ChatGPT can be used as default Safari search engine with new extension | Hacker News Reader

ChatGPT can be used as default Safari search engine with new extension

macrumors.com

31 pointsTimLeland19 comments

I use LLMs all day and they've replaced a lot of what I'd previously searched for. Even so, I don't think I'm ready yet for an LLM as default search engine. LLMs are useful for generating information based on what they know about. For example, generating useful commands for tools like `ffmpeg` or `jq`. They're not better than a search engine for finding factual information, like "What is the population of Canada?" LLM hallucination is still a thing.

LLMs replace some of the work we'd previously had to rely on search engines for. They're not a replacement for everything, and they shouldn't be used as such.

this feature is one where ChatGPT will actually do a Bing search (sometimes rewriting your search query), and then show you a summary of the content of the links.

so "hallucinations" are more rare, although the model may be very gullible with respect to the content of the search results, which is similar.

It's just going to regurgitate the first few things it sees without applying critical reasoning. These models aren't quite there yet for search reliability.

I prefer kagi's approach. If I add a "?" to the end of my search query, I get a LLM response at the top of my search results. Any LLM response includes source links to quickly verify the information presented. So, if I am using search engine to quickly check a fact, say "What year did Tremors come out?" I get the following at the top of the results:

Quick Answer

  The movie Tremors was released in 1990 12. It is an American monster horror film starring Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward 12.

 References

  r/movies on Reddit: Tremors (for those who saw it when it came out www.reddit.com

  Tremors (1990 film) - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org

Will this still send your information to Google because the redirect sometimes happens after the search has already been sent? I’m curious because I use a similar Kagi extension and I feel like it’s definitely sending my information to DuckDuckGo which sucks. I wish apple would allow more search options.

Depends on how the extension works probably. Had the issue with some extension but the Qwant extension for example doesn't leak - you can check yourself when capturing the http(s) traffic with something like proxyman.

All the Safari search engine extensions work the same: https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2025/2/2.html

Interesting, something must have changed then - the qwant search extension definitely does not leak the search to the default search engine - I checked myself with Proxyman.

I just tested with Little Snitch and saw leakage to Google.

It's a race condition, so you might not always see it.

I don't know your setup but in my opinion something like proxyman / mitmproxy or even Wireshark would be the better way to analyse this. I tested quite often and never saw the leak with Qwant.

I have Proxyman and Wireshark. IIRC I used Proxyman also when writing my blog post.

In any case, Little Snitch is not lying and inventing packets. I don't know why you aren't seeing anything, but as I said, it's a race condition, so that can happen, and in any case, I would say that it's a better way to analyze this by adding Little Snitch to your setup.

I quickly downloaded the kagi extension for testing and there I can see the leaking - the Qwant extension still does not leak. Maybe you could also test the Qwant extension?

> Maybe you could also test the Qwant extension?

I did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43175181

There's really no magic or mystery here. The extension is simply using this API: <https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/sfs...>

I don't know why it's different for you and me then. I tested Qwant once again and saw not one call to duckduckgo (my default search engine) - now I'm over 100 searches while analysing with proxyman without one leak. The kagi extension on the other hand leaked all my first 3 searches. Something must be different.

I've been a Perplexity user for about a year now, why would anyone pick ChatGPT search over Perplexity?

Cool. I'd use ChatGPT as my default search in Firefox. I'm not going to start using Safari for this however.

ChatGPTs search is still slow and has low overview.

Currently apoenai feels dead in the water

But the bigger question is - at what cost?

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