Let users add custom URL for search engine

Brave Feature Requests Desktop Requests
1

The list of optional search engines is great, but it would be helpful to let users add their own. For instance, OCG.org offers an alternative to ecosia for those who want to let their searches support an environmental cause without the drawback of an independent search engine (OCG.org’s searches go through google, so you get google’s functionality, but OCG gets the ad revenue to pay local fishermen to literally pull trash out of the ocean). I’m sure there are other search engine options available as well, so the ability to enter a custom URL for the default search engine in Brave would be really useful.

2

Have you looked at brave://settings/searchEngines? You should be able to add your own search engine and set it as default there.

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3

I just tried this and I have to say the current implementation is either clunky or not very well explained/documented. Any search engines added can’t be used in the omnibox unless they are default, but what if I don’t want it to be default? what if I just want to add it as an option? Current implementation doesn’t allow you to do this easily and the fact that custom search engines aren’t listed as “custom search engines” makes it hard to realize that a search engine was even added.

1 Like
4

I also want to vote on this feature, with a quite specific additional request. (The urge is so strong that I create an account to leave the comment here.)

I basically follow the steps recommended by community members here. It works fine with a caveat: the URL of customized shortcut (could be set as default for omnibox search) cannot include port number, and I wish Brave team could consider improving on this.

My use case is, I self-host SearXNG and wish to use it as my default search engine service. In this case the address would be something like:

http://127.0.0.1:8888/search?q=%s

My experiment is that, while I could input the full address, including port number 8888 in my search engine setting, the port number would be removed after I restart Brave, so when I use this shortcut/search in omnibox, the resulting address would be:

http://127.0.0.1/search?q=%s

As the port number is removed after restarting Brave, I cannot access my self-hosted SearXNG, and I have to adjust the search engine setting every time I restart Brave to include port number again, which is far from ideal.