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PSA: Quick startup on the dedicated Duck.ai LLM/AI WebView2 chat mechanism

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PSA: Quick startup on the dedicated Duck.ai LLM/AI WebView2 chat mechanism

On Windows, the DDG browser isn't a separate browser engine like Chrome is.

It's more like an embedded web app using WebView2, or maybe it's best
described as a webview-based browser shell (or maybe an in-app browser).

Whatever it is, below is a first-pass test on Windows of installing it.

Note, what spawned this need for a dedicated AI sans login was that
MS CoPilot earlier in the year allowed unlimited chats sans account
registration but as of yesterday, the last vestige of the no-registation 
Micorosoft CoPilot Edge-sidebar chat went away.  
  Newsgroups: alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.comp.microsoft.windows,alt.comp.os.windows-11
  Subject: Can anyone get Edge Copilot to work without logging in after July 2026?
  Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:20:53 -0700
  Message-ID: <114905j$7bm$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>

With that gone, and with ChatGPT limiting the output sometimes, 
I needed a dedicated tasbar icon that launches only an LLM interface.

Moving forward, given Gemini limits free chats as does ChatGPT, 
since I no longer run "searches" outside of an LLM (because the
LLM allows more natural search terms), I'm going to try, for the 
first time in earnest, the duck.ai interface & browser.

I realize duck.ai works in any browser, after agreeing to the privacy 
terms every time I use it, but maybe people have experience with 
the dedicated ddg browser (which has its own separate AI interface)? 

 June 2023
 *DuckDuckGo's Privacy-Enhanced Browser Waddles Into Windows*
 *How It Compares To Chrome*
<https://hothardware.com/news/duckduckgo-announces-privacy-focused-browser-on-windows>

     "...it is not a fork of the open-source Chromium browser like
      many other browsers but a standalone app that utilizes the 
      underlying operating system rendering API. On Windows, this 
      is Windows WebView2 over top of the Blink rendering engine, 
      all of which to say this is a stripped-down Microsoft Edge 
      under the hood"

Here's what I just did to install it on Windows.
Please add your experiences and improve this so others find it useful.
1. https://duckduckgo.com/app
2. https://duckduckgo.com/windows?origin=funnel_app_bing
3. C:\data\software\browser\chrome\ddg\
   Name: DuckDuckGo.Installer.exe
   Size: 9901448 bytes (9669 KiB)
   SHA256: 348D3CDE37F1EE13FF585918A3FC166E5A332B0655DF79D45AAB6BFE9D683733
4. Hit the taskbar network killswitch toggle & doubleclick the installer
   Let's start your install
     (_)Search privately by default
     (_)Chat privately with popular AI chatbots (optional)
     (_)Block 3rd party trackers
     (_)Block cookie pop ups
     (_)Block targeted ads
     [Install Now]
     [x]Open DuckDuckGo when your computer starts up

   Note that these buttons will play a role later in the install... 

   Drat. There's no option to tell it where to go. 
   The only option is to turn off the automatic startup with Windows.
5. It seems to do nothing but usually I see some kind of error.
   Often I see the default browser pop up phoning home at least.
   I don't see any of that (my default browser is a text log capture).

6. Eventually I toggle the network killswitch (adds the gateway back).
   It doesn't restart, so the installer appears to be hung.
   It won't even close when I hit the Window dressing [x] at top right.

   Ah, when restarted the first button turns "green" from gray 
   when it is on the Internet and then it moves to the second button
   and so on. 

   Then there is a "Welcome to DuckDuckGo" and a browser comes up.

7. The browser pops up to a "Start browser setup" button.
   1 of 4 
     (x)Search privately by default
     (x)Chat privately with popular AI chatbots (optional)
     (x)Block 3rd party trackers
     (x)Block cookie pop ups
     (x)Block targeted ads
     (x)Delete browsing data with one buton 
     (x)Play YouTube videos without ads
     [Make DuckDuckGo your default] [Skip]

8. Import bookmarks and passwords
   2 of 4 
    [Import Now][Skip]
    [Next]
9. Show a bookmarks bar with your favorite sites
   3 of 4 
    [Show Bookmarks Bar][Skip]
    [Enable Session Restore][Skip]
    [Show Home Button][Skip] (add a shortcut to the toolbar)

10. Want easy access to private AI Chat?
    4 of 4 
    [Search & Duck.ai][Search Only]
    [Start Browsing]

11. It created a desktop shortcut:
    Target
    C:\Users\{you}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\DuckDuckGo.exe

12. It defaults to 
     [Search]
    But we can switch it to 
     [Duck.ai]
    Tools of {Create image,Web search,Customize Responses}
    Choices of {Fast, Reasoning}
    Engines of Choices of= {GPT-5.4 nano,GPT-5.4 mini, Claude Haiku 4.5,
     Mistral Small 4, gpt-oss 120B, Gemma 4 31B}
    Advanced Models (requires DDG subscription) {GPT-5.4, Claude Sonnet
4.6}

13. There's one more icon, a bunch of vertical lines (sound perhaps?), 
    which, when clicked, pops up a 
      Say hello to Duck ai
       Free and private chats, anonymized by us. 
       No account required.
       No AI raining on your conversations.
       Popular AI models from GPT, Claude, Mistral, Llama
       By clicking "Agree and Continue" you acept Duck.ai's privacy 
       policy and terms of service. 
         [Agree and Continue][Not Now][Disable Duck.ai]
       If you click to agree, another [Enable Voice Chat] comes up.
         Private by design
         No audio gets stored
         No audio identification
          [Enable Voice Chat][Cancel]

If you already use this interface, please let others know what you think.
If you know of an unlimited no-registration chat on Windows, let us know.

-- 
Once we understand the complexities, the whole thing becomes very simple.

      
      
      
      
       

	

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PSA: Quick startup on the dedicated Duck.ai LLM/AI WebView2 chat mechanism Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-08-09 09:29 -0800
  Re: PSA: Quick startup on the dedicated Duck.ai LLM/AI WebView2 chat mechanism Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-08-09 10:34 -0800
    Re: PSA: Quick startup on the dedicated Duck.ai LLM/AI WebView2 chat mechanism Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2026-08-09 19:40 +0100
      Re: PSA: Quick startup on the dedicated Duck.ai LLM/AI WebView2 chat mechanism Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-08-09 13:23 -0800
    Re: PSA: Quick startup on the dedicated Duck.ai LLM/AI WebView2 chat mechanism Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2026-08-09 19:16 -0400
      Re: PSA: Quick startup on the dedicated Duck.ai LLM/AI WebView2 chat mechanism Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-08-09 15:50 -0800
  Re: PSA: Quick startup on the dedicated Duck.ai LLM/AI WebView2 chat mechanism Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-08-09 18:34 -0800
    Re: PSA: Quick startup on the dedicated Duck.ai LLM/AI WebView2 chat mechanism Maria Sophia <mariasophia@comprehension.com> - 2026-08-09 18:59 -0800
    Re: PSA: Quick startup on the dedicated Duck.ai LLM/AI WebView2 chat mechanism Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2026-08-10 00:05 -0400

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