DuckDuckGo is a great privacy-conscious search engine that doesn’t record your search history and behaviour like Google. It means, fewer chances of falling prey to targeted advertisements. DuckDuckGo is a treasure of great features and more. Here is everything about DuckDuckGo, and how you can customise your search preference.
Using DuckDuckGo is simple – simply visit DuckDuckgo.com and start searching. Making it your browser’s default search engine should be the next step. Most popular browsers let you set DuckDuckGo as the default search engine, and the steps for most browsers are similar. Here is how to go about setting it up.
Step 1: Click on menu icon on the top-right corner of the browser.
Step 2: Click on Options.
Step 3: Click on Search.
Step 4: Select DuckDuckGo as your default search engine.
DuckDuckGo has its own web browser for Android and iOS devices that look for trackers, scans and ranks sites’ privacy policies and even force sites to use an encrypted (HTTPS) connection where available, to protect your data. Thankfully, you can also have similar top-grade privacy features on your existing desktop browser by installing DuckDuckGo’s browser extension. You can install the extension on your browser by clicking this link- https://help.duckduckgo.com/desktop/adding-duckduckgo-to-your-browser/?redir=1.
Appearance and customisations
DuckDuckGo lets you customise its appearance to your liking. There are currently 6-themes to choose from – Default, Basic, Contrast, Dark, Grey and Terminal. You can also change the font and its size by going to the Appearance menu. There is also a background colour option for changing the colour across the entire site. You can also change the browser’s Region and Language by accessing the General settings menu. Turing on options such as Infinite Scroll loads results continuously, eliminating the need to manually click the next page.
Keyboards shortcuts
DuckDuckGo’s keyboard shortcuts make searching more efficient. You can press J and K or the up and down arrows to scroll through individual search results. The highlighted result can be opened by pressing Enter or hitting the O key. You can also use CTRL + Enter to open the highlighted result in a background tab. Pressing Ctrl + V opens the highlighted result in a new tab. You can also fetch additional results from the highlighted website by pressing D.
Pressing T takes you to the top of the page while pressing M highlights the main result. You can also focus the search box by pressing / or H. Using the right and left arrow keys navigates the Instant Answer tabs. DuckDuckGo lets you turn off keyboard shortcuts in the settings menu in case you don’t like them.
Bangs search
Bang searches are one of DuckDuckGo’s coolest features. They act like shortcuts that quickly takes you to search results on other sites. For example, if you want to search about Reliance Digital on Wikipedia, type !w Reliance Digital in your search box. There are currently 13,564 Bangs and here are some of the popular ones to know.
Instant Answers
DuckDuckGo says it uses over 100 sources to provide answers to your searches, and its Instant Answer feature lets you glimpse at results without clicking them. This feature can save time, and it also helps to protect privacy, as you see the results without visiting the website. The search engine currently supports 1,235 kinds of instant answers, and here are some of the interesting ones.
Cheat sheet
Cheat sheet makes using software easy, and you can quickly find them on DuckDuckGo. Just end your search result with “Cheat sheet”. For example, type ‘’Photoshop cheat sheet’’ in the search bar to take a quick look at its cheat sheet.
Calculator
You don’t need to open the calculator app on your desktop while using DuckDuckGo. Just enter all kinds of math questions in the search bar to get answers.
Generate password
DuckDuckGo also lets you generate random passwords. For example, if you want to generate 16 characters password, type ‘’password 16’’ in your search bar.
Quick Games
DuckDuckGo also lets you play some games using its instant answers feature. Try searching ‘’Play 2048’’ in the search bar.
These were some of the coolest features DuckDuckGo offers. We often end up with unnecessary information while searching for the relevant one. DuckDuckGo aims to keep the search results unbiased, so you can get what’s essential. We have already covered how DuckDuckGo works and how it helps to improve your privacy. To know more about the latest technology, keep following us on www.reliancedigital.in.
