DuckDuckGo, the corporate greatest recognized for its privacy-focused search engine of the identical title, is engaged on a desktop browser that ought to deliver the identical deal with avoiding being tracked to your whole internet expertise. In a publish on its weblog, DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg provides a glimpse at what the upcoming browser will appear to be and notes that we are able to count on it to carry out the identical method its searching app does on cell.
Weinberg explains that the desktop browser will supply “sturdy privateness safety” by default, with out you having to toggle on any hidden safety settings. Just like the cell app, the desktop equal will include the identical “Hearth” button that immediately erases your entire searching historical past, saved information, and tabs in a single click on. It’s additionally constructed round “OS-provided rendering engines” — like it’s on cell — which Weinberg says will create a neater interface and eliminate any litter that comes with mainstream browsers. He additionally claims that early checks of the browser point out that it’s “considerably quicker” than Google Chrome.
“macOS and Home windows each now supply web site rendering APIs (WebView/WebView2) that any software can use to render a web site. That’s what we’ve used to construct our app on desktop,” Allison Johnson, the senior communications supervisor at DuckDuckGo, defined in an announcement to The Verge.
“As a substitute, we’re constructing the desktop app from the bottom up across the OS-provided rendering APIs. Because of this something past web site rendering (e.g., tabs & bookmark administration, navigation controls, passwords and so on.) we’ve to construct ourselves.” In different phrases, on Home windows, the browser will use Edge / Chromium rendering, and the identical goes for Safari / Webkit on macOS. Johnson additionally famous that this isn’t the identical as forking, which might imply that the browser is constructed off of 1 that already exists.
The browser is at present in a closed beta take a look at on macOS, however a tweet from Weinberg hints that DuckDuckGo is getting it prepared for Home windows as effectively. There’s no phrase on when the desktop browser will change into publicly accessible.
Final month, DuckDuckGo launched a built-in instrument for its cell searching app that’s supposed to forestall apps from monitoring customers on Android. And in July, the corporate rolled out an e mail safety service that claims it would strip away any trackers hooked up to your emails.
Replace December twenty first, 2021 4:40PM ET: Added an announcement from a DuckDuckGo spokesperson that clarifies how the corporate is constructing the browser.
