DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo’s browser for Android shows web pages with Android’s built-in WebView and adds DuckDuckGo’s protections on top. Search goes to DuckDuckGo, and there is no setting to choose another search engine; F-Droid marks the app for that, as it “Uses DuckDuckGo as the exclusive search engine, which is not libre.” DuckDuckGo’s own help pages list F-Droid among the official places to get the browser.

What it protects against

From DuckDuckGo’s list of protections for the Android browser:

• Trackers on websites: “3rd-party scripts on our list blocked from loading”, third-party cookies blocked, first-party cookies set by other scripts limited to seven days, and tracking parameters removed from links.
• Fingerprinting: browser features on its list are overridden, “except in iframes, where JavaScript injection is unsupported by the Android WebView API”.
• Global Privacy Control, on by default, which tells sites not to sell or share your data.
• Cookie pop-ups on its list are answered and closed, where the WebView allows it.
• HTTPS upgrades for a list of sites covering “approximately 90% of search engine clicks”. In this build the list is downloaded after installation rather than built in.

DuckDuckGo notes some exceptions, such as leaving some sites temporarily unprotected when the protections break them.

Fire Button and other features

• Fire Button: one tap deletes the browsing data of all tabs, or only of the current one; Fire Tabs are kept apart from your other browsing data, which, in the app’s words, “is burned when you close them all”; they are offered only where the phone’s WebView supports separate profiles. Bookmarks, downloads and sites you mark as Fireproof are kept.
• App Tracking Protection: blocks trackers on DuckDuckGo’s list inside your other apps, “even when you’re not using them”, through a local VPN on the phone. It’s off until you turn it on. DuckDuckGo leaves browsers and other apps that load websites out of it, and doesn’t block trackers that belong to the app’s own parent company. It can’t run alongside another VPN app.
• Email Protection: free @duck.com addresses that forward mail to you with trackers removed.
• Passwords and autofill, stored on the phone and protected by your screen lock, with no account needed.
• Sync & Backup, end-to-end encrypted, for bookmarks, passwords and Duck.ai chats.
• Duck.ai, an AI chat with a free tier, which can be switched off in the settings.

What this F-Droid build leaves out

The F-Droid build is made from a version of the source that DuckDuckGo prepared for it, without Google’s libraries:

• No subscription: the VPN, Personal Information Removal and the paid Duck.ai models can’t be bought or signed in to.
• No phishing and malware warnings, as far as we can tell from the code: DuckDuckGo’s Scam Blocker is switched off in F-Droid builds (“MSP is disabled in F-Droid builds, as we can’t download datasets”), and the browser turns off Android’s own Safe Browsing in every build.
• Restoring Sync automatically from a Google backup isn’t available; setting up Sync by hand works.
• DuckDuckGo’s own Duck Sans font isn’t included; the app uses the system font.

What goes online

From the 5.299.0 source code and DuckDuckGo’s help pages:

• Search suggestions as you type, sent to duckduckgo.com; on by default, switchable under Search Suggestions.
• Install and activity counts: requests DuckDuckGo calls ATB, which it uses to “count approximately how many devices accessed DuckDuckGo without knowing anything about those devices”. On Android 11 and later the app also creates a DuckDuckGo folder in Downloads to recognise a reinstall; DuckDuckGo says you can delete it.
• Usage events (“pixels”) to improving.duckduckgo.com. DuckDuckGo says these requests “cannot be associated with any individual. We do not create unique cookies or store IP addresses.” We found no setting to turn them off.
• Crash reports, sent automatically: after a crash, a report with the error and stack trace goes out later. For crashes in native code, version 5.299.0 uses a handler based on Google’s Crashpad: each app process announces at start that the handler is registered, and after a native crash the next start sends a short report with the app and WebView versions, both to DuckDuckGo’s improving.duckduckgo.com over HTTPS. From our reading of the code, the crash dumps themselves stay on the phone. The older native handler and its plain-HTTP start-up message were removed in 5.299.0.
• Settings and lists from DuckDuckGo’s servers: its remote configuration every hour, which can switch features on or off without an app update, tracker lists every 12 hours, and in-app messages every hour.
• Website icons straight from each website.

Our tracker scan found no third-party tracking libraries; the events above go to DuckDuckGo itself.

About this file

• This is F-Droid’s build of version 5.299.0, released by DuckDuckGo on 19 October 2026 and added by F-Droid on 1 November, signed with F-Droid’s key. F-Droid’s builds trail DuckDuckGo’s and can skip releases. DuckDuckGo’s release notes say only “Bug fixes and other improvements”.
• At 97.4 MB the file is smaller than the previous build we measured; it still carries native code for four CPU types. Since 5.296.0 DuckDuckGo has stored its native code compressed, making the APK smaller than before.
• It runs on Android 9 and later and declares 22 permissions, among them location, camera and microphone for websites that ask, the VPN for App Tracking Protection, and the list of installed apps, which DuckDuckGo says it uses for app links, its search widget and App Tracking Protection.
• The screenshots are from DuckDuckGo’s F-Droid listing, promotional images from 2024 with an older interface; we left out the ones showing other companies’ sites and logos.
• DuckDuckGo’s browser is licensed under the Apache-2.0. One part isn’t: the App Tracking Protection engine, which DuckDuckGo started from the firewall NetGuard with its owner’s permission, is offered “solely for reuse as-is (without modification), in connection with DuckDuckGo apps, and for noncommercial purposes only”. F-Droid distributes the app with it. Since 5.296.0 the app also includes DuckDuckGo’s crash-handling library android-crashkit, which Maven Central lists under the Apache-2.0 but whose source repository isn’t public. The source of this version is at https://github.com/duckduckgo/Android/tree/5.299.0.

Flagged by F-Droid:

• NonFreeNet: Relies on or promotes a proprietary network service.

CPU types in this build: arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM, almost every phone since 2017); armeabi-v7a (32-bit ARM, older and budget phones); x86 (32-bit Intel, emulators); x86_64 (64-bit Intel, emulators and Chromebooks).

Versions currently kept in the F-Droid repository. We host and check only the newest one. Full changelog.