Settings in “No AI” DuckDuckGo

Back on June 8, 2026, Chris Wiegman published a blog post titled You Don’t Need the DuckDuckGo noai Subdomain. For those not in the know, noai.duckduckgo.com is a subdomain of DuckDuckGo search which removes DuckDuckGo’s new “AI” features. I wrote about how to add the “noai” version of DuckDuckGo as a search engine to Chromium- and Firefox-based web browsers back in January in Adding noai.duckduckgo.com as Custom Search Engine. Mr. Wiegman writes regarding a “better way” to use DuckDuckGo without AI features than the noai subdomain: Instead of using a special domain to access DuckDuckGo, a method that works, but not in every situation, you can just use the normal DuckDuckGo domain, without AI and customizable even further to serve your needs. His argument is based on the facts that all of the DuckDuckGo “AI features” can be disabled by flipping a few toggles in DuckDuckGo’s settings, and that the settings include additional customization options that may be of use separate from AI. I concur in part and dissent in part. Mr. Wiegman is correct DuckDuckGo’s AI features can be disabled from the regular settings, something DuckDuckGo itself notes in describing the noai subdomain. Moreover, I agree that this is the probably the best course for many DuckDuckGo searchers since it does not require setting a custom search shortcut (like I demonstrated) or using an extension (DuckDuckGo offers one). However, I use the noai subdomain instead of regular DuckDuckGo, and I would recommend it for people who want to use DuckDuckGo without the “AI features” and who are open to taking a few minutes to setting up a search shortcut by following my NLJ guide. I offer the following reasons in response to Mr. Wiegman’s post: The settings that Mr. Wiegman references for DuckDuckGo’s main domain are accessible in the noai subdomain. The only difference is that the AI toggles are not only disabled, but also not present. Consider noai DuckDuckGo a cleaner settings experience. My preferred DuckDuckGo set-up is just as configurable with the noai subdomain. This distinguishes the noai version of DuckDuckGo from DuckDuckGo Lite, which is a much bigger departure from base DuckDuckGo. Assuming arguendo that DuckDuckGo maintains the noai subdomain as it exists today, I suppose using it prevents new “AI features” from popping up enabled by default. I prefer removing things that I do not need or want to having to disable them. For the same reason, I switched from Brave to Brave Origin for everything I use Brave (my main desktop browser is Firefox, but I use Brave for other purposes). Of course, I have a self-interested reason I writing this reply. My noai DuckDuckGo guide has been my most-visited article on NLJ for both May and June (I believe news about Google pushing AI search benefited my DuckDuckGo guide). I joke, of course. Both my method and Mr. Wiegman’s preferred method to using DuckDuckGo without AI lead to the same result, and I tip my hat to DuckDuckGo for thoughtfully making its AI features optional for people who prefer a more traditional search product.