DuckDuckGo Browser Launches on Windows in Beta

DuckDuckGo’s new web browser is launching on Windows in public beta today. Just like the Mac version that was released in beta last year, the web browser focuses on privacy and comes with a built-in password manager, ad blocker, and video player that block tracking cockies and personalized ads on YouTube.

“DuckDuckGo for Windows comes with these best-in-class privacy protections switched on by default, leading to a better everyday user experience. By blocking trackers before they load, for example, our desktop browsers use about 60% less data than Chrome,” the company said today.

DuckDuckGo for Windows can already import passwords and bookmarks from other browsers and password managers. However, it doesn’t support extensions yet, but DuckDuckGo plans to add that in the future. Another feature that’s still in the works is the ability to sync bookmarks and passwords between different devices.

If DuckDuckGo for Windows uses Windows WebView 2 (Blink) as its rendering engine, the company is proud to say that all of the code in its web browser has been written in-house. “Our engineers have spent lots of time addressing any privacy issues specific to WebView2, such as ensuring that crash reports are not sent to Microsoft,” DuckDuckGo explained.

While there’s no complete parity with DuckDuckGo for Mac yet, the team is hard at work on bringing additional privacy features such as Fingerprinting Protection, Link Tracking Protection, and Referrer Tracking Protection to Windows users. DuckDuckGo for Windows can be downloaded from this page.