this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2024

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Startpage.com is not a default option for Apple users (www.startpage.com)

submitted 4 months ago by benfell to c/technology

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Has anyone figured out how to add a search engine option to the list Apple offers?

DuckDuckGo prioritizes MSN's lifted pages. I need original pages. This MSN crap is unacceptable.

all 17 comments

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Apple users

I mean, if the only constraint is that it be on an Apple platform, and not specifically for Safari, I imagine just use a browser that lets you choose your search engine. Firefox can, and I'm sure that there are also Chrome-based browsers out there that do so as well.

[+] [email protected] -9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Just FYI there are no chrome based browsers on IOS cos there is no chromium, the FOSS ones use Firefox mostly

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Huh? Custom web engines aren’t allowed on iOS, Firefox’s included. All iOS browsers are just UIs on top of Safari’s engine.

Edit: idk about the EU though

[+] [email protected] -15 points 4 months ago (1 children)

They are based off Firefox for IOS which uses WebKit, but they are still based on the browser like Edge which is based on chromium vs Flakon which uses blink but not the rest chromium

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (1 children)

They are based off Firefox for IOS which uses WebKit, but they are still based on the browser like Edge which is based on chromium vs Flakon which uses blink but not the rest chromium

I’ve reread this like 5 times and still have no clue what you’re trying to say.

The person you replied to was technically incorrect - other browsers aren’t UIs on top of Safari, but (outside the EU) they’re all limited to the same browser rendering engine Safari uses, Webkit.

This means that other rendering engines - namely Firefox’s Gecko and Chromium’s Blink, as well as niche engines like Ladybird’s - are unavailable there (outside the EU).

They are based off Firefox for IOS

This is not generally true of browsers on iOS, and might not be true of any.

Flakon

I didn’t know what this was at first - apparently this was a typo for “Falkon.”

which uses blink

The browser rendering engine used by Chromium browsers is Blink, which was forked from Webkit over a decade ago, but I’m not aware of any non-Chromium browsers that use it… including Falkon, which appears to leverage QtWebEngine, which itself uses Chromium.

but they are still based on the browser like Edge

By “based on” do you mean “uses the same branding as and is loosely inspired by?” Because I highly doubt that the iOS codebase is based off the desktop codebase for many Chromium or Firefox-based browsers… they may share some code and assets but I doubt they get to share much more than that.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Ecosia for sure and Qwant and Brave AFAIK too are forks of Firefox. They all use WebKit as an engine but the rest of the browser is derived from Firefox. Falkon vs Edge was a bad example (wrong), these browsers are more like Floorp. I wasn’t saying that this is generally true for IOS browsers, just that a pretty large part of FOSS ones are

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Cool, didn’t know that about Ecosia.

Qwant: looks like maybe they used to have a browser that might have been forked from Firefox, but it hasn’t been updated in a while - per the App Store listings, I think they now just have a lightweight search engine frontend.

Brave on iOS appears to have been forked from Firefox on iOS back in 2018-2019, which was news to me. (“Appears to” regards the date; it was definitely forked from Firefox).

the rest of the browser is derived from Firefox

This might be true for some, like Ecosia, but I’m guessing that Brave isn’t pulling changes from Firefox. It seems like they basically used the Firefox codebase as a starting point - and in 5 years of development, a lot can change.

I wasn’t saying that this is generally true for IOS browsers, just that a pretty large part of FOSS ones are

Gotcha, that makes more sense.

One more thing to point out is that your comment reads like they were based on Firefox and that Firefox didn’t use Webkit (but of course Firefox on iOS also uses Webkit).

more like Floorp

Meaning that they’re forks of Chromium on desktop in the same way Floorp is a fork of Firefox on desktop?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

Meaning that they’re forks of Chromium on desktop in the same way Floorp is a fork of Firefox on desktop? Not sure what exactly you mean, but I meant they are forks of Firefox on iOS like floorp is from Firefox on desktop

[–] friend_of_satan 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Use DuckDuckGo and put !s into your search.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It’s a bit unclear what you mean by “Apple” - I’m assuming you mean Safari on both Mac and iOS.

The search engine I use is SearxNg. On Firefox on Mac it was pretty easy to add.

To use it in Safari, I installed the Keyword Search extension from the App Store. It has the option to set a search engine as the default if you don’t use a keyword, so I did that. This works in both Mac and on iOS / iPadOS.

There are other Safari extensions that do similar things, like Customize Search Engine (free). Kagi has an extension that can make Kagi the default search engine, for example (it doesn’t appear that there’s an equivalent for Startpage, though). I haven’t used anything other than Keyword Search for this, though.

[–] benfell 2 points 3 months ago

This appears to work. Thanks!

[–] Veedem 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I’ve seen XSearch recommended a few times but I’ve never used it myself:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/xsearch-for-safari/id1579902068

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I use it and it’s pretty great, though it sometimes does feel like a hack (I mean, that’s essentially what it is).

For a better experience pick a search engine in Safari that you’ve blocked with DNS so that you’ll never see a glimpse of it before xSearch redirects you (as you would on a slower network).