Which browser, and which search engine?

30 August 2026 · by Sharath · for parents · 4 min read

Your child spends more time inside a browser than inside any app you choose for them. Pick Brave, Safari or Firefox, set DuckDuckGo as the search, and do it on every device. Here are the exact steps.

Your child will spend more time inside a browser than inside any app you choose for them. Two settings decide most of what reaches them there, and both take about five minutes to change.

Why not just leave it on Chrome

Two plain facts, and no story around them.

Google sells advertising. Chrome and Google search are how it learns who is looking, and a child's browsing is worth as much to that trade as yours.

Chrome also shut the door on the strongest ad blocker there is. Google turned off the extension type that uBlock Origin needs during 2025, and Microsoft Edge followed in 2026. Firefox and Brave still run it. If you stay on Chrome, the best tool for the job no longer fits.

The three that work

Brave. Ad and tracker blocking is already switched on, under a setting called Shields. Nothing to install, nothing to maintain, and it is built on the same engine as Chrome so sites behave. Download it at brave.com/download.

Safari. Already on the Mac, the iPad and the iPhone. Apple blocks cross site tracking by default, and Safari is the browser Screen Time controls properly, which is probably the parental control you already use. Nothing to download.

Firefox. Not owned by a company that sells advertising, and the last major browser that still runs the full uBlock Origin. Download it at mozilla.org/firefox.

Pick one. Put it on the laptop, the phone and the tablet, and make it the default. A child who meets one set of rules on the laptop and another on the tablet learns that the rules are decoration.

Why DuckDuckGo for the search

DuckDuckGo does not build a profile of the person searching. Two things follow from that.

Ads stop following them around. Search for a bike once and you are not shown bikes for a fortnight.

More useful for a child: everybody gets the same results. A search engine that ranks pages by what you clicked last week slowly hands a child a version of the web shaped around what they already think. Yours does the same thing to you. The one they learn on should not.

Be honest with them about the trade. DuckDuckGo is thinner than Google on some searches, especially local ones. That is worth teaching rather than hiding: when an answer does not come back, change the words and try again, then try a different engine. Give up last, not first.

Setting DuckDuckGo as the default

Brave, laptop. Menu, then Settings, then Search engine. Set it for normal windows and for private windows.

Brave, Android and iPhone. Menu, then Settings, then General, then Search engines. Set the standard tab and the private tab.

Safari, Mac. Safari menu, then Settings, then the Search tab, then Search engine.

Safari, iPhone and iPad. Settings app, then Apps, then Safari, then Search Engine. On an older iPhone, Safari sits on the main Settings list instead of under Apps.

Firefox, laptop. Menu, then Settings, then Search, then Default search engine.

Firefox, Android. Tap the small search icon to the left of the address bar, then Search settings, then Default search engine.

Firefox, iPhone and iPad. Menu, then Settings, then Search under General.

Extensions worth having

Every extension you install can read every page your child opens. So install few, only from the browser's own add on store, and look at the list once a term to see what is still there.

Do it with them watching

This is a ten minute job you could do alone in two. Do it the slow way, with them at your shoulder, and ask one question while you work: who pays for this page?

A child who can answer that has understood something about the internet that most adults have not. Everything on the screen was put there by somebody, for a reason, and the reason is rarely you.

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