What is DuckDuckGo for Mac? | #firefox | #chrome | #microsoftedge | #hacking | #aihp

Data privacy company DuckDuckGo has released its super secure web browser in beta for Mac—finally. The move comes years after the company released its browser for iOS and Android in 2018, and adds to their growing suite of digital privacy tools for everyday consumers.

DuckDuckGo for Mac is built around the company’s own search engine, and has been developed to reduce the incredibly annoying quirks—like cookie popups and slow load times—of pre-existing internet browsers. The company is quick to point out that their new browser is not just a replacement for the not-so-private Incognito browser on Google Chrome, an option that is not all that private. Instead, the browser, aptly named DuckDuckGo for Mac, features a whole bunch of benefits for the average data-concerned web surfer. The best part? Privacy is the default, not an opt-in feature.

The company explained in their press release:

“With one download you get our built-in private search engine, powerful tracker blocker, *new* cookie pop-up protection on approximately 50% of sites (with that % growing significantly throughout beta), Fire Button (one-click data clearing), email protection and more – all for free. No complicated privacy settings, just simple privacy protection that works by default.”

The browser is also faster than Google Chrome, as DuckDuckGo for Mac blocks trackers before they even get the chance to load. Likewise, DuckDuckGo for Mac navigates users to the encrypted version of a website as often as possible, meaning less exposure to third-party scripts that try to log your data. In-app data like browsing history and saved passwords (even the embarrassing ones) are also completely invisible to DuckDuckGo.

DuckDuckGo built this new browser from the ground up, instead of “forking” it. A web browser consists of an engine that renders website code into a usable interface, and most developers will “fork” (that’s dev speak for rip-off) a pre-existing web browser’s rendering engine and build on top of it. DuckDuckGo for Mac is built on top of the macOS rendering engine.

DuckDuckGo for Mac is currently in beta and will be open source in the future. DuckDuckGo for Windows is coming soon.