I’m guessing the issue is because there isn’t a lot of merit in saying Apple and Google are totally stitched up when the options change by region and for the plaintiff there are at least 4 additional options other than Google.

EG Ecosia is a recent entry, so it does seem that Apple does look into this and introduce new options that can serve their audience size with sufficient quality results. Getting included seems more about making a unique and useful product.

Other than downloading another web browser which features more fine tuning options for web browsing, one can also download safari extensions that increase the search capability in both mobile/desktop safari. One such extension is called xSearch, which presents the familiar idea of using shortcut terms to direct search queries to any number of custom configurable search providers. The share sheet extension also extends this into other apps, and similarly because it uses the standard URL scheme, it can push queries into entirely different apps other than Safari for the search to take place. (eg search this text in the Twitter app.)

Do you know any plugins or apps that let you search multiple engines at once and then lets you flip between results easily?

Maybe check out “Search Extension for Safari”, it’s focus is specifically about rapidly switching engines to obtain different sets of results.

Most other search engines use Google under the hut anyway.. I'm wondering sind quite a whole, when Google will block them..

(s/hut/hood/; s/sind/since/; s/whole/while/; - no offense intended, just looking to save 10 seconds of headscratching)

Only Startpage uses Google, to my knowledge, as there isn’t an API you can enable to start getting Google’s search results (without entering into talks with their sales / exec team). Bing does, though, and that’s why Brave and DuckDuckGo use Bing under the hood a lot.

https://programmablesearchengine.google.com/about/ That product includes an option to search the web. For example, kiddle.co uses it to provide some of their web search results.

Also, many other search engines uses Google's search API. But as you said, that requires direct relationship with Google sales.

I can't believe I've never considered this. They really should have a "custom" option in there as well.

Is it possible to do using .mobileconfig profiles maybe?

(Off topic: Is there a specification somewhere on what's possible using .mobileconfig profiles?)

It’s possible to do via extensions now. Hyperweb is an extension that allows for adding atmos search engines.

I've been using hyperweb for a couple of months now. Absolutely outstanding app -- it has completely transformed my mobile web experience. Custom ad blocking filters, automatically opening reddit links in Narwhal, custom css so I can browse HN with a dark theme... I kind of look at it as a single app that turns Safari into a slightly shittier Firefox. And since Apple has neutered browsers on iOS, this is absolutely as good as it gets.

"Hyperweb..."

Wow nice! Now if there was a containers extension I could switch to Safari and away from Firefox.

Tab groups might do this since one of them is private browsing. If groups aren't isolated, implying they are by putting private browsing in there would be a huge UX fail.

I believe private browsing tabs in Safari have been isolated to some extent for a while already — if you sign into something in one tab, you aren't signed in in the other tab, suggesting separate cookies.

Some non-default browsers (e.g., Snowhaze, Firefox) support adding new search engines. However, if you highlight and "look up" a word on-page, the search link will always take you to the OS-default search engine.

I did a search for it, and apparently the only way to add other search engines are through extensions. I haven't tested it though.

I am test driving Kagi and was very suprised to learn that on Firefox I appear to need a plugin/extension to add it as a default search engine.

Blew my mind. Maybe I am missing something.

That's not the case for me. Firefox 95.0.2 for Linux, using Kagi as my default, and I have neither a Kagi plugin nor an extension installed.

Please tell me how ( I don't want the extension ).

I go to preferences -> search. Then to 'Default search engine', which gives me a combo which gives me Google/Bing/eBay/Wikipedia. But I can not add anything to the combo.

Further down, there is 'One-Click Search Engines' which contain the same options. No button to add one. Below is a 'Find more search engines' link which leads me to the plugins page.

Not op, but if you go to kagi.com and look in the search bar (edit: Firefox's own built in search bar) you'll see a little green plus over the magnifying glass. Click it and you'll see an option to add it to the search engine list.

Just to add to this, in firefox, you can use the extension "Add custom search engine"[1] and you can add any search engine to your firefox search engine list, and to the address bar. Another benefit of using this, you can access your saved preferences while searching from the address bar. DDG, Startpage, Kagi all give you a bookmarklet URL which you can add through this extension.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-custom-se...

Thank you!

I don't know why you get downvotes, this is true, at least for iOS. There's no way a user can add a new search engine, they can only choose one of the five choices.

I'm so happy that Apple keeps me safe of dangerous search engines. /s

I don't get this logic, honestly. What is the point of not being able to add any and all search engines to Apple?

Apple hates any sort of technical customization in their mass-market products. They always have, and keep stripping them down to the most dumbed-down settings screens they can figure out while still allowing the bare necessities (which they apparently don't consider adding an alternative search engine to be).

I don't like this approach, but it is very consistent in their products, features tend to disappear over time and new ones only pop up if they're very sexy and can be announced on-stage.

Every customization option means more complaints from some customer who managed to mess up that setting.

“My search no longer works!” “Sir you have the search registry key set to ‘turkey bake time’”

“Well that’s what I was searching for, and then the search stopped working completely. iPhones are the worst, I’m gonna tell all my friends”

I’m sure Apple’s world-renowned UX team can innovate a way to allow new search engines to be added w/o bricking your phone. I’d rather have that than lack if real, capital-laden competition in search.

I’m not sure they can: adding “one more feature” here and there quickly overrides anything a UX team can do to prevent 10s of thousands of confused complaints and returned phones.

For example, my family member is a smart woman and I used to teach professionally. I haven’t yet found a way to teach her what a web browser is and isn’t.

This is relevant to the things she wants to get done (e.g. shortcuts don’t run in webview, gmail’s native app doesn’t support recipient groups but the web app does, etc)

After warmup, examples, Socratic questioning, task assignments, checking understanding and testing (with detailed feedback), it seems she approximately learns what a web browser is and when she is and isn’t in one, but then she doesn’t really understand it a couple days later.

She’s otherwise as clever and capable as everybody else or rather more clever.

At Apple’s scale, every added feature to a web browser adds thousands of clever people quitting in confusion.

That’s why they hide things like search engine selection under menus an average user will never see, even if accidentally pressing 37 not-quite-randomly wrong things during a session.

We here have the curse of expertise.

The best Apple UX can do for the majority of the population is say no to features more often than yes, and to hide deep under the hood any setting that persists after the device is restarted and could lead to confused angry consumers that can’t figure out what to do and don’t have nearby family members to solve it before they quit.

It is likely more that the Safari team anticipates non-scrupulous companies taking advantage of an option to add a default search engine inline. Things like modal prompting and site-specified explanatory text are exploited these days.

Likely the best bet would be a web extension manifest value to expose a potential search engine. That would mean on iOS that you still need to publish an app for your search engine option to show up.

Well, well. I just realized. I think that apple sets by default that IOS Safari can't use location services without going into settings. Which for a really significant chunk (majority?) of iphone users mean that any web app using location services is "broken"[1]. Which of course means that for those folks web apps are not a thing, but they go and buy an app in the app store. Well played. (#ssholes.)

[1] Due to circumstances, I have needed to demo a certain location web app to quite a few people. I am not exaggerating.

Safari is not privileged in terms of location access [1], so the user both has to let Safari have access to location information and let Safari share that location information with a site.

If the user rejected Safari's access to location, sites also will also not get location data. However, Safari has asked me for access the first time on several phone installs, so I believe Safari not having location services is still a user choosing to limit platform access at some point during setup or on demand in Safari.

Unfortunately the public often does not trust even the platform vendor with location access. I somewhat blame Google for leading the public narrative to that point - but it is admittedly a very easy topic to fearmonger about.

(Said as someone who often has to restore location access to Apple and Google maps on family members' phones as part of troubleshooting issues)

I don't agree entirely. I'm able to control my privacy settings to an, for an Android user's standpoint, absurd level of detail. In addition I can fiddle with so many settings hidden and tucked away quite nicely on my iPhone. In addition, I'm only able to shut down JavaScript in Safari - and more, while not being able to do so in Firefox Focus. Options like that are counter-intuitive if you ask me. This argument is very convenient for any options that are against them. But if they're so consistent, than I wouldn't be able to control my privacy settings to such a degree, because it'll confuse users and can be just as annoying if set incorrectly.

Not to take away from your overall correct point, but... Let me introduce you to focus modes....

One incentive for them doing this is that they have to provide support and if they let everyone use random search engines that deliver malware etc. They end up having to pay their "geniuses" more to un-crud peoples infested machines.

> I'm so happy that Apple keeps me safe of dangerous search engines. /s

You joke, but I still have PTSD from the IE7 days. https://www.linux-noob.com/forums/uploads/post-12-1098049148...

On my device I can goto www.domain.com

What’s the point in hiding how it works behind a GUI widget?

If you just want to abstract everything behind the least UX possible, use curl to browse the web.

Watch them hide everything behind UI and all the tech nerds complain they can’t see how anything works then!

It’s IT people whining their way into closed systems with their circular back n forth; open source/diy or closed and they do it all for me!

There is no middle ground.

UI clutter, but I completely agree with you, in this instance it is 100% warranted.

In fairness you don't have to use Safari.

You do on iOS, even if you use "Firefox".

No, you don't have to use Safari, which is limited to eight search engines. You can use Firefox, which allows more search engines. Yes, its renderer is the same, but it is different software, and this isn't a thread about the renderer.

I (and I imagine a lot of sysadmin/MSP types) don't care about grouping tabs as much as to be able to log into the same site with multiple login IDs at the same time.

Which also has nothing at all to do with non-default search engine options.

I guess I work differently as I always nav to the home page of the site where I wish to do a search. So I "add a search engine" by adding a bookmark.

I just checked on Chrome on my Android device, and my options are:

- Google (default, duh)

- Yahoo

- Bing

- DuckDuckGo

- Ecosia

There is no obvious option to add another search engine. Just as an additional data point here.

Fantastic and subtle ways to generic-ize API and competition.

I have eight options available to me in mobile safari other than using bookmarks to use any search engine that exists.

It is easy to conceive of reasons why a company would not want to enable native UI elements to rely on external services without having vetted those services or established a relationship with them for recourse in the event of issues. It is harder--though not impossible--to conceive of ways to avoid these issues.

If I add an arbitrary default search engine via URL, and that search engine is later compromised or serves up garbage or malware, that's a problem for Apple, even though we'd all like to believe we're above-average users who wouldn't blame Apple for our own choices.

That doesn't make sense. Why would someone who knows how to find a different search engine, change the setting be part of the group of people who are new or otherwise clueless?

Apple should provide the option.

Are you kidding?

I have to assume you're not trolling, and really can't conceive of an entire large category of people who might, in response to a Facebook post, follow step-by-step instructions to change their default search engine without understanding the ramifications thereof, or how to change it back.

There are more people in that category than in the category of people who change their default search engine for good reason, knowing that it may deliver a less-optimal experience than Google under some circumstances.

This doesn't make sense if they changed the setting through a tutorial they could change it back through that same process.

Interacting with humans has shown me many, many examples of people who can follow steps written by a marketer to push their nonsense without any clue of how to reverse the process.

What doesn't make sense is believing that every human being is always intelligent and rational and never forgets anything.

They'd be doing it because Shmaleksandr O'Kogan built a Google wrapper with a cool This Is Your Digital Life feature. After Cambridge Analytica, it's pretty hard to believe that user opt-in is an effective defense against data privacy scandals.

> EDIT: Interesting. I’m picking up downvotes for this, is there some way to achieve this (other than jailbreaking) I’ve missed?

Downvote patterns on HN are the most lunatic of any I've seen, including on much lower-quality fora. I wouldn't try to fit a model to it.

I've often assumed HN is brigaded by some of the larger corporations. Whenever there is a negative article about google, the comment sections seem to fill with glowing reviews and whataboutsisms. During the Roku Google battle, the comment sections were chock full of the same critique of rokue over and over again. It seemed fairly obvious there.

I just assume that's what's going on here.

Yea, I have no idea what the reasons are, that could totally be a factor. It's not a super high-quality commenter community, but the vote patterns are more bizarre than a lot of decidedly lower-quality fora, so there are clearly other factors.