If you care about privacy while browsing, switching to DuckDuckGo can be a great choice. Unlike many search engines, DuckDuckGo focuses on protecting your privacy by not tracking your searches or building a personal profile based on your browsing activity.
By default, most Chromebooks use Google Chrome browser with Google as the default search engine. However, ChromeOS allows you to change this setting in just a few steps. Once you switch to DuckDuckGo, any search you perform from the address bar will use DuckDuckGo instead of Google.
In this guide, we’ll walk through the exact steps to make DuckDuckGo the default search engine on your Chromebook.
Make DuckDuckGo the Default Search Engine in Chromebook
Before changing the default search engine, it’s helpful to understand why many users choose DuckDuckGo over other options.
DuckDuckGo focuses heavily on privacy and transparency. Unlike traditional search engines, it does not track your search history, collect personal data, or create user profiles for targeted advertising. Each search request is treated independently, which means you won’t get results influenced by previous searches.
For Chromebook users who value privacy or simply want a different search experience, switching to DuckDuckGo can be a smart and easy change. Here’s how:
1. Click on the App Launcher and open Settings.
2. When the Settings window opens, look at the left sidebar and click on System Preferences.
3. Scroll down to the Search and Suggestions section and click on Search.
4. Next, click on the Set search engine in Chrome browser settings option. This will open the Google Chrome search engine settings page. Alternatively, you can access the same settings directly from the Chrome browser.
5. Click on the Change option.
6. Select DuckDuckGo from the list and click Set as default.
Once selected, DuckDuckGo will immediately become the default search engine for searches performed from the address bar. Now, whenever you type a query into the address bar, Chrome will automatically send the search to DuckDuckGo.
How to Add DuckDuckGo Manually in Chrome
In some cases, DuckDuckGo may not appear in the list of available search engines. If that happens, you can add it manually by following these steps:
1. Open Chrome, click the three-dot menu in the top-right corner, and select Settings.
2. In the sidebar, click Search engine, then select Manage search engines and site search.
3. Scroll down to the Site search section and click Add.
4. Then enter the following information: Name as DuckDuckGo, Shortcut as duckduckgo.com, and URL as https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s. The %s part tells Chrome where to insert your search query in the URL.
5. After adding the search engine, click the three-dot icon next to DuckDuckGo and select Make default.
DuckDuckGo will now be your Chromebook’s default search engine. To confirm everything is working correctly, type any search query into the Chrome address bar. If the results appear on DuckDuckGo, the change was successful.
