duckduckgo-privacy-extension

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Description

The extension lock the default search engine when activated.

Steps to Reproduce

1. install the chrome extension
2. try to change the default search engine without disabling the extension

Expected behavior:

I want to be able to use the extension to block the trackers and still use different default search engine.

Actual behavior:

Default search engine is locked with duckduckgo.com

Versions 2020.8.12

• Extension: 2020.8.12
• Browser: Chrome
• OS: Windows

This behavior is caused by this. Change true of line 30 to false should remove it.

This is exactly the reason I switched back to AdGuard (which uses more resources than the DDG Privacy Essentials), but I doubt they will remove it (it seems some people https://github.com/duckduckgo/duckduckgo-privacy-extension/issues/239 actually prefer this) from the official release.

I'd also like to express my support for an option to disable this functionality easily, as it's annoying to have to edit source or set a browser policy in order to work around it.

This is a Chrome limitation - if we want to change the default search engine on install we have to set this is_default flag. However, once we set this Chrome will lock the search engine choice.

There are a couple of workarounds if you want to keep the extension's privacy protections but not use our search all the time:

1. Use our ! bangs to redirect to different search engines when you need them
2. Install another extension that changes the default search engine, which will then unlock your search setting in Chrome.

Closing as a duplicate of: #90