Download DuckDuckGo 0.30.8 Beta (Mac) – Download Free

Known for its search engine, DuckDuckGo has also created extensions, mobile apps, and now a desktop browser for macOS. As always, the focus is on protecting users’ privacy, but it also incorporates a range of innovative features to make browsing easier and more secure.

go duck Based on WebKit, ensuring excellent macOS integration and web compatibility. It’s designed to be lightweight and secure, freeing up valuable resources while limiting tracking on the web. The app is still in beta, and there are a lot of features yet to roll out, but it’s already pretty impressive.

privacy first

Similar to the famous search engines, this browser is designed to prevent you from being tracked around the web. It blocks trackers before it even loads, ensuring that no information can be collected if they are simply restricted. This is used to prevent many popular tracking methods that many other browsers have problems with.

Besides that, you have global privacy controls, automatic removal of tracking parameters from URLs, Google AMP protection, and CNAME hiding protection. Also, if you try to visit an HTTP link, Smarter Encryption ensures that you visit a secure version of the website.

Blocking trackers will drastically reduce the number of ads you see online, reduce load times, and limit resource usage. There are many gaps left because ads are blocked, but the team is also working hard to close those gaps.

Duck Player — private YouTube player

Google is known for its poor privacy practices, but YouTube is hard to avoid. If you want to watch something without being tracked, the browser can use its built-in player, which will bypass ad personalization and thus get rid of most ads.

This is probably the best way to maintain your privacy on YouTube without actually leaving the site and your views will be counted.

Let DuckDuckGo handle the cookie consent prompt

While better than nothing at all, cookie pop-ups are very annoying. It usually takes at least a click or two to select the most private option, which can waste a lot of time when visiting a new website.

This browser is able to automatically manage cookie prompts to choose the best option for you. Most popular sites are supported, but we still encountered a lot of unsupported sites, so there is more work to be done.

Fire button for quickly clearing browsing data

Deleting browsing data takes more than a few clicks in most browsers, and it’s something many users do regularly. In DuckDuckGo, it only takes two clicks using the handy button in the upper right corner. This is a very useful feature ported from the company’s mobile browser.

Of course, some cookies are necessary to log in to a website and you do not have to delete them. Thankfully, you can “fireproof” them when you log in, which will prevent those cookies from being deleted when you clear your browsing data.

Very promising browser, not just for privacy nerds

You might be tempted to ignore DuckDuckGo if privacy isn’t too much of a concern, but you really shouldn’t. It includes features that can make browsing easier for any user, with the added bonus of preventing being tracked in the process.

You can think of it as an upgraded version of Safari. The same minimalist design and intuitive approach, but with a host of extra features that make your life easier and work behind the scenes to keep you anonymous on the web.

Of course, DuckDuckGo is still in Beta, so it’s not quite complete yet. But if you’re willing to overlook some missing features, it’s definitely worth checking out.