DuckDuckGo, optional Duck.ai

I love love love this browser, it is safe and simple, and I love it more than the browser I used to use, which was safari 😒 loll. I don’t have much to say to hype it up bc I have a specific reason for this review, and it is to request more options for screen time limits. On an iPhone, screen time limits are automatically put on EVERY website on safari, which is annoying if you need to research for school or look something up. With duckduckgo, it doesn’t do that, which is one reason I switched. BUT, I am young and deal with a phone addiction like other teens usually do, and I wish you could choose specific sites to limit on duckduckgo. This is my idea: In the menu, go to settings and click “screen time limits”, it’ll show you a simple set up menu where you can manually type in the specific websites you would like to limit and how long you have screen time on them. You do not have limits automatically on EVERY website, but only the ones you choose!! Or you can choose to do limits for every website, or make everything automatically have limits and choose what websites to allow. I feel like if that idea was implemented, it could help a lot of teens who need a better relationship with their phones but also need access to the web for school research. I have screen time limits until 12 PM (I requested it bc it helps with productivity), so if I have last minute homework to do that morning, I need to be able to reach a site to get it done and not have to send 12 billion requests for each individual site and annoy my parents and myself. Anyway, PLEASE look into this, I know I’m not the only one wanting a feature like this! Love the app, just not great for those struggling with their screen time :)

I’ve been using DuckDuckGo for around a decade and I think it’s a huge improvement over Google, but the browser and search engine still need work. First of all, DuckDuckGo stores your search history and loads all kinds of third party trackers, despite claiming not to. On multiple occasions I have seen previous searches and results from months ago randomly show up (either as suggestions or full searches) when I open browser. You can see the list of third party trackers that are loaded by clicking on the shield icon, and while I appreciate the transparency, its infuriating to see that they still regularly load trackers from Google ads and others. I feel that this is false advertising—our privacy is not being protected if they’re loading Google trackers, but they claim that it is. Second, the search results are still mixed and not always all that accurate. This has been an issue from the beginning—I always resort to google when I need precision. Finally, why is there no stop button on the browser? If a link is taking forever to load (which it often does), I need to be able to press stop and try a different link. Or if I clicked a link by mistake, I need to be able to stop it from loading and resume what I was doing. Honestly, I can deal with all of the above issues, but the lack of a stop button is a serious problem for me. Every browser needs a stop button; it’s been a bare minimum basic browser feature since the 90s. I really hope DuckDuckGo will consider adding one. Thank you.

I cannot get over what this web browser has shown me. Every time I use it I have to click on the top left of the search bar to see the list of which left wing based companies were trying to track my movements and searches online. Still amazes me how invasive we’ve let these people and these companies become. Like a bunch of frogs in ever-warming water... how soon before that water becomes boiling? How many more liberties will we allow them to take before we wake up and realize we have a right to our privacy and our freedom? I just wonder how long it will be before someone tries to shut this app down for not giving in to the invasive and manipulative agenda the other web browsers all exhibit. I’m sure monitoring our online presence is just the beginning. I fully expect their “cancel culture” to hit this area next. Media and online manipulation are their weapons of choice at the moment and if we have the opportunity to start to “pull back the curtains” to actually see that manipulation (like this app does so beautifully) we are risking being woken up to the reality that we’ve allowed ourselves to be manipulated up until now. Wake up America! This isn’t about Trump. It’s not about Republicans. This is about your freedom and mine. I took back a little off the freedom of privacy when I downloaded this app. I dare you to do the same. Now how long do you think it will be before some cancel-culture manipulator tries to remove this comment because they don’t agree with it and/or they don’t want y’all to know the truth?