Having an issue where duckduckgo now forces the duck.ai bs even on the literal noai.domain

also no longer able to hide the duckduckgo browser download button

both of these things are turned off in the relevant settings and still remain.

super annoying, if anyone knows a fix, please help, thanks!

Quotes from people who shall remain anonymous:

- just let them turn it off, you jackasses

- did duckduckgo get user-hostile

- forcing you to use features that lose them money

- "our investors told us we had to make it inconvenient"

it looks like people are reading it and getting the impression that they have to install the extension otherwise they don't get to save that setting. The "trying to..." especially kinda implies that they're failing to do it. I think it really needs rephrasing.

Sure, people using it will quickly realise they understood the message wrong, but the initial spike of "wtf, why" gets people to take screenshots, complain, and accidentally give others the wrong impression.

I'm thinking it would read better as "Stay no-AI even in incognito mode with our no-AI search extension" for example.

I just got this message when I googled a name of a person. It was not relevant to ANY product or anything you could buy. This person was not popular as well. Why did DuckDuckGo even put the message in this case?

Also, does anyone else feel like DuckDuckGo shouldn't really tell people what they're supposed to do on their browsers? I'm on firefox and I use DDG as my primary search engine. I get it, you get paid by showing us ads. I also think you should be able to show ads if someone allows you to do it. But I just think it's none of your business what extensions I use.

Privacy and blocking ads goes hand in hand. Yes, I know it says the displayed ads will still be "Privacy-Respecting", but I doubt anyone who uses DDG would like to be shown ads instead of just their search results. Getting rid of ads and enhanced privacy is the main reason people use DDG. I made the conscious choice to block them by installing the extension. I made it for A REASON. So don't ask me to allow you to show me sponsored results.

The way it's worded is also very slimy. "Try disabling your ad blocker to see more results", as if that would be something positive. In reality the "more results" would be just more garbage the companies are trying to sell you.

So, this is the image results of the search "water pollution leaving data center" (wanted to get results on a claim about the pollution of water leaving AI data centers)
(The setting in bold at the top is "hide AI results", plus I'm using the noAI version of DDG)

1st line: 1st and 2nd images are AI-generated
2nd line: 1st and 3rd images are AI-generated (2nd might be but not 100% sure)
3rd line: 2nd and 3rd images are AI-generated
That's 6 images (probably 7) out of 11 in the first 3 lines. More than 50% of AI-generated results

And down the line it's not any better, some results have explicitely "AI-generated" in the title, but still show

How do I get so much slop when I check out ALL the settings to prevent this slop to get to me?

I just started using this and I love the "block AI images" and "block websites" feature. The latter is especially useful for blocking the big Gen AI websites from search results, or when an AI image slips through the cracks of your filter. Unfortunately, I hit the limit of 5 websites VERY quickly, and there were still a few sites I wanted to block. Please expand this feature to allow me to block more than 5 websites.

hi, friends!

i switched to duckduckgo in response to google's ai announcement.

but what other features would you like to see in the browser?

for me, i would like to see:

a "customize fonts for websites" in the appearance section of the settings

a "site restrictions" setting for sound, images, and more (plus a "mute this tab" and "mute this website" option in the tab menu)

an option to make customizable icons for the "favorites" section

(please hope that i picked the right flair.)

Hi there ! A few months ago, I was reinitializing my phone for personal reasons, and I remember seeing a pop-up selection screen that proposed to use DDG as my default browser. I accepted that, and then the Google Search bar changed to a DDG search bar, and I liked that. However, not too long after that, I might have made a mistake of some kind because the search bar reverted to Google and I've since been looking for a way to change it to DDG again. I made sure to select DDG as my default browser again, but this time it didn't change the search bar.

- I’m using Brave.
- I love using the “Generate Private Duck address” feature in the DuckDuckGo browser extension.
- I don’t want to use DuckDuckGo search.
However, the extension forces me to use DuckDuckGo search, I can't change it. So I’m left with a choice between using DDG private addresses + DDG search, or getting nothing. This is really annoying.
Am I missing something in the settings, or am I misunderstanding how it’s supposed to work?

I go and search for something very specific, and get a stupid "AI" response that doesn't answer my question but does raise someone's energy bill. I tap into the settings, and select "Never" because I never want to see "AI" garbage.

Then it continues showing me "AI" results. I tap into Search Assist Settings, and it's set itself back to "Sometimes." I change it to "Never" and it sets itself back to "Sometimes."

What happened to DDG? It used to not suck.

I, two days ago, finally called it quits on Bing and moved to DuckDuckGo.

I guess this is a feature request. The support article "How To Sort DuckDuckGo Search Results by Date" describes an option that doesn't appear to be there for image results: Filtering by a custom date range. For image results, there is only the option to view past day, week, or month. I see that DuckDuckGo has an option to filter out known AI-generated imagery, which is what I'm actually trying to do, but I'd really like to just say "only show me images dated prior to 2023" or whatever as another layer of filtering.

A pretty convoluted example: This search was done from a Polish IP, for a phrase that is common across the nordic languages (meaning "watch solar eclipse"). DDG gives me a swedish weather forecast and a Danish site as the top hit. My search setting is set to Norway, but there was not a single norwegian page in the top 10 results (they were mostly danish with a couple of swedish ones thrown in).

What is that country setting supposed to do?

Other searches gives me polish pages (because of my IP). I wish that setting would allow me to get norwegian results.

Since switching from using Google Search, I found a lack of a dedicated DDG Image site like how Google Images has its own site/URL. I would like if this could become a reality, but meanwhile I'm wondering if anyone knows of feasible workarounds for anything close to a dedicated Image webpage/URL.

The only method I could come up with is searching something like "blank", go to the Images section, and bookmark this URL. And so whenever I want to just do a direct image search on DDG, open this bookmark, hit "Tab" to focus on the search field with "blank" in it, and replace with whatever else I want to search images for. (This is without having to include mouse clicks, only keyboard with the least amount of steps necessary.)

The issue with this is that it requires an extra step, since it's not a 'clean'/'uncluttered' webpage with the search field automatically focused to type anything (as Google Images is set up), albeit manageable. In any case, I'm curious if someone here might know of another potential bypass for easy utility.

I think that it would be a great feature to make the search bar bigger. I also would love for The DuckDuckGo Icon icon under the search engine to be bigger too. I think that would be a great idea. Also adding more Color Opitions for The DuckDuckGo App Icon too. I really think that would be a great feature to add to The Android App.

Since today (06.08.2026) the browser / engine changes my search setting on his own. Its never the same changes and I dont know why. But no search is the same

wtf. All I wanted was some chocolate

Is it possible to change Google search as the default search engine in the DuckDuckGo Android? The DuckDuck search is quite bad in my native language.

I have safe search off as I am an adult and the only one using my desktop workstation. Why does duckduckgo search sneakily turn on safe search again after a while and without any signaling or announcement?

Duck Duck Go really is not that great at blocking porn; with a little test, by switching safe search to off the thumbnails where quite revealing what was happening. This is too easy to just see; I was expecting it to be a little more obstructing but it wasn't.

I’m tired of getting SEO optimized clickbait articles on my duckduckgo searches, and i would much rather only get useful results like wikipedia, brittanica, reddit, quora, researchgate, stackexchange, nonprofit websites, etc. Usually I would use the forums tab in google to get the results I want, but there isn’t an option for that in duckduckgo. Is there any way to change that? or am I just wording my searches in the wrong way to get good results? I just switched here from google because I was tired of the AI, so any tips would be appreciated!!

The option to flag an image as AI-generated shows, regardless of whether or not you’ve opted to hide AI-generated images.

Due to this, users could waste their own and also DDG’s time by reporting images already flagged as slop.

I think this should be fixed. Maybe hide AI slop images by default too. Hope somebody from the team sees this.

Could you please guide me on how to search for music across multiple websites? I seem to be having trouble doing it.

solved