searxng/docs/admin/settings.rst

settings.yml

This page describe the options possibilities of the searx/settings.yml file.

Further reading ..

• search API

Contents

Global Settings

server:
    port : 8888
    secret_key : "ultrasecretkey" # change this!
    debug : False                 # debug mode, only for development
    request_timeout : 2.0         # seconds
    base_url : False              # set custom base_url (or False)
    themes_path : ""              # custom ui themes path
    default_theme : oscar         # ui theme
    useragent_suffix : ""         # suffix of searx_useragent, could contain
                                  # informations like admins email address
    image_proxy : False           # proxying image results through searx
    default_locale : ""           # default interface locale

outgoing: # communication with search engines
    request_timeout : 2.0 # default timeout in seconds, can be override by engine
    # max_request_timeout: 10.0 # the maximum timeout in seconds
    useragent_suffix : "" # suffix of searx_useragent, could contain informations like an email address to the administrator
    pool_connections : 100 # Number of different hosts
    pool_maxsize : 10 # Number of simultaneous requests by host

    #proxies:
    #    http:
    #        - http://proxy1:8080
    #        - http://proxy2:8080
    #    https:
    #        - http://proxy1:8080
    #        - http://proxy2:8080
    #        - socks5://user:password@proxy3:1080
    #        - socks5h://user:password@proxy4:1080

    #source_ips:
    #    - 1.1.1.1
    #    - 1.1.1.2

locales:
    en : English
    de : Deutsch
    he : Hebrew
    hu : Magyar
    fr : Français
    es : Español
    it : Italiano
    nl : Nederlands
    ja : 日本語 (Japanese)
    tr : Türkçe
    ru : Russian
    ro : Romanian

port :

Port number of the searx web application if you run it directly using python searx/webapp.py. Doesn't apply to searx running on Apache or Nginx.

secret_key :

Used for cryptography purpose.

debug :

Allow a more detailed log if you run searx directly. Display detailed error messages in the browser too, so this must be deactivated in production.

request_timeout :

Global timeout of the requests made to others engines in seconds. A bigger timeout will allow to wait for answers from slow engines, but in consequence will slow searx reactivity (the result page may take the time specified in the timeout to load)

base_url :

The base URL where searx is deployed. Used to create correct inbound links.

themes_path :

Path to where the themes are located. If you didn't develop anything, leave it blank.

default_theme :

Name of the theme you want to use by default on your searx instance.

useragent_suffix :

Suffix to the user-agent searx uses to send requests to others engines. If an engine wish to block you, a contact info here may be useful to avoid that.

image_proxy :

Allow your instance of searx of being able to proxy images. Uses memory space.

default_locale :

Searx interface language. If blank, the locale is detected by using the browser language. If it doesn't work, or you are deploying a language specific instance of searx, a locale can be defined using an ISO language code, like fr, en, de.

proxies :

Define one or more proxies you wish to use, see requests proxies. If there are more than one proxy for one protocol (http, https), requests to the engines are distributed in a round-robin fashion.

source_ips :

If you use multiple network interfaces, define from which IP the requests must be made. This parameter is ignored when proxies is set.

locales :

Locales codes and their names. Available translations of searx interface.

Engine settings

Further reading ..

• engines-dev

- name : bing
  engine : bing
  shortcut : bi
  base_url : 'https://{language}.wikipedia.org/'
  categories : general
  timeout : 3.0
  api_key : 'apikey'
  disabled : True
  language : en_US
  #proxies:
  #    http:
  #        - http://proxy1:8080
  #        - http://proxy2:8080
  #    https:
  #        - http://proxy1:8080
  #        - http://proxy2:8080
  #        - socks5://user:password@proxy3:1080
  #        - socks5h://user:password@proxy4:1080

name :

Name that will be used across searx to define this engine. In settings, on the result page...

engine :

Name of the python file used to handle requests and responses to and from this search engine.

shortcut :

Code used to execute bang requests (in this case using !bi or ?bi)

base_url : optional

Part of the URL that should be stable across every request. Can be useful to use multiple sites using only one engine, or updating the site URL without touching at the code.

categories : optional

Define in which categories this engine will be active. Most of the time, it is defined in the code of the engine, but in a few cases it is useful, like when describing multiple search engine using the same code.

timeout : optional

Timeout of the search with the current search engine. Be careful, it will modify the global timeout of searx.

api_key : optional

In a few cases, using an API needs the use of a secret key. How to obtain them is described in the file.

disabled : optional

To disable by default the engine, but not deleting it. It will allow the user to manually activate it in the settings.

language : optional

If you want to use another language for a specific engine, you can define it by using the full ISO code of language and country, like fr_FR, en_US, de_DE.

weigth : default 1

Weighting of the results of this engine.

display_error_messages : default True

When an engine returns an error, the message is displayed on the user interface.

Note

A few more options are possible, but they are pretty specific to some engines, and so won't be described here.

settings.yml location

First, searx will try to load settings.yml from these locations:

1. the full path specified in the SEARX_SETTINGS_PATH environment variable.
2. /etc/searx/settings.yml

If these files don't exist (or are empty or can't be read), searx uses the searx/settings.yml file.

use_default_settings

Note

If searx is cloned from a git repository, most probably there is no need to have an user settings.

The user defined settings.yml can relied on the default configuration searx/settings.yml using use_default_settings: True.

In the following example, the actual settings are the default settings defined in searx/settings.yml with the exception of the secret_key and the bind_address:

use_default_settings: true
server:
    secret_key: "uvys6bRhKHUdFF5CqbJonSDSRN8H0sCBziNSrDGNVdpz7IeZhveVart3yvghoKHA"
server:
    bind_address: "0.0.0.0"

With use_default_settings: True, each settings can be override in a similar way with one exception, the engines section:

• If the engines section is not defined in the user settings, searx uses the engines from the default setttings (the above example).

• If the engines section is defined then:

  • searx loads only the engines declare in the user setttings.
  • searx merges the configuration according to the engine name.

In the following example, only three engines are available. Each engine configuration is merged with the default configuration.

use_default_settings: true
server:
    secret_key: "uvys6bRhKHUdFF5CqbJonSDSRN8H0sCBziNSrDGNVdpz7IeZhveVart3yvghoKHA"
engines:
  - name: wikipedia
  - name: wikidata
  - name: ddg definitions

Another example where four engines are available. The arch linux wiki engine has a token<private engines>.

use_default_settings: true
server:
    secret_key: "uvys6bRhKHUdFF5CqbJonSDSRN8H0sCBziNSrDGNVdpz7IeZhveVart3yvghoKHA"
engines:
  - name: arch linux wiki
    tokens: ['$ecretValue']
  - name: wikipedia
  - name: wikidata
  - name: ddg definitions

automatic update

The following comand creates or updates a minimal user settings (a secret key is defined if it is not already the case):

make SEARX_SETTINGS_PATH=/etc/searx/settings.yml user-settings.update

Set SEARX_SETTINGS_PATH to your user settings path.

As soon the user settings contains an engines section, it becomes difficult to keep the engine list updated. The following command creates or updates the user settings including the engines section:

make SEARX_SETTINGS_PATH=/etc/searx/settings.yml user-settings.update.engines

After that /etc/searx/settings.yml

• has a secret key
• has a engine section if it is not already the case, moreover the command:
  • has deleted engines that do not exist in the default settings.
  • has added engines that exist in the default settings but are not declare in the user settings.