How to change the default search engine on Android

The short answer depends on which search box

If you mean the browser, open Chrome, tap the ⋮ menu, tap Settings, tap Search engine, and select one. If you mean the Google search bar sitting on your home screen, there is no equivalent setting — that bar belongs to the Google app, it only searches with Google, and the fix is to replace the widget rather than to configure it.

Written in August 2026, against current Chrome for Android on Android 15 and Android 16. Manufacturer software changes the wording of the system screens more than the version number does: Samsung's One UI, Xiaomi's HyperOS and others rename and re-nest the same options, so treat the system paths below as Pixel-style naming with equivalents elsewhere.

1. Open Chrome.
2. Tap the ⋮ icon at the top right of the toolbar.
3. Tap Settings.
4. Tap Search engine, in the Basics group near the top.
5. Tap the engine you want from the radio-button list. Chrome applies it at once and returns you to the previous screen.
6. Back out to the browser. The next thing typed in the address bar, and the search box on Chrome's new-tab page, both go to the new engine.

The list you are offered is region-dependent, and Chrome adds engines you have used to a secondary list further down the same screen. Anything not offered can still be added by hand from Chrome's search-engine management screen, which accepts a name, a keyword and a query URL.

The Google app and the home-screen search bar

This is the part that defeats people, and the answer is unsatisfying: you cannot point the Google app at another engine. The Google app is Google Search — the search bar it draws, the widget it installs on the home screen, and the results it returns are one product, and no setting inside it swaps the engine underneath. Searching from that bar bypasses your Chrome preference completely, which is why a person who carefully switched Chrome to DuckDuckGo still watches Google results appear all day.

What you can do is remove the entry point. Long-press the Google search bar on the home screen and drag it to Remove (on many launchers the bar is part of the launcher's default layout and removing it requires the launcher's own home-screen settings, or a different launcher entirely). Then add a widget belonging to the engine you prefer: DuckDuckGo, Bing, Ecosia, Brave and several others ship a home-screen search widget that looks and behaves much like Google's and hands queries to their own app.

On some devices the Google app can also be disabled outright from Settings → Apps; whether it can be uninstalled or only disabled depends on how the manufacturer shipped it.

The assistant is a third, separate system

Long-pressing the power button, or saying the wake phrase, invokes whatever is registered as the device's digital assistant. That is neither Chrome's setting nor the Google app's, and on recent Android it is a genuinely open slot: Settings → Apps → Default apps → Digital assistant app lists every installed app that has declared itself capable of the role. Samsung phones reach the same screen through Settings → Apps → Choose default apps.

Assistant apps from AI search companies can register there, so a phone can be configured with Chrome searching one engine, a home-screen widget searching a second, and a long-press assistant answering from a third. That is confusing, but it is not a fault; Android treats these as three unrelated capabilities. If your reason for switching is that you would rather one company did not receive your questions, all three slots have to be dealt with, and the assistant is the one people forget.

Browsers other than Chrome

Every Android browser keeps its own default, stored in its own app data. Firefox for Android puts the control under its ☰ menu in Settings → Search, and supports adding a custom engine by URL. Brave, Edge, Opera and Vivaldi each expose a comparable option in their own settings, and Samsung Internet — preinstalled on Galaxy devices and the second most used browser on Android by some measurements — carries its own default search engine setting inside its own settings screen, entirely independent of Chrome's.

Which of them opens links tapped in other apps is a separate system setting: Settings → Apps → Default apps → Browser app. Changing the default browser does not change any engine; it changes which app receives the link, and that app then applies whatever engine it is configured with.

What the EU choice screens changed

In the European Economic Area, users of new Android devices and of Chrome are shown a choice screen listing search engines and asked to pick one, instead of arriving at a preset default. These screens follow from the Digital Markets Act, which took effect for designated gatekeepers in March 2024. The engines shown are those with meaningful usage in that country, and the order is randomised so that no position is a paid advantage.

This replaced an earlier arrangement. From 2020 to 2021, Android in Europe carried a choice screen whose slots were sold at auction — engines bid for inclusion, which favoured those able to pay and drew sustained criticism from the smaller engines it was supposed to help. Google ended the auction model in 2021 and moved to a free listing before the DMA screens arrived.

Two limits are worth being clear about. The choice screen sets a browser default; it does not change what the Google app does, because the Google app is not a browser and is not a default that the screen offers. And the screens are geographic — a device set up outside the EEA does not see them, and no setting turns them on.

If the setting will not hold

Android is more permissive than iOS about what one app can do to another's experience, so this deserves checking rather than dismissing.

Start with the boring cause: the query went into a different search box than the one you configured. Between Chrome, the Google widget, the assistant, a browser preinstalled by the manufacturer and any in-app browser used by social apps, a phone has five or six places to type a search, and each answers to a different setting. Establish which one produced the unexpected results before troubleshooting anything.

Next, look for a controlling extension or policy. Chrome on Android does not support extensions, so a locked dropdown there usually means enterprise management — a work profile, or a device managed by an employer, in which case Settings → Accounts or the badge on your Chrome profile will say so.

Genuine hijacking on Android generally arrives as an installed app rather than as a modified browser: a "battery saver", a keyboard, a QR scanner or a free VPN that sets itself as the default browser or assistant, or that overlays its own search. Review Settings → Apps → Default apps to see what currently holds each role, uninstall anything you did not deliberately choose, and confirm Play Protect is enabled. Sideloaded apps from outside Google Play carry most of this risk.

Then the question of whose results you want

Android's engine lists usually contain five or six names, and they represent fewer than five or six independent indexes. Google and Bing crawl and rank their own. Yandex does, in its own market. Everything else in a typical Android list is drawing on one of those: DuckDuckGo's web results come substantially from Bing with its own privacy handling layered on, and Ecosia has drawn on partner indexes while directing profits to tree planting.

The engines that operate independent crawlers at smaller scale — Mojeek, Brave Search, Marginalia — rarely appear preinstalled, which is exactly why Chrome's ability to add an engine by query URL matters more on Android than the built-in list does. A switch that changes the logo but keeps the index gives you different data handling, not different results. Both are worth having; knowing which one you got is worth more.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• support.google.com/chrome/answer/95426
• support.google.com/android/
• digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/
• support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/mobile