Privacy-focused browser DuckDuckGo has been using Apple Maps since early 2019 and has been improving the integration steadily. Now DuckDuckGo has launched driving and walking directions to further complete the feature set while keeping your location searches completely private.
DuckDuckGo announced the news in a blog post this week:
This means that when DuckDuckGo users search for location and map searches they’ll see private route overview, distance, and travel time for driving or walking.
We’ve been providing users with mapping features within DuckDuckGo Search for many years, along the way improving them with greater accuracy, dark mode, local re-querying and more. Now we’re excited to announce a big step forward with the introduction of directions – private, as always, and like our embedded maps, powered by Apple’s MapKit JS framework and already familiar to millions of users.
Here’s how the update looks on the web and iPhone:
DuckDuckGo also highlights its privacy policy and species on how it keeps your location searches private:
A location query such as Tower of London can open our expanded maps, as usual.
Clicking the Directions button in the map sidebar will now display boxes to enter a starting point and a destination. For convenience, the starting point by default will be set to your current location, which works anonymously (as explained below). The best routes and their estimated durations will be shown on the map, and updating the starting point will redraw the available routes.
Learn more in the full post here. DuckDuckGo is a free download from the App Store.
As with all our search features, your privacy is still protected when using these directions thanks to our strict privacy policy of not collecting or sharing any personal information. In the case of location-related searches, your browser sends location information which we isolate from any personal information the browser sends, and which we discard after use, enabling us to provide anonymous localized results and features. Our help page has more detail on how we keep location searches private.
