diff --git a/Dockerfile b/Dockerfile
index ece20c86b..66f58395d 100644
--- a/Dockerfile
+++ b/Dockerfile
@@ -36,7 +36,6 @@ RUN apk add --no-cache -t build-dependencies \
     su-exec \
     python3 \
     py3-pip \
-    py3-numpy \
     libxml2 \
     libxslt \
     openssl \
@@ -44,8 +43,6 @@ RUN apk add --no-cache -t build-dependencies \
     uwsgi \
     uwsgi-python3 \
     brotli \
- && pip3 install --no-cache setuptools wheel \
- && sed -i s/fasttext-wheel/fasttext/ requirements.txt \
  && pip3 install --no-cache -r requirements.txt \
  && apk del build-dependencies \
  && rm -rf /root/.cache
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 5c45fff6b..ea2616e1a 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -15,4 +15,4 @@ setproctitle==1.3.2
 redis==4.4.0
 markdown-it-py==2.1.0
 typing_extensions==4.4.0
-fasttext-wheel==0.9.2
+fasttext-predict==0.9.2.1
diff --git a/searx/utils.py b/searx/utils.py
index 2157a4ce0..cda336035 100644
--- a/searx/utils.py
+++ b/searx/utils.py
@@ -15,7 +15,6 @@ from os.path import splitext, join
 from random import choice
 from html.parser import HTMLParser
 from urllib.parse import urljoin, urlparse
-import fasttext
 
 from lxml import html
 from lxml.etree import ElementBase, XPath, XPathError, XPathSyntaxError, _ElementStringResult, _ElementUnicodeResult
@@ -51,12 +50,9 @@ _STORAGE_UNIT_VALUE: Dict[str, int] = {
 _XPATH_CACHE: Dict[str, XPath] = {}
 _LANG_TO_LC_CACHE: Dict[str, Dict[str, str]] = {}
 
-_FASTTEXT_MODEL: Optional[fasttext.FastText._FastText] = None
+_FASTTEXT_MODEL: Optional["fasttext.FastText._FastText"] = None
 """fasttext model to predict laguage of a search term"""
 
-# Monkey patch: prevent fasttext from showing a (useless) warning when loading a model.
-fasttext.FastText.eprint = lambda x: None
-
 
 class _NotSetClass:  # pylint: disable=too-few-public-methods
     """Internal class for this module, do not create instance of this class.
@@ -630,9 +626,13 @@ def eval_xpath_getindex(elements: ElementBase, xpath_spec: XPathSpecType, index:
     return default
 
 
-def _get_fasttext_model() -> fasttext.FastText._FastText:
+def _get_fasttext_model() -> "fasttext.FastText._FastText":
     global _FASTTEXT_MODEL  # pylint: disable=global-statement
     if _FASTTEXT_MODEL is None:
+        import fasttext  # pylint: disable=import-outside-toplevel
+
+        # Monkey patch: prevent fasttext from showing a (useless) warning when loading a model.
+        fasttext.FastText.eprint = lambda x: None
         _FASTTEXT_MODEL = fasttext.load_model(str(data_dir / 'lid.176.ftz'))
     return _FASTTEXT_MODEL