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DuckDuckGo's Privacy-Focused Mac Browser is Now Available for Public Beta Testing (theverge.com) 13
DuckDuckGo is rolling out its web browsing app for Mac users as an open beta test. Designed for privacy, the app was announced back in April as a closed beta, but is now available for all Mac users to try before its official public launch. From a report: The desktop browser includes the same built-in protections we've seen already featured in DuckDuckGo's mobile apps, combining DuckDuckGo's search engine, defenses against third-party tracking, cookie pop-up protection, and its popular one-click data clearing 'Fire Button.' Some additional features have been added to the browser (version 0.30) since its original announcement.
Now users can try Duck Player, a feature that protects users from targeted ads and cookies while watching YouTube content. Ads viewed within the Duck Player will not be personalized, which DuckDuckGo claims actually removed most YouTube ads as a result during testing. YouTube will still register your views, but content watched through Duck Player won't contribute to your YouTube advertising profile. Pinned tabs and a new bookmarks bar have been included to address feedback from early beta testing, as well as a way to view your locally stored browsing history. DuckDuckGo's Cookie Consent Pop-Up Manager is also available which works on about 50 percent of sites (with more to come) to automatically choose the most private option and spare users from the annoying pop-up messages. The app also lets you activate DuckDuckGo Email Protection on the desktop to better protect your inbox with email tracker blocking.
Now users can try Duck Player, a feature that protects users from targeted ads and cookies while watching YouTube content. Ads viewed within the Duck Player will not be personalized, which DuckDuckGo claims actually removed most YouTube ads as a result during testing. YouTube will still register your views, but content watched through Duck Player won't contribute to your YouTube advertising profile. Pinned tabs and a new bookmarks bar have been included to address feedback from early beta testing, as well as a way to view your locally stored browsing history. DuckDuckGo's Cookie Consent Pop-Up Manager is also available which works on about 50 percent of sites (with more to come) to automatically choose the most private option and spare users from the annoying pop-up messages. The app also lets you activate DuckDuckGo Email Protection on the desktop to better protect your inbox with email tracker blocking.
webkit (Score:3)
"DuckDuckGo for Mac is based on the WebKit rendering engine used by Safari, which the company claims allows it to use “about 60 percent less data” than Chrome."
At least its not just another Chromium browser.
Re: (Score:2)
Chromium is just another WebKit fork.
(Yes, I know WebKit is really just another KHTML fork.)
Re: (Score:1)
Is this the cause of "The application requires macOS 10.15 or later." dependency?
what i want to see is (Score:2)
Who will want to use this? (Score:4, Insightful)
The world does not need another browser. If you want a privacy-focused browser, Firefox, Brave and Vivaldi are established already. DDG could have created extensions for those and be done with it. I bet that would get them more market share than trying to compete in the browser space.
Re:Who will want to use this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Every major browser in the top 10 most used list besides Firefox and Safari are based on Blink/Chromium.
I applaud any effort to establish a niche for another Webkit based browser besides Safari, especially one that will (eventually) has a presence on Windows computers. We could use another Gecko based browser as well tbh.
The world needs more than 1 browser engine to keep standards sane.
Re: (Score:2)
Brave is about advertising and has just replaced Google with itself.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, chromium is open-source, but it's mostly developed by google, and if something isn't already in the code sneakily harvesting data, you can't guarantee this feature won't be introduced at any time later.
Nice Features (Score:1)
I'll give this a try (Score:4, Interesting)
But if it doesn't have Firefox's level of cookie control, it's unlikely I'll be switching.
I really don't get why Firefox is the only browser that gives you any control over cookies (having to manually delete individual ones after the fact is not really "control").
Re: I'll give this a try (Score:3)
disk usage of Mac browsers, if someone cares (Score:1)
0017.3 MB Safari
0047.2 MB DuckDuckGo
0361.5 MB Firefox
0460.1 MB Orion
0519.8 MB Brave
0557.0 MB Vivaldi
0963.4 MB Chrome
1406.6 MB Microsoft Edge
I just tried it... (Score:2)
I just installed it, opened it, and the first thing I see is a warning from my outgoing firewall that it's trying to connect to improving.duckduckgo.com.
Come on. How hard is it to ask people if they want to opt-in to that? It's calling home before even showing me a privacy policy.