instant Answers.

This also applies to functions found in other search engines, like simple math calculations ("what is 2+2"), unit conversion ("2oz in grams"), and exchange rates ("10 USD in AUD"). You can also use DuckDuckGo to define words ("define malware") or to find synonyms ("thesaurus happy").

Bangs are qualifiers that you can add to your search query to limit your search results to a particular website. For example, to search How-To Geek, you can add !howtogeek to your search query, e.g. "!howtogeek windows networking".

There are thousands of bangs available for all sorts of websites, from the obvious ones like !youtube and !reddit to niche services. If you use a website that doesn't currently have a bang, you can submit it . Keep in mind that DuckDuckGo has previously purged a lot of bangs for liability reasons, including websites that enable piracy.

You can even quickly access Google from DuckDuckGo if you find yourself needing to perform the occasional search that just needs Google. The Google bang is a simple !g. For example, you can type "!g example" to search for "example" on Google.

Last, but certainly not least, is the DuckDuckGo mobile app, available for both iPhone and iPad  as well as  Android . This app is optional, and you can likely already switch to DuckDuckGo in your mobile browser of choice, whether it's Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.

It's most comparable to the Google app for iPhone and iPad in that it functions as a web browser, except that it replaces Google's data collection and tracking for DuckDuckGo's private browsing approach.

The app makes it easy to quickly switch your default browser to DuckDuckGo as well as providing many of the other benefits found in the browser extension. This includes making it as difficult as possible for advertisers to track you and providing forced encryption and a privacy grade for each website you visit.

The browser also includes a Fire Button, which burns your entire browsing history and currently open tabs in a single tap. You can also secure the browser with a fingerprint or facial recognition for added security.

Of course, you can also use DuckDuckGo as your default search engine in mobile browsers like Safari and Google Chrome.

Google is an advertising company. The more it knows about you, the better it can serve you relevant advertisements. This is why the company tracks so much of what you do online. Google's algorithms take into account everything from the videos you watch on YouTube to the websites you browse that use Google Analytics to build a profile of your interests for advertisers to target.

DuckDuckGo makes money from ads served by Microsoft and affiliates like Amazon and eBay, but they do so in a manner that doesn't track or identify you. Learn more about how DuckDuckGo makes its money .

While Google may be the more powerful search engine, using it comes at the cost of privacy. Ditching Google in favor of a search engine like DuckDuckGo is one small change you can make for a more private online experience.

Looking for something a little different? Take a look at Ecosia, a not-for-profit search engine that uses its revenue to plant trees .

Related: What Is Ecosia? Meet a Google Alternative That Plants Trees

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Here’s why DuckDuckGo works great in iPhone’s Safari

It's not just privacy–duckduckgo is a really handy search engine on a tiny screen.

Here’s a little asterisk, a footnote, a grace note you might have missed in Apple’s unveiling of iOS 8 at its annual developers’ conference earlier this week: iOS and OS X devices can now switch to DuckDuckGo as their default search engine in the Safari browser. That’s really helpful, but for far more than the privacy reasons you might have heard or read.

Sure enough, a friend who jumped into the first iOS 8 beta (with a $99 developer account) showed me the setting for DuckDuckGo (DDG) on his iPhone on Monday night. Things in beta releases of Apple systems have disappeared before, but Apple is promoting DDG as a “New feature to protect your privacy” , and DDG posted on its official blog about its Apple inclusion . It seems like DDG is coming to iPhones and iPads.

DuckDuckGo’s marketing message these days is focused around privacy, which makes sense. DuckDuckGo does not “collect or share personal information,” , and it does not track users . With everything we have learned about our actual privacy and exposure in the hands of Google, startup apps, social networks, the NSA, and supposedly secure web tools, a site that says, basically, “We don’t care what your do or track it” has a good pitch.

But don’t lose sight of another reason to try out DuckDuckGo on your iPhone or iPad: it is a really smart search engine that wants to save you time. It has a few features that can save you a few steps, give you instant answers to fare more searches and questions than Google, and allows you customize how it looks, acts, and operates, if you want to get into the details.

The shortlist of nifty things DuckDuckGo will do for you:

Instant answers to a remarkable range of questions

Type in “White House Black Market coupons” into Google , and you get a standard page of Google results. Type that into DuckDuckGo , and you see direct links to coupon codes and URLs, provided by Coupon Mountain and listed in a box right at the top of the results.

Google has its own instant answers to certain questions, implemented by the Google team with the cooperation of select partners. DuckDuckGo lets anybody jump into their open-source bits and hack away , providing instant answers for any kind of search that can be defined and hooked up to another site’s API.

There are things you can ask DuckDuckGo from your Safari bar for convenient answers. Like (breathes in): “password 12” and “password 14 strong” , spaghetti carbonara recipe , words that rhyme with Monterey , the hood internet tracks , “mortgage interest calculator $250000 at 4.5% over 30 years” , distance from Buffalo to Ithaca , Korean food in Pittsburgh , map Tarrytown NY , how to mix a mojito … and on it goes.

Instantly search almost any other site

Programmers refer to the exclamation point (!) as “bang.” Why ? It comes from letterpress, or maybe comic books, or just because “exclamation point” is a somewhat long phrase to say or type out, and programmers are lazy. Anyways.

Type “!” into DuckDuckGo (or your Safari search bar, in this case, followed by a shortcut letter or word, and DuckDuckGo will automatically redirect your search into that site. So “ !a cordovan shoe polish ” flings you right over to the Amazon results page for your fancy shoe needs. There are hundreds and hundreds of DuckDuckGo !bangs . Your mission is to try out just a few of the useful bits:

• !a = Amazon
• !w = Wikipedia
• !yt = YouTube
• !gmail = Gmail (your own Gmail archive, which feels weirdly magical)
• !recipes = Allrecipes

You can still use Google

One of the most frequently used bangs must be !g, which searches Google. Add !g in front of your search, and you basically just search Google instead of DuckDuckGo, with a usually unnoticeable hop between the two sites. Ain’t nobody pretending we’re all gonna live without Google here.

The weather

Just entering “ weather ” shows you the results for your rough location, right at the top of the results. The weather comes from Forecast.io . If you click on the weather result, Forecast will try to tell you exactly when it is going to start raining or snowing, right where you are. You can do the same for “ weather Orlando, FL ” or “ weather 14201 .

I have detailed my strange love for Forecast in a previous post. Suffice to say, I think it’s the best weather you could get from a web browser, and DuckDuckGo agrees.

Customize the look and feel of your DDG

DuckDuckGo doesn’t track you, record your IP address, or offer log-in accounts. But it does let you save settings for things like the theme, your preferred font, and features you do or do not want. Which, uh, what?

They’re anonymized “Cloud Settings” , which you can save with a unique passphrase that will bring back all the settings you like, on a phone or in a full browser. I like a dark theme with sans-serif font, and I get it everywhere I’m using DDG.

Got your own reasons for using DuckDuckGo, either on the desktop or in your phone? Leave a comment, or tweet it at me .

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How to give Safari a privacy boost with DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials

In this day and age, you should be doing everything in your power to boost the security and privacy of your browsing efforts. If you don't, you're being tracked, logged, and monitored by just about every site you visit. 

For some, that is simply not acceptable. 

If that sounds like you, and you're a macOS Safari user, you owe it to yourself to give Apple's web browser a helping hand with DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials. This browser add-on helps prevent online tracking by automatically blocking third-party trackers and even grades each site's privacy from A-F (A being trustworthy and F being absolutely not trustworthy).

I'm going to show you how to install and use this free Safari extension so you can extend the privacy of Safari. All you'll need is an Apple laptop or desktop and the Safari browser. Now let's add some privacy protection to your favorite browser.

Adding the DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials to Safari

Before installing, make sure to close Safari. Once you've done that, open the Apple App Store and search for DuckDuckGo in the search bar. You should see an entry for DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials. Click on that entry and then click Get ( Figure 1 ).

The DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials entry in the Apple App Store.

Next, click Install and, when prompted, either tap the fingerprint sensor (if your hardware has one) or type your user password. The installation will begin and finish very quickly.

Once the installation completes, close the App Store and open Safari. Near the top of the browser window, you'll see a notification warning that you need to turn on both "Privacy Protection" and "Privacy Dashboard" in the Extension Preferences ( Figure 2 ).

The next step is enabling these two features in Safari.

Click Turn On and Review and then, in the next window ( Figure 3 ), click the checkboxes for both Privacy Dashboard and Privacy Protection.

Enabling both features for DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials in Safari.

You'll be prompted to okay the enabling of the features, so make sure to click Turn On when asked.

Close and restart Safari. Next, visit any website you choose and you'll notice the small circle directly to the left of the address bar will display a grade for the site ( Figure 4 ).

Facebook earned a C privacy grade.

If you click on the grade a new popup will appear with all of the information you need to see. As you can tell, Facebook was upgraded from a previous D listing and DuckDuckGo has blocked 1 tracker ( Figure 5 ).

DuckDuckGo blocked a single tracker from Facebook.

You do not have to do anything to prevent DuckDuckGo from blocking trackers in Safari. This one-two punch of both Safari and DuckDuckGo tracker blocking should go a long, long way to keep your browsing experience safe from trackers keeping tabs on your comings and goings within the browser.

If you're concerned about your privacy, you should consider the addition of the DuckDuckgo Privacy Essentials extension a must.

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Iphone web browser choice gets one thing right, two things wrong, say developers.

Being prompted to make an iPhone web browser choice in Europe has seen an uptick in the use of third-party apps , but not everyone is happy about it.

The EU itself is investigating whether Apple’s implementation of the antitrust requirement goes far enough, and developers of third-party browsers say the process gets one thing right, and two things wrong …

iPhone web browser choice

While iPhone owners have been theoretically able to choose their preferred web browser since iOS 14, it wasn’t much of a choice, for a couple of reasons.

First, most people didn’t even know they could choose an alternative browser. The default is Safari, and you’d have to proactively install a third-party one and then manually set it as your default.

Second, Apple insisted that all browsers had to use its own WebKit API. That ensured that competing browsers couldn’t do anything to impact security of privacy, but it also meant that they couldn’t offer faster speeds, or features not available in Safari.

The EU required Apple to drop the WebKit requirement, and also to proactively present users with a choice of browser when they first use their device. These changes were introduced in iOS 17.4 , and only apply within EU countries.

Apple gets one thing right

Developers of third-party web browsers have seen an increase in usage following the implementation of the changes, and they say Apple did play fair in one important respect: browsers are listed in random order, and Safari doesn’t get any special position or prominence in the list.

But two things remain unfair, they say

Wired spoke to a number of developers of alternative iPhone web browsers, and found that they had two criticisms.

First, iPhone owners are not asked to make their choice during the initial iPhone setup process. Instead, they are only presented with the choice when they first open the Safari app. This means that Safari has already presented itself as the default.

“It starts from you clicking Safari,” says Jon von Tetzchner, CEO and cofounder of Vivaldi. “Which, I think all of us agree, that’s the wrong spot.” Tetzchner said he prefers Google’s implementation of its new browser choice screen that guides Android users to select a default while setting up their phone.

Second, users are given zero information about each browser – just a list of names, many of which will be unfamiliar to non-techy users. That reinforces the idea that they should select Safari unless they already know a reason to make a different choice.

“Giving people information about the choice, and also information about what they’re choosing is really, really important,” says Kush Amlani, a global competition and regulatory counsel at Mozilla, which makes the Firefox browser.

A fairer option would be to give each developer a few words to pitch their browser. DuckDuckGo, for example, might have something like “Uses our privacy-first search engine, which doesn’t track you or filter your results.”

We’ll need to wait for the EU’s conclusion to determine what changes might be needed to comply with the law.

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DuckDuckGo is a web browser that was built mainly to respect the privacy of the users so this web browser is known for its transparency towards its users. It was built by DuckDuckGo Incorporation. The development credit for this browser goes to Gabriel Weinberg and his team. It supports various operating systems like Mac, Windows, Android etc. 

Safari is also a web browser used for surfing the internet and it was built by Apple. It was mainly used on the Mac operating system but it can also be used on Windows operating system. Initially, it was released in 2003, just like chrome it is also freeware. It is open source and is written using different programming languages like C++, Swift etc.

Following is a table of differences between DuckDuckGo and Safari:

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Apple considered DuckDuckGo as an alternative to Google for private mode on Safari

Things could have been very different.

Don’t want the web to save your history, cookies or search results? Safari’s Private Browsing mode to the rescue. Interestingly, while it currently uses Google for search purposes, (much like the non-private mode) there was a chance it could have been a very different search engine.

Apple considered using DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine, as the default option in Private mode. That would mean no tracking from the search engine itself, for an even more ‘private’ Private mode.

Private mode and search

The news has come to light within the US government antitrust trial against Google. Testifying to the court, the CEO of DuckDuckGo, Gabriel Weingberg revealed that the firm had been in meetings with Apple in 2018 and 2019 so that the search engine would become the default in Safari’s Private Browsing mode.

Bloomberg reports further , with Weinberg testifying that the two firms had “about 20 meetings and phone calls with Apple executives, including the head of Safari, in 2018 and 2019 about becoming the default search engine for private browsing mode” 

“We were talking about it, I thought they would launch it” Weinberg continues. Apple, however, had other ideas, it would appear. Also testifying in a closed session, Apple executive John Giannandrea said that “to his knowledge” Apple had not considered the switch. He continued “The motivating factor for setting DuckDuckGo as the default for private browsing was an assumption that it would be more private.”

Instead, Apple has stuck with Google, apparently due to DuckDuckGo’s use of Bing search, with concerns that customer information would then be sent on to Microsoft. 

More and more information about the search engine wars is coming from this antitrust suit against Google, and somehow Apple has found itself a little closer to the center than it might appreciate. Either way, the world might have looked a great deal different with a DuckDuckGo search default in Safari.

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As iMore's Senior Staff writer, Tammy uses her background in audio and Masters in screenwriting to pen engaging product reviews and informative buying guides. The resident audiophile (or audio weirdo), she's got an eye for detail and a love of top-quality sound. Apple is her bread and butter, with attention on HomeKit and Apple iPhone and Mac hardware. You won't find her far away from a keyboard even outside of working at iMore – in her spare time, she spends her free time writing feature-length and TV screenplays. Also known to enjoy driving digital cars around virtual circuits, to varying degrees of success. Just don't ask her about AirPods Max - you probably won't like her answer.

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Why Apple’s iPhone Browser-Choice Option Sucks

You just bought a new iPhone in Europe and finished setting it up. You’re excited to start planning a much-needed vacation, so you tap on the Safari browser to search for upcoming flights. Oh, you suddenly see a pop-up asking you to choose a default browser. You quickly scan the list of options, only recognizing one or two, then decide to keep Safari and move on with your hunt for travel deals.

With the iOS 17.4 update , Apple now includes a default browser selection pop-up screen for European iPhone users. It’s part of the company’s response to the Digital Markets Act , which EU lawmakers enacted earlier this year to encourage competition on the internet. (The browser choice screen is not currently rolling out to iPhones in the United States.) While browser choice screens are, in theory, meant to level the playing field in markets dominated by a handful of gatekeepers , their effectiveness is determined by the quality of the user experience.

Many of the competitors appearing on Apple’s browser choice screen are dissatisfied with how it’s been implemented in European markets. Brendan Eich, CEO and cofounder of Brave , compared powerful companies that control the defaults on smartphones to street magicians who fan out cards to pick from but hustle you by forcing a specific card to the top of the deck.

An Apple spokesperson requested to speak off the record about browser choice screens. When WIRED declined and asked for an on-the-record comment, all further requests for an interview went unanswered.

Whenever someone updates their software to iOS 17.4 in Europe, they may see the browser choice pop-up the first time they tap on the Safari browser. After a short introductory screen about the default browser choice, a list of 12 browser options are displayed in a random order. The browsers that appear on the list vary slightly by country. Safari is automatically included, and the 11 other picks are browsers with the most iPhone downloads in a particular country that also adhere to Apple’s configuration requirements for defaults.

“It starts from you clicking Safari,” says Jon von Tetzchner, CEO and cofounder of Vivaldi . “Which, I think all of us agree, that’s the wrong spot.” Tetzchner said he prefers Google’s implementation of its new browser choice screen that guides Android users to select a default while setting up their phone.

Google actually has some experience implementing a choice screen to appease European regulators. When it was forced to add a search engine default selector to Android in 2019, many of the developers behind alternative options initially criticized the design and denounced Google’s practice of selling slots on the screen through auctions. The company responded by rolling out an updated pop-up without slot auctions in 2021. Google did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.

The slow speed of enforcement from European regulation means any changes mandated by lawmakers only arrive after a drawn-out process. “Google had implicit permission to implement a bad version of it and run out the clock. In the process, it makes the entire remedy of a choice screen look bad,” says Kamyl Bazbaz, a vice president of public affairs for DuckDuckGo . “If you can only judge the effectiveness of a thing based on a bad version of it, you're gonna think it sucks.”

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A few representatives from smaller browser companies also expressed that they wanted more information included with Apple’s choice process, like definitions of what a browser is for less tech-savvy users and descriptions of the different browsers’ specialties. “Giving people information about the choice, and also information about what they're choosing is really, really important,” says Kush Amlani, a global competition and regulatory counsel at Mozilla , which makes the Firefox browser.

Sophie Dembinski, a head of public policy and climate action at Ecosia , mentioned how Apple’s pop-up appears for all iPhone users even if they’ve already gone into their phone’s settings and set an alternative browser as their default. In comparison, Google’s browser choice screen for Android users won’t show up if you’ve already gone through the steps of setting a preference for a third-party option.

While many developers are unhappy with Apple’s implementation, not every company with a browser on the choice screen expressed frustration. “We believe that Apple's approach to presenting the browser choice screen is fair and acceptable,” says Andrew Moroz Frost, the Aloha Browser founder. He pointed out the randomized order of the browsers shown on the pop-up as one example of Apple designing it in a fair manner.

Richard Socher, the founder and CEO of You.com , seemed more encouraged by there being a browser choice screen that includes the search-focused startup rather than frustrated by Apple’s implementation. “I think it’s great that there’s not the default already preselected,” he says. Socher highlighted the randomized order as a positive sign as well.

Is this choice screen a true turning point for alternative browsers to grow their user base? “We’re expecting to have a clear picture on user uplift within months, not weeks,” says Dembinski. While some browsers reported initial upticks in downloads , it still seems too soon to make sweeping generalizations about the long-term efficacy of Apple’s choice screen.

“We would like to encourage platform providers to also level out the playing field for app developers around the world, not just in the EU,” says Jan Standal, a vice president of product marketing at Opera . Some of the companies WIRED spoke with remain hopeful that the precedent of browser choice screens set by the DMA will inspire international software changes.

Shortly after Apple’s choice screen launched, the European Commision announced that the screen would be part of its wider investigation into how Apple, Google, and Meta might be breaking these updated regulations: “The Commission is concerned that Apple's measures, including the design of the web browser choice screen, may be preventing users from truly exercising their choice of services within the Apple ecosystem, in contravention of Article 6(3) of the DMA.” In keeping with its slow-moving tradition, this investigation may take up to a year to complete.

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Apple to unveil AI-enabled Safari browser alongside new operating systems

Safari getting new AI tools in iOS 18

The software — expected to debut as Safari 18 later in 2024 — is currently undergoing evaluation alongside internal builds of Apple's next-generation operating system updates, namely iOS 18 and macOS 15, according to people familiar with the matter. Should all of the new features make it to the release candidate stage, users will be treated to a new user interface (UI) for customizing popular page controls, a "Web eraser" feature, and AI-driven content summarization tools.

Intelligent Search - AI-enhanced browsing and text summarization

Engineers evaluating the latest builds of Safari 18 can find a toggle for the new page controls menu within the browser's address bar. The menu consolidates — and provides quick access to — old and new page control tools, among them being the browser's new "Intelligent Search" feature.

This feature is not automatically enabled in test builds of Safari 18 and instead requires manual activation from the page controls menu. Once enabled, it's believed the tool leverages Apple's on-device AI technology — specifically the Ajax language-learning model — to identify topics and key phrases within a webpage for which to base the summarization.

In selecting key phrases, Apple's LLM software identifies sentences that provide explanations or describe the structure of objects, depending on the text in question. Words repeated within a text and key sentences are recognized as text topics.

These early indications suggest Apple is striving to deliver text summarization alongside Safari 18 later this year, though the exact implementation of this feature remains fuzzy.

Apple's text summarization features could be a response to rival generative AI tools, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT. But Apple's on-device models and technologies like Private Relay could make the experience much more secure for users. Intelligent Search is also likely to be the same AI browser assistant that one X user hinted at a couple of weeks back.

Web Eraser for better content-blocking

Also accessible from the new page controls menu is a feature Apple is testing called "Web Eraser." As its name would imply, it's designed to allow users to remove, or erase, specific portions of web pages, according to people familiar with the feature.

The feature is expected to build upon existing privacy features within Safari and will allow users to erase unwanted content from any webpage of their choosing. Users will have the option to erase banner ads, images, text or even entire page sections, all with relative ease.

The erasure is said to be persistent, rather than limited to a browsing session. This means that Safari will remember the changes even after the original tab or window has been closed.

When visiting a web page with previously erased content, Safari will inform the user that the page has been modified to reflect their desired changes. The browser will also give the user the option to revert changes and restore the webpage to its initial, unaltered state.

As for where Apple got the inspiration for Web Eraser, the company could have Sherlocked the feature from the third-party app 1Blocker. The application features a similar way of erasing ads, where users would tap ads to make them disappear.

Updated UI will move key tools into one easy location

The new page controls menu referenced throughout this article will attempt to offer Safari 18 users quick and easy access to several options previously located across different menus and the Share Sheet. Running on pre-release versions of macOS 15, for instance, the menu also pulls in the "Aa" menu common on existing iPadOS versions of the browser. These include zoom options, webpage settings for privacy controls, content blocking options, extension shortcuts, and access to the new AI and erasure tools.

These various options existed previously on macOS, but were found by navigating through the Safari settings menu. Having all of these controls in one central location in the Address Bar will make these options more discoverable for end users. Other options like on-page text search and reader mode are also in this menu.

This all suggests Apple intends to unite the iPadOS and macOS Safari UI paradigms when it unveils its new OS releases during its Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

AI-enhanced Visual Lookup feature could be available in 2025

Simultaneously, Apple is also working on a much more powerful visual search feature scheduled for integration sometime in 2025 that will allow users to obtain information on consumer products when browsing through images. People familiar with the tool say it's similar to the Visual Lookup feature, through which Siri can identify plants, pets and landmarks from photos.

Visual Search could be implemented as a system-wide feature. So, instead of surfacing search results in the Photos app, the user may be able to use Visual Search directly in Safari by selecting an image.

Given development of this tool is in the earlier stages, it remains unclear how Apple will ultimately go about implementing it. It also remains to be seen whether or not the feature will make it through internal testing.

The iPhone maker has expressed significant interest in artificial intelligence and more recently published research related to on-device language learning models. This goes hand in hand with widespread rumors about several other AI-powered software features, many of which are expected to make their debut later this year with iOS 18.

Another big year for Safari

From its inception, Safari was always meant to rival existing web browsers.

Safari was originally added to macOS as a means of replacing Microsoft's Internet Explorer for Mac, which was the default browser. Over the years, the app made its way to the iPhone , and has since received various upgrades over the years.

More recent versions of Safari provide users with personalized web suggestions, and allow for greater privacy protection with features such as iCloud Private Relay.

This latest set of enhancements only serves to better position Safari against the competition, in an ever-increasing landscape of generative AI tools and third-party ad-blockers.

While Apple tests many such features during different development stages, it is important to remember that not all of them make it to release. Apple has been known to delay features or cancel them entirely, so there's always a chance we may not see these new Safari features after all.

Along with Safari 18 and its associated improvements, we should also see a revamped Calculator with Math Notes make its way to iPadOS 18. Freeform Scenes and Adaptive Voice Shortcuts are new OS features, which are also expected to debut later this year.

Apple is expected to introduce various AI-related enhancements as part of iOS 18 and macOS 15, both of which should be announced at the company's annual WWDC on June 10.

36 Comments

"As for where Apple got the inspiration for Web Eraser, the company could have Sherlocked the feature from the third-party app 1Blocker. The application features a similar way of erasing ads, where users would tap ads to make them disappear." They may also have been inspired by Simplified Page....

As long as I can turn it off/hide it they can knock themselves out. 

Will the web eraser feature remove pop up videos, such as the ones that appear on this site?

I use the 'Reader' function in Safari quite a bit, but sometimes it doesn't work very well. Seems like something that AI could help make better. 

Web ads suck but how else do you think your favorite websites will stay in business? Are you prepared to pay a subscription to every site? I doubt it…

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Apple Promotes iPhone 15's 'Find Your Friends' Feature in Star Wars-Themed Ad

Apple today released a new video ad promoting the "Find Your Friends" feature available in the Find My app on all iPhone 15 models.

How to use the Find Your Friends feature:

• iPhone 15: How to Locate Friends With Precision Finding

Both you and the other person must have an iPhone 15 in order to use Find Your Friends. Similar to an AirTag, the feature supports Precision Finding, which provides an on-screen directional arrow and exact distance to the other person's location.

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Top Rated Comments

In the ad, a person dressed as a Mandalorian from the Star Wars universe uses the feature to find other Mandalorians in a crowded convention center.

This is the way.

How is this an advantage over just ringing them and saying, 'Where are you?' as we all do at the moment?

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