Adding a compatible searxng instance

blahblahblah

Searxng is MUCH more private and than most other search engines but the vanilla version hides the search queries. Priv.au is a fork of searxng with search queries so it solves that issue. I am proposing it being added as an option in the search engine list for people who want to use an open source and private search engine.

Searxng is highly customazible within its search engines, with other basic features like safemode, ui changes, and being able to use bangs. idk of other browsers/apps support the engine

laiz

Suggestions about adding a searxng instance pop up every now and then, bu they rarely get any support from the community and we ultimately end up tagging them asClosed because the instance that was suggested (sometimes just mere months earlier) is shut down for some reason.

Could you tell us more about priv.au?

How long has it been live?
For how long have you used it?
I see the entire instance relies on one individual, as is often the case with searxng instances
what is the performance like?
https://uptime.searxng.org/history/priv-au the uptime stats leave something to be desired. While Orion users have the ability to choose whatever search engine they want, adding something that can occasionally go down for a lengthy period of time as a default option doesn't make the Orion team look good
Why priv.au and not some other instance?

blahblahblah

I'm not an expert on priv.au as I'm just a user, but I'll answer your questions!

Priv.au seems to have been around since December 8th, 2023 according to it's oldest commit on github https://github.com/privau/searxng
I've not used it long, about a week, and chose it by going through dif instances on searx.space and narrowing it to us servers, up to date, not vanilla, and ranked highly on searx.space
Yeah, this seems to be true
Works amazingly, very fast, I haven't had any problems with peformance
The uptime stats are 99.46%, with the longest downtime being 3/26/2025 for 10 hours, ironically it went down for 5 1/2 hours the day after I made that post.
It doesn't need to be THAT specific instance, but the vanilla version of searxng hides the search querie so it's not compatible with how orion does searching. For example I search apple using a vanilla instance I get searx.example/search when i use priv.au i get https://priv.au/search?q=apple. Vanilla is not compatible with orion, and priv's fork is. Random thing too, it also has a kagi theme

If reliability is a major worry, it should be possible for orion to make a fork of searx and have the same features, but idk if that has like conflict of interest for the company

Yannick

Sorry, it was too tempting.

Yannick

It seems like a kinda shady project to me, and I’d rather they develop their own extension and everyone will be happy. Besides, honestly, we just want you to use Kagi.com 😉