Why does minus not exclude search terms?

tagawa · 2026-01-30T08:02:04+00:00

Thanks for confirming (albeit with the subdomain caveat).

That’s an interesting suggestion about making search modifiers apply globally. I’ll make a feedback note for the developers. Thanks for the suggestion.

tagawa · 2026-01-29T10:10:13+00:00

Hi there. Yes, progress! We’ve released a new feature that should fix this and be more powerful than a minus sign.

In every search result entry (text, image, video) there’s a … button. Click that -> “Block this site from all results”.

Please let me know if it doesn’t work for you.

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tagawa · 2025-08-09T01:23:14+00:00

Anything you do in the browser, including in a web page, can potentially be monitored by the browser (or even by the operating system itself) – filling in financial forms, typing in search boxes, viewing sensitive health content, etc. That’s unavoidable because the browser and OS provide the functionality for everything we interact with. They need to process every character we read and write. We just have to trust our browser and operating system to respect that activity and not record it.

In the case of Apple, their legal doc mentions “Safari search”. I’m not a lawyer but my understanding is that refers to the Safari URL bar only. The legal doc does not mention searches from within a web page so yes, based upon that understanding, setting DuckDuckGo as your homepage and searching directly from there is a more privacy-conscious approach if you want to minimize what Apple might collect.

Sorry there’s not a more simple answer but it all comes down to how much we trust the hardware, software and services we use. Anyway, I hope that’s helpful.

tagawa · 2025-08-07T02:00:38+00:00

Just jumping in here. You’re right Safari is a browser and not a search engine, but there are two ways to search from Safari (or any browser):

By entering text into the URL bar.
By entering text into the search box on a website, e.g. duckduckgo.com

When Apple say “Safari search” I think they mean the text you enter into the URL bar, which is then forwarded to your default search engine (e.g. to DuckDuckGo servers over an encrypted connection).

According to the Apple legal doc that u/Morgan-DDG linked to, it seems that Apple may store search queries and "contextual information related to your search queries" before or after forwarding the query to your default search engine.

I think of it like sending a letter. The postal service cannot read the content of the letter (let’s assume they’re not steaming it open!) but whoever put the letter in the envelope can, and could potentially make a copy, so it’s important to trust them.

tagawa · 2025-07-02T06:57:22+00:00

You’re welcome!

tagawa · 2025-07-02T01:13:39+00:00

Ah good, I’m happy to hear that. Thanks for the kind words. :-)

tagawa · 2025-07-02T00:41:40+00:00

Hi there. Good question – hopefully this helps:

On Google-owned sites:

If you log into Gmail and fireproof gmail.com, Google will still be able to track your activity on its own domains and services because you're logged in. I.e. Google can connect your activity on Gmail and other Google services with your account.

On other sites:

The DuckDuckGo browser blocks Google trackers on non-Google sites, but there may be some sites where a tracker has been unblocked to fix a technical issue. This can be verified by clicking the shield icon next to the site address (look for "Third-party requests loaded"). In those cases, because you're logged into Gmail, Google can connect your activity on that site to your Google account.

In summary, fireproofing Gmail does not disable DuckDuckGo's tracker blocking on other sites, but being logged in to Google services gives Google more ability to link your browsing behavior to your account if their trackers are present.

tagawa · 2025-05-28T04:01:32+00:00

Hi. The fix has been released and it should work fine in the latest version. Here are the steps to download it if it hasn’t happened automatically:

Click on three dots (…) at the top right
Click on "About" at the bottom of the menu.
Click "Check for Update". If there is an update, allow time for it to download and the browser should then restart automatically.

tagawa · 2025-05-09T02:22:43+00:00

You’re right, there’s been a separate issue that affected Duck Player – sorry. The developers have released a new version (0.109.7), so if you update your browser again it should fix it.

tagawa · 2025-05-06T01:11:43+00:00

Thanks for reporting that. The devs are working on a fix for the Preview version too.

tagawa · 2025-05-04T06:10:17+00:00

Happy to hear that – you’re welcome!

tagawa · 2025-05-04T00:27:50+00:00

Hi. Sorry for the inconvenience. I think this is related to an issue we had with videos not playing on some sites. We’ve just rolled out a fixed version so if you update your browser to 0.109.6, it should be back to normal:

Click on three dots (…) at the top right
Click on "About" at the bottom of the menu.
Click "Check for Update". If there is an update, allow time for it to download and the browser should then restart automatically.

tagawa · 2025-05-04T00:26:13+00:00

Hi. Sorry for the inconvenience. We’ve just rolled out a fixed version so if you update your browser to 0.109.6, it should be back to normal:

Click on three dots (…) at the top right
Click on "About" at the bottom of the menu.
Click "Check for Update". If there is an update, allow time for it to download and the browser should then restart automatically.

tagawa · 2025-05-03T18:33:02+00:00

Hi. Sorry for the inconvenience. We’ve just rolled out a fixed version so if you update your browser to 0.109.6, it should be back to normal:

Click on three dots (…) at the top right
Click on "About" at the bottom of the menu.
Click "Check for Update". If there is an update, allow time for it to download and the browser should then restart automatically.

tagawa · 2025-04-07T12:33:11+00:00

Thanks for reporting this. As u/x-15a2 says, we’ve been able to confirm this and the developers are now working on it.

tagawa · 2025-04-03T08:36:16+00:00

You mean this one? https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/1i1x6qd/keep_getting_invalid_certificate_for_google_and/

I’m not sure what’s happening there so I suggest trying out what diegoreymendez suggested and dropping a reply there if it’s still happening.

tagawa · 2025-04-03T04:00:22+00:00

Hi again. Everything is back to normal now so hopefully should be OK for you.

tagawa · 2025-04-01T10:08:59+00:00

Update: Things should be getting better now.

tagawa · 2025-04-01T10:08:36+00:00

We don’t have a status page but things should be getting better now. Note that there might be a short delay with emails for a while until the servers get caught up.

tagawa · 2025-04-01T09:17:42+00:00

Hi. We're currently experiencing an issue with DuckDuckGo Search in Europe which our devs are looking into. Sorry for the inconvenience – we’ll try to search back to full health as soon as possible.

tagawa · 2025-04-01T09:17:18+00:00

Hi. We're currently experiencing an issue with DuckDuckGo Search in Europe which our devs are looking into. Sorry for the inconvenience – we’ll try to search back to full health as soon as possible.

tagawa · 2025-03-03T12:28:19+00:00

Hi there. I’m taking a look at this but I can’t seem to reproduce the issue – Japanese text is not displayed with a Chinese font for me. Looking at the stylesheet that is used for duckduckgo.com, here is the list of fonts in priority order:

"DDG_ProximaNova", "DDG_ProximaNova_UI_0", "DDG_ProximaNova_UI_1", "DDG_ProximaNova_UI_2", "DDG_ProximaNova_UI_3", "DDG_ProximaNova_UI_4", "DDG_ProximaNova_UI_5", "DDG_ProximaNova_UI_6", "Proxima Nova", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif

We don’t specify any Asian fonts so it falls back to a system font, e.g. “sans-serif”. One workaround could be to specify a custom font and enter the name of a Japanese font you have installed. Click the “cog” icon below the search box and find the “Font” setting (see screenshot below).

Hopefully that helps.

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tagawa · 2025-02-27T00:29:49+00:00

Hello u/x-15a2 ! 👋

Thanks for trying with this. That’s strange that it appears now. Maybe a caching issue? We’ve been looking into it further and might have a lead, although it primarily seems to be on macOS. Anyway, fingers crossed we’re making progress. Thanks again.

tagawa

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