Custom search engines on Android

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Description of the issue:

Brave no more often the possibility to add custom search engines on Android.

How can this issue be reproduced?

  1. Navigate to you preferred search engine (https://searx.be , for instance)
  2. Perform a search
  3. https://searx.be should be listed under “Settings → Search engines” as recently visited

Expected result:

https://searx.be should be listed under “Settings → Search engines” as recently visited

Brave Version( check About Brave):

1.32.160

This also happens with previous versions and on beta.

Mobile Device details

Poco X3 NFC - Android 11 - LineageOS 18.1

Additional Information:

I tried to use an older version of Brave (down to 1.30) and the issue is still present. Looks like some server-side or deliberate new “feature”.

Is this a bug or a decision by Brave devs? If the ability to set-up custom search engines has been removed from Brave for Android the developers should clearly state it. Some of us have actively chosen Brave over other alternatives (i.e., Vivaldi) just because of the “custom engines” feature. We need to make an informed choice.

We understand that at Brave wants people to use their search-brave.com. Still, the option to use public, personal or private SearX instances should be given, by a company advocating for privacy.

@Anion,
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. AFAIK we haven’t changed anything here, but when testing this myself I’m seeing the same behavior. You should need only to run a search on any search engine for it to appear in that list, yet I do not see them added.

I’ve reached out to the Android team about this and will let you know when I have more information.

Thanks a lot for your reply. I sincerely appreciate that. FYI, I have also filed a bug on github for that:

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