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Comment by glenjamin | Hacker News Reader

I find it a little surprising that the famous apple blogger neglects to mention that Apple makes it hard to use a search engine like Kagi on iOS!

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I find it a little surprising that the blog famously censored by HN is still able to land on the first page of HN

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I see Gruber on here fairly frequently. Enough to say that articles from his blog are not a rarity

Curious, I just tried it for the first time. Install Kagi Extension for Safari from the App Store, open up Safari, go to Manage Extensions, turn it on. Then tap it in the extensions menu and accept permissions. Then it works.

Not one click but by no means a byzantine process

This extension is a big ugly hack: It redirects result pages of built-in search pages to Kagi, sometimes _after_ the original page has fully loaded. This doesn't occur on my M4 MacBook Pro, but happens all the time on my much slower 12-inch MacBook [0].

If this doesn't scare you already, I'll rephrase: Your queries may be sent to the built-in search engines even if you think you're only using Kagi! It does not actually replace the need for real custom search engine support in Safari. The official Kagi docs coyly acknowledge this [1]:

> For a better experience, we recommend selecting a single search engine to redirect (DuckDuckGo or Ecosia are recommended options as they have better privacy policies than other alternatives).

[0]: It's an amazingly portable device made ahead of its time - Apple really should revive this form factor and stick an M1 chip in it. [1]: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-started/setting-default.h...

Yes, use ecosia.

The extension is a big ugly hack, but you don't have to use it. You can simply set kagi.com as your start page and/or your new tab page.

Orion (made by Kagi) is a WebKit-based browser that eliminates the need for an extension.

> Apple makes it hard to use a search engine like Kagi on iOS

Unobvious. Not hard. To the chasm that is getting someone to pay for search, getting them to install an app and follow tedious but simple configuration instructions is a gap in the sidewalk.

I have been a software engineer for almost two decades and it's taken me three tries at reading and rereading the instruction on how to set Kagi as default search on iOS, because I missed the fact that I had to allow permission to use the extension WHILE browsing google.com for it to work, as it has to intercept the query to rewrite the URL.

When all it should've been is a "custom search engine" option like Firefox does.

Calling it "unobvious" is PR newspeak for jumping through the hoops to set up a Rube Goldberg machine to do a basic search.

> I missed the fact that I had to allow permission to use the extension WHILE browsing google.com for it to work

There was a period of time when they had two apps, and I agree the old one was stupidly complicated. The new one, Kagi for Search, doesn't require this.

Like, should Apple have an open API for routing searches? Maybe. Would that get abused? Probably. Do I think Kagi should be on Apple's list? Yes. Does prioritising a 50,000-user engine into iOS's defaults create other issues? Yes as well.

I installed Kagi for Search not even a week ago, so I guess the new app is just too advanced for someone like me.

I've also found that the extension configuration isn't very durable. I wound up having to re-do the arcane setup process semi-annually on each device or my searches would 403. Eventually just gave up. Brave search seems to work just as well.

How Apple haven't already lost a massive anti-trust case is beyond me.

I think there might be more to it. While it might just be me, I think Kagi could use some improvement here. I've been using Kagi with Safari on Mac for about a year, and never got the search extension to work consistently. It would sometimes give me Google, and sometimes Kagi. And sometimes it would give me one site then switch to the other after a several second delay.

Eventually I gave up and uninstalled their extension. I switched to using StopTheMadness to do the redirects instead, and am having much better luck. I did switch from redirecting Google to redirecting Ecosia at the same time, and this might be the difference, and while I'd fully agree that Safari doesn't make it easy, but I think the base problem is that their browser extension just doesn't work that well.

(If you are familiar with both, you will understand that switching _to_ StopTheMadness for a better interface is pretty high in irony!)

Hmm, fair enough. Do you think there is something Kagi could do to make this easier?

I don't know the details well enough to pinpoint the problem, but the fact that StopTheMadness is able to redirect consistently and the Kagi extension wasn't makes me think there is something they could fix to make it work better.

No, it's "hard", because it requires an extension to monitor all requests to a different search enging and hijack those to perform a redirect.

This is a clever workaround by Kagi, but a glaring hole in the Safari extension API surface area.

If I were setting up Kagi just for my self that’s probably true. But the thing preventing me from paying for Kagi is I’d want it for my household. Setting it up and supporting it on all the devices was enough for me to take a pass.

It’s not surprising. This is an article about Kagi. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had something about iOS’ search engine management in an early draft and then edited that part out because it’s off-topic.

In comments on Mastodon he also finds a way to twist this into an anti-EU rant: https://mastodon.social/@gruber/114418346006131728

Yeah, this is tedious.

How so?

I have Kagi set as the default search engine in the Orion browser.

The main problem I experience on iOS is that apps that open websites will pick Safari, and not my default browser. I'm sure they have some legitimate excuse, like "the app developer made that choice", or "that other browser doesn't support the right API" or whatever bullshit that makes the default browser not the default.

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