![]() Unlike Google, DuckDuckGo doesn’t auto-suggest new searches because it never collects your search history to begin with-this felt like a small price to pay for more private browsing.Īnother refreshing privacy feature: DuckDuckGo actively blocks external trackers from following you around online. If you don’t like this, however, these settings can be changed by turning off personal results. ![]() Google’s (admittedly handy) Autocomplete prediction works by reflecting both real searches done by other users on Google as well as your own past searches. The entire time I was using the search engine, I didn’t feel inconvenienced by the lack of personalization. Privacy is the biggest draw of DuckDuckGo, and it applies it in a way that doesn’t feel restricting. Using DuckDuckGo brought me back to a simpler time when a search engine was only there to answer questions like, “What is the best laptop under $1000?” or “What was Tim Robbins’ character’s nickname in Top Gun?” (It was Merlin.) I barely remember a time when my every move wasn’t tracked, analyzed, and then marketed back to me through targeted suggestions and ads. Google has taken steps to address the issue by allowing you to disable search personalization under settings, but I suspect many users are still unaware of this option. Given what I see at this early state, I’m hopeful for the eventual full release.For someone who has used Google most of his adult life, this feels oddly refreshing. The lack of support for other sorts of plugins is less cumbersome–ad and script blockers are the most common, and DuckDuckGo’s integrated privacy protections take care of most of that on their own.Īs this is only version 0.30, we can expect DuckDuckGo to be in a beta state for perhaps another year or so. ![]() Until we get multi-device sync and a way to work with the most popular password managers, I can’t see myself doing more than dipping my toe in DuckDuckGo’s waters. And while you can import passwords from other browsers, that’s a one-way street.Įven bookmarks do not yet sync between devices. The universal autofill function of 1Password works, but that only fills in passwords, it doesn’t save or suggest new ones. It will soon have integrated compatibility with Bitwarden, but if you don’t use that password manager you’re out of luck. It has its own password manager, but that doesn’t sync between devices yet. More importantly, the browser simply doesn’t work with plugins at all yet. Since so many sites use cookies to save logins, you’ll be asked when you log in to sites if you want to “fireproof” the login–so the Fire Button removes everything but the cookie that keeps you logged in. Unlike the mobile versions, the Mac browser gives you the option of clearing only data from sites visited in the current tab or current window. This is a one-click button to nuke all your browsing history and data. The desktop browser carries the “Fire Button” over from the company’s mobile browsers. The private beta had empty placeholders where ads should be, but the open beta version now removes them to make pages look better. This means that while DuckDuckGo doesn’t specifically have an “ad blocker” built in per se, it ends up blocking most ads by default because most ads and ad networks are just loaded with trackers. That doesn’t mean everything is blocked–there are less-invasive trackers used for things like auditing web traffic, and non-tracking plugins that do things like load fonts are allowed through. It blocks what the company calls “invasive trackers” before they even load, which can save a lot of data transmission and make pages load faster and operate more smoothly. The main conceit of DuckDuckGo is that it helps prevent you from being tracked online. That works on web pages as expected, but middle-clicking bookmarks (from the menu or bar) does nothing. For example, I’m a heavy bookmarks bar user, and I middle-click to open links in a new tab quite often. Some of these things still need a bit of polish. Since DuckDuckGo never saves your browsing history online, they implemented a browser history that is just a list saved to your local machine. A number of features have been added since the invite-only beta began earlier this year, including pinned tabs and a bookmark bar.
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