Searx is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from more than 70 search services. Users are neither tracked nor profiled.
I recently learned about Searx and have been using it as my main search engine.
How to use
You basically have two option: install Searx in a machine controlled by you or use one of the available Searx-instances.
For now I’m using one of the instances, namely https://searx.pofilo.fr/.
Preferences
You can set a different variety of preferences including:
- Autocomplete: choose a search engine to search as you type.
- Image proxy: image results will go through searx.
- Method: you can choose between GET and POST. If you choose the GET option you search query will be part of the url, so choose POST if you and a little more privacy.
- Themes: I like the ‘oscar’ theme.
- Style: I like the ‘Logicodev dark’ theme style.
- Engines: For each search category (general, images, etc.) you can choose witch search engines to use.
- Plugins: A good one to enable is ‘Tracker URL remover’. There is also a ‘Vim-like hotkeys’ plugin.
Searching
You can search like in any search engine. In the advanced settings you can also choose the in wich categories you want to search and a time period.
Also you can use the prefix ! to search in a given category or search engine. As an example you can search for Linux in reddit by typing !re Linux.
In preferences you can see the available shortcuts in the Engines section.
Browser integration
I use Firefox and an extension called ‘New Tab Override’.
Here’s what I changed in Firefox Preferences:
Here’s what I changed in the ‘New Tab Override’ extension:
