In October 2022, the privacy-themed search engine DuckDuckGo launched a web browser. However, it was just for Macs. Today, the DuckDuckGo browser is finally available for Windows users in open beta.
In a blog post, DuckDuckGo described many of the privacy-themed features in its web browser. They include Duck Player, which lets users watch YouTube videos without ads, and also lets people watch videos and not have them affect future video recommendations from Google"s company.
Some of the other privacy features in the new web browser include the ability to use the @duck.com domain if you want to sign up for services online while hiding your real email address, and the Fire Button which quickly deletes your recent browsing data.
The DuckDuckGo Windows browser also has a password management feature that not only takes care of all your passwords, but can even suggest strong passwords for any new online service you may want to use. Of course, it also has an ad blocker, and it can even remove the whitespace on web pages when ads are removed with other third-party ad blockers.
The blog post states:
DuckDuckGo for Windows was built with your privacy, security, and ease of use in mind. It’s not a “fork” of any other browser code; all the code, from tab and bookmark management to our new tab page to our password manager, is written by our own engineers. For web page rendering, the browser uses the underlying operating system rendering API. (In this case, it"s a Windows WebView2 call that utilizes the Blink rendering engine underneath.)
DuckDuckGo will be adding more features to its Windows web browser in the coming months, with the goal to reach feature parity with the older Mac version. That includes adding even more privacy features like Link Tracking Protection and Referrer Tracking Protection. You can download the browser at DuckDuckGo now.
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