DuckDuckGo for Mac is now open source | Hacker News Reader

DuckDuckGo for Mac is now open source

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I am confused.

Ddg is a web search engine. So <search engine> for Mac seems like a type error.

The linked page tells you that they are hiring, and how to install the project, but /not what it is/.

Google is the search engine. Google Chrome is the browser.

Ddg is the search engine. Ddg for mac/Windows is the browser.

Actually it’s called Google Search.

https://duckduckgo.com/mac

You'll never guess the one trick I used to find that. They don't want you to know.

Note that this page triggers a download - which is quite rude on their behalf - apparently there's no page on their site where you can read about the browser before deciding whether you may want to download it.

Hi there, DDG employee here -- here are a few options where you can learn about the Mac browser before downloading:

https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/get-duckduckgo/...

https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-for-mac-open-beta/

https://duckduckgo.com/app (this one detects your device so only works if you're on a Mac)

If you write an app that references that link, Apple will not approve it for the App Store (less of a requirement for Mac, than iOS).

I ran into this with Zoom. If you follow a Zoom conference link, it automatically starts downloading the Zoom client. I wrote an app that helps folks find Zoom meetings.

I was forced to add code that intercepts callouts to Safari, that access Zoom conferences, and show an alert, instead, asking the user to download the app.

Please don't post links that download things automatically.

uBlock stopped the auto download for me I think

I use uBlock and got the download.

Your browser auto-downloaded it. The website just said it's available.

No, that doesn't normally happen. The link doesn't point to an executable. So the linked webpage caused the browser to download. At least there should be a warning.

Having worked in this space, you'd be amazed how the average user confuses search engine, browser and app.

It makes sense for anything that wants to compete with Google to also offer a desktop and mobile a browser.

Has anyone else noticed 99% of DDG search results are now AI spam? I can't look for anything on DDG anymore, it's 100 pages of "Table of Contents" questions/answers by AI. It's like when recipe blogs took over the internet, but worse now, because I can't even get a reliable answer now.

I get a lot of links to local businesses that have nothing to do with what I'm searching for.

DDG has really dropped off in quality over the last couple of years. I'm about ready to try that paid search engine that keeps being mentioned here on HN.

I've been using Brave Search for years and it's fantastic. I haven't used Google since and it supports Bangs! like DDG. It's free so you can give it a try.

It's not good for images, unfortunately. Bing is way better for images.

Yes, for images I just do !gi

Did Brave give up on their cryptocurrency stuff?

Unsure, but I don’t see anything related to it these days

It's a decent alternative to what Mozilla was doing to earn money.

They've kinda realized that it's not going anywhere. So now they're focusing on products that can earn them revenue. Like AI features and search ads.

How to make sure Brave (the browser) gets some money if I'm not using their search engine? (I use Kagi)

I still use Google; however, Brave Search has been my default and it is good in most cases. Better than Bing (and DDG).

I really liked Brave Search but unfortunately it started giving me captchas on every search after 11 pm Pacific or so for some (unknown) reason. They’re not even image captchas, you just click the button and wait 15-20 seconds which is pretty inconvenient.

Hi, Brave engineer here,

May I ask when you switched away from Brave Search? We've been doing work to reduce the amount of captchas a few months ago and we stopped getting feedback about this issue at that point. If it's still happening, it's something we will look into again.

Also, are you a user of ProtonVPN by any chance?

Thanks for your help,

Hi pythux, off-topic question but do engineers directly read the feedback or is it filtered for you by someone else?

It can be both, we have people who look at community feedback on a daily basis, but engineers also tend to be out there on HN and Reddit, etc. and today it was the case that I saw the comment and could jump in straight away.

Excellent browser. One issue with it though, when I close the browser I am expecting my history to be deleted as I set it up that way, but it turns out I have to manually close every tab before closing the browser for it to actually delete the history and that seems like a mistake. Otherwise, great browser. Though you should rip out all the Google stuff from it, literally every single thing that connects or touches that pos company.

Hey, let me forward that to someone more knowledgeable about this topic. We'll get back to you. Thanks for the feedback!

Sampson here, from Developer Relations at Brave. Would you mind telling me a bit more about how you have Brave configured, so that I can make sure local testing and troubleshooting on my end reflects your scenario accurately? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

You are presumably using the "Clear on Exit" feature, located within settings at brave://settings/clearBrowserData. When you select the "On Exit" tab of that view, which options do you have selected? Do you find that none of the data types are cleared when you close the browser (via › Exit), or only some of them are cleared?

I'm also curious about the state of two options within brave://settings/system, namely "Close window when closing last tab," and "Warn me before closing window with multiple tabs". Are both of these enabled?

Thank you in advance

(Kagi, for anyone willing to do the same. It's great!)

Feels nice to know that I am literally a paying customer and at least in theory incentives should be somewhat aligned.

I'm relieved to see someone stating this. I get ignored (and dvoted) every time I criticize ddg, but I have no vested interested -- I simply find precisely what you mentioned and that it tends to suck in general.

I've started using Kagi for any "important" searches and I have to say it works very well, quite a contrast to what DDG has now become.

I use kagi for everything

Kagi is my one and only search engine for few years now. What a breath of fresh air. It was, "back to sanity" for me.

Use Kagi. It doesn't have this problem.

I thought DDG was a skin for bing? Maybe that's a bing issue.

I just ran half a dozen identical searches on DDG and Bing, and yeah it looks like DDG is returning the same main results as Bing (if you ignore all the AI stuff at the top of Bing searches).

Could be, but I don't think so, because I use Ecosia, which is even more of a Bing skin than DDG. DDG adds some of their own flair into the mix, but Ecosia is pretty much just Bing I believe. In any case I don't feel like I'm getting much in the way of AI spam. For the few searches I do try on Google, I think it's safe to say that Ecosia/Bing is now a better search engine that Google.

Realistically I think it has more to do with the terms your searching for, and not necessarily if one search engine is worse hit by spam, AI or otherwise.

Which searches? I find myself only using the !g for very specific, rare, within the past year framework problems and trying to find local restaurants, but Google and Yelp suck for that too but are slightly better.

DDG and Google are both open when I'm looking for stock images for flash cards.

I don't get AI spam, but I have started getting recent news articles, generally starting from ~the end of page 1 and getting more and more common as you go further down. i find they contain maybe one word from my query in the title- so it's not just pulling them out from nowhere, but come on surely it can do better than that...

I switched to a different search engine (brave) to get away from it, the result quality seems about the same for english, but not as good for other languages- it's not amazing but it'll do

I’ve been seeing this in DDG too, pretty annoying. I usually end up switching over to Google but will try Brave now you mention it

Depends on what you're looking for. With news, I'm often getting 2 pages almost fully stuffed with msn.com links

not perticularly, probably depends on what you're looking for.

I've not encountered this myself, but I can believe you do.

Over the last 12 months or so I was getting that problem with Google, but they seem to have realised that a lot of people were saying that and changed. Whatever Google did wrong for my searches a year ago — and perhaps even that was "not keeping ahead in the race against hostile SEO" — it's entirely possible DDG is doing wrong for your searches right now.

DDG search seems to fill 95% of my needs. 5% of the time I have to switch to Google , usually for reviews or some strange maps link / interface. I suppose reviews are part of Google maps too, so really I only need that. Need is questionable but it’s there and easy

I sometimes have to use DDG when I'm in private browsing mode (I don't feel like setting it up for Kagi), and have noticed that DDG has become complete junk. Not only does it seem to be highly sanitized but it's full of crappy results. Yeah, every search engine has bad results, especially The Google, but DDG has seen the sharpest decline in quality. I used to be a fan!

This is great to hear but I’ve found Kagi’s Orion to be so good that I’m unlikely to switch

I don’t understand why I’d want a DDG browser. Firefox seems fine ?

is this based on an existing engine/framework or something new?

WebKit afaik

It’s JSC + Webkit => so it’s just Safari in disguise

Is that not like saying that Brave, Orion, Vivaldi, Edge and Opera are just Chrome in disguise? I mean I wouldn't disagree necessarily.

Yeah, I mean they are all different when it comes to tools around web page itself, but compatibility & web performance will be similar to the rendering/js engine.

Orion is also WebKit, not chromium based

But, unlike most browsers with WebKit inside, lets you run “most” Firefox/Chrome extensions.

We have taken steps to update our terminology and remove words with problematic racial connotations, most notably the change to main branches, allow lists, and blocklists. Closed issues or PRs may contain deprecated terminology that should not be used going forward.

TIL blacklist and whitelist are racist. Even though if you look at the etymology they're not. Meh.

Holy shit, it wasn’t?

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