3.2 KiB
How to search
searx
SearXNG supports {{engines | length}} search engines. Since searching all of these for every single query would be too slow SearXNG groups its engines into categories.
The most important categories are easily accessible as tabs on the search result page (just like with the mainstream search engines).
Within a category engines can be enabled or disabled from the Engines tab in the preferences (you can access the preferences via the Preferences link in the Oscar theme and the ☰ link in the Simple theme). When you search in a category only the enabled engines will be searched.
Searching multiple categories
In the User Interface preferences you can disabled Search on category select which changes the tabs on the search result pages into checkboxes, letting you search multiple engines at once. (Note: If you have JavaScript disabled that is already the case.)
Bang syntax
Alternatively you can use our bang syntax. For example searching for cats !images !videos searches all enabled engines in the Images category and all enabled engines in the Videos category. Note that the order of the bangs does not matter, e.g. !videos cats !images yields the same results.
Searching specific engines
Instead of casting a wide net you can also specifically target engines. In the engine preferences you can find a "shortcut" for each engine, which you can use with the same bang syntax you know from categories. For example searching for !ddg ducks searches for "ducks" only in the DuckDuckGo search engine.
Note that you can combine category bangs with engine bangs, so e.g. the query !ddg !images ducks searches the DuckDuckGo engine along with all enabled engines in the images category for "ducks". (For engine bangs it does not matter if the engine is enabled or disabled within its category, if you ask for an engine explicitly it is always searched.)
Searching in a language
In the language select after the search box you can choose which language you want your search results to be in. Note that no matter what you choose you might still get results in other languages (mostly English) because not every engine supports language selection (you can see which ones do in the engine preferences).
Alternatively you can use the special syntax :es gato to search for "gato" in Spanish, :fr chat to search for "chat" in French, :de katze to search for "katze" in German, etc.
Note that unlike the bang syntax the language codes cannot be combined. Searching for :es :fr cat does not search for "cat" in Spanish and French it only searches in French (the last language code is used).
Also note that searching for :es gato changes your default search language to Spanish so subsequent searches will also be in Spanish (until you change the language in the language select or use another language code).