searxng/docs/admin/engines/settings.rst

settings.yml

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

Further reading ..

• use_default_settings.yml
• search API

Contents

settings.yml location

The initial settings.yml we be load from these locations:

1. the full path specified in the SEARXNG_SETTINGS_PATH environment variable.
2. /etc/searxng/settings.yml

If these files don't exist (or are empty or can't be read), SearXNG uses the searx/settings.yml file. Read settings use_default_settings to see how you can simplify your user defined settings.yml.

Global Settings

brand:

brand:
  issue_url: https://github.com/searxng/searxng/issues
  docs_url: https://docs.searxng.org
  public_instances: https://searx.space
  wiki_url: https://github.com/searxng/searxng/wiki

issue_url :

If you host your own issue tracker change this URL.

docs_url :

If you host your own documentation change this URL.

public_instances :

If you host your own https://searx.space change this URL.

wiki_url :

Link to your wiki (or false)

general:

general:
  debug: false               # Debug mode, only for development
  instance_name:  "SearXNG"  # displayed name
  contact_url: false         # mailto:contact@example.com

debug : $SEARXNG_DEBUG

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

contact_url:

Contact mailto: address or WEB form.

enable_metrics:

Enabled by default. Record various anonymous metrics availabled at /stats, /stats/errors and /preferences.

search:

search:
  safe_search: 0
  autocomplete: ""
  default_lang: ""
  ban_time_on_fail: 5
  max_ban_time_on_fail: 120
  formats:
    - html

safe_search:

Filter results.

• 0: None
• 1: Moderate
• 2: Strict

autocomplete:

Existing autocomplete backends, leave blank to turn it off.

• dbpedia
• duckduckgo
• google
• startpage
• swisscows
• qwant
• wikipedia

default_lang:

Default search language - leave blank to detect from browser information or use codes from searx/languages.py.

languages:

List of available languages - leave unset to use all codes from searx/languages.py. Otherwise list codes of available languages. The all value is shown as the Default language in the user interface (in most cases, it is meant to send the query without a language parameter ; in some cases, it means the English language) Example:

languages:
  - all
  - en
  - en-US
  - de
  - it-IT
  - fr
  - fr-BE

ban_time_on_fail:

Ban time in seconds after engine errors.

max_ban_time_on_fail:

Max ban time in seconds after engine errors.

formats:

Result formats available from web, remove format to deny access (use lower case).

• html
• csv
• json
• rss

server:

server:
    base_url: false                # set custom base_url (or false)
    port: 8888
    bind_address: "127.0.0.1"      # address to listen on
    secret_key: "ultrasecretkey"   # change this!
    image_proxy: false             # proxying image results through SearXNG
    default_http_headers:
      X-Content-Type-Options : nosniff
      X-XSS-Protection : 1; mode=block
      X-Download-Options : noopen
      X-Robots-Tag : noindex, nofollow
      Referrer-Policy : no-referrer

buildenv

Changing a value tagged by buildenv <make buildenv>, needs to rebuild instance's environment utils/brand.env <make buildenv>.

base_url : buildenv SEARXNG_URL <make buildenv>

The base URL where SearXNG is deployed. Used to create correct inbound links. If you change the value, don't forget to rebuild instance's environment (utils/brand.env <make buildenv>)

port & bind_address: buildenv SEARXNG_PORT & SEARXNG_BIND_ADDRESS <make buildenv>

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

secret_key : $SEARXNG_SECRET

Used for cryptography purpose.

image_proxy :

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

default_http_headers:

Set additional HTTP headers, see #755

ui:

ui:
  default_locale: ""
  query_in_title: false
  default_theme: simple
  theme_args:
    simple_style: auto

default_locale :

SearXNG 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.

default_theme :

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

theme_args.simple_style:

Style of simple theme: auto, light, dark

query_in_title:

When true, the result page's titles contains the query it decreases the privacy, since the browser can records the page titles.

results_on_new_tab:

Open result links in a new tab by default.

redis:

url

URL to connect redis database, see Redis.from_url(url) & redis db:

redis://[[username]:[password]]@localhost:6379/0
rediss://[[username]:[password]]@localhost:6379/0
unix://[[username]:[password]]@/path/to/socket.sock?db=0

Tip for developers

To set up a redis instance simply use:

$ ./manage redis.build
$ sudo -H ./manage redis.install

To get access rights to this instance, your developer account needs to be added to the searxng-redis group:

$ sudo -H ./manage redis.addgrp "${USER}"
# don't forget to logout & login to get member of group

outgoing:

Communication with search engines.

outgoing:
  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: ""       # informations like an email address to the administrator
  pool_connections: 100      # Maximum number of allowable connections, or null
                             # for no limits. The default is 100.
  pool_maxsize: 10           # Number of allowable keep-alive connections, or null
                             # to always allow. The default is 10.
  enable_http2: true         # See https://www.python-httpx.org/http2/
  # uncomment below section if you want to use a proxy
  # proxies:
  #   all://:
  #     - http://proxy1:8080
  #     - http://proxy2:8080
  # uncomment below section only if you have more than one network interface
  # which can be the source of outgoing search requests
  # source_ips:
  #   - 1.1.1.1
  #   - 1.1.1.2
  #   - fe80::/126

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 SearXNG reactivity (the result page may take the time specified in the timeout to load). Can be override by settings engine

useragent_suffix :

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

keepalive_expiry:

Number of seconds to keep a connection in the pool. By default 5.0 seconds.

proxies :

Define one or more proxies you wish to use, see httpx 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. Example:

• 0.0.0.0 any local IPv4 address.
• :: any local IPv6 address.
• 192.168.0.1
• [ 192.168.0.1, 192.168.0.2 ] these two specific IP addresses
• fe80::60a2:1691:e5a2:ee1f
• fe80::60a2:1691:e5a2:ee1f/126 all IP addresses in this network.
• [ 192.168.0.1, fe80::/126 ]

retries :

Number of retry in case of an HTTP error. On each retry, SearXNG uses an different proxy and source ip.

retry_on_http_error :

Retry request on some HTTP status code.

Example:

• true : on HTTP status code between 400 and 599.
• 403 : on HTTP status code 403.
• [403, 429]: on HTTP status code 403 and 429.

enable_http2 :

Enable by default. Set to false to disable HTTP/2.

max_redirects :

30 by default. Maximum redirect before it is an error.

categories_as_tabs:

A list of the categories that are displayed as tabs in the user interface. Categories not listed here can still be searched with the search-syntax.

categories_as_tabs:
  general:
  images:
  videos:
  news:
  map:
  music:
  it:
  science:
  files:
  social media:

Engine settings

Further reading ..

• configured engines
• engines-dev

In the code example below a full fledged example of a YAML setup from a dummy engine is shown. Most of the options have a default value or even are optional.

- name: example engine
  engine: example
  shortcut: demo
  base_url: 'https://{language}.example.com/'
  categories: general
  timeout: 3.0
  api_key: 'apikey'
  disabled: false
  language: en_US
  tokens: [ 'my-secret-token' ]
  weigth: 1
  display_error_messages: true
  about:
     website: https://example.com
     wikidata_id: Q306656
     official_api_documentation: https://example.com/api-doc
     use_official_api: true
     require_api_key: true
     results: HTML
  enable_http: false
  enable_http2: false
  retries: 1
  retry_on_http_error: true # or 403 or [404, 429]
  max_connections: 100
  max_keepalive_connections: 10
  keepalive_expiry: 5.0
  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 SearXNG 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)

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 SearXNG.

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.

tokens : optional

A list of secret tokens to make this engine private, more details see private engines.

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.

network: optional

Use the network configuration from another engine. In addition, there are two default networks:

• ipv4 set local_addresses to 0.0.0.0 (use only IPv4 local addresses)
• ipv6 set local_addresses to :: (use only IPv6 local addresses)

Note

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

Example: Multilingual Search

SearXNG does not support true multilingual search. You have to use the language prefix in your search query when searching in a different language.

But there is a workaround: By adding a new search engine with a different language, SearXNG will search in your default and other language.

Example configuration in settings.yml for a German and English speaker:

search:
    default_lang : "de"
    ...

engines:
  - name : google english
    engine : google
    language : en
    ...

When searching, the default google engine will return German results and "google english" will return English results.

use_default_settings

use_default_settings: true

• settings location
• use_default_settings.yml
• /etc/searxng/settings.yml <utils/templates/etc/searxng/settings.yml>

The user defined settings.yml is loaded from the settings location and can relied on the default configuration searx/settings.yml using:

use_default_settings: true

server:

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: "ultrasecretkey"   # change this!
    bind_address: "0.0.0.0"

engines:

With use_default_settings: true, each settings can be override in a similar way, the engines section is merged according to the engine name. In this example, SearXNG will load all the engine and the arch linux wiki engine has a token <private engines>:

use_default_settings: true
server:
  secret_key: "ultrasecretkey"   # change this!
engines:
  - name: arch linux wiki
    tokens: ['$ecretValue']

engines: / remove:

It is possible to remove some engines from the default settings. The following example is similar to the above one, but SearXNG doesn't load the the google engine:

use_default_settings:
  engines:
    remove:
      - google
server:
  secret_key: "ultrasecretkey"   # change this!
engines:
  - name: arch linux wiki
    tokens: ['$ecretValue']

engines: / keep_only:

As an alternative, it is possible to specify the engines to keep. In the following example, SearXNG has only two engines:

use_default_settings:
  engines:
    keep_only:
      - google
      - duckduckgo
server:
  secret_key: "ultrasecretkey"   # change this!
engines:
  - name: google
    tokens: ['$ecretValue']
  - name: duckduckgo
    tokens: ['$ecretValue']