The answer, in one path
Safari's search engine on iPad is an iPadOS setting: open Settings, choose Apps in the left-hand sidebar, tap Safari, then Search Engine, and pick from the list. Nothing inside Safari itself changes it, and no other browser on the iPad obeys it.
What follows was written against iPadOS 26 as it stands in August 2026; the same path applies on iPadOS 18. If your iPad runs iPadOS 17 or older there is no Apps entry — Safari appears in the sidebar directly, roughly two thirds of the way down, and everything after that step is unchanged.
- Open Settings. On iPad it opens as two columns: a sidebar of categories on the left, the selected category's controls on the right.
- In the sidebar, scroll to the foot of the list and tap Apps. The right-hand pane fills with an alphabetical list of every installed app that exposes settings.
- Tap Safari. Faster alternative: tap the Search field at the top of the sidebar and type search engine, which jumps straight to the row.
- In the Search group, tap Search Engine.
- Tap your choice. The tick moves; there is nothing to confirm and nothing to save.
- Swipe up to leave Settings. Every open Safari window — including both halves of a Split View and anything in Slide Over — is already using the new engine.
The menu is fixed, and shorter than you expect
iPadOS presents a closed list rather than a field you can fill in. On an iPad set to a United States region that list is Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia. Region matters: devices configured for mainland China have been offered Baidu, and Russian-region devices Yandex. Nothing you install can insert an extra row into that menu.
So Kagi, Qwant, Swisscows, Startpage, Brave Search and Marginalia are all unavailable to Safari's address bar in the ordinary sense. The workarounds are worth knowing in order of how little they cost you: use that engine's own iPad app if it has one; install a browser that lists it; or add the engine's search page to the Home Screen and start searches there. On a tablet the third option is less painful than on a phone, because the larger Home Screen makes a saved web app easy to reach.
One iPad-specific wrinkle: apps on iPadOS that embed web content in an in-app browser view generally hand searches to the system, not to your chosen engine, so a link opened inside a social or news app may behave differently from the same query typed into Safari.
Profiles, Split View and Private Browsing
Safari on iPadOS supports profiles — separate compartments for work and personal browsing, each with its own tab groups, favourites, history, cookies and enabled extensions. Profiles do not each carry a search engine. The engine is set once, at the app level, and every profile inherits it, so switching from a Work profile to a Personal one does not switch engines with it.
Private Browsing is the exception. Under Search Engine there is an Also Use in Private Browsing switch, present since iPadOS 17. Turn it off and a second engine can be nominated for private tabs only. This is the one place iPadOS lets two engines coexist, and the sensible use of it is to leave everyday browsing on whichever engine you find most useful while sending the searches you would rather not have attached to a profile somewhere else entirely.
Split View does not complicate any of this. Two Safari windows side by side are one app with one setting; there is no way to run Google in the left pane and DuckDuckGo in the right.
School, work and family iPads often will not let you
iPads are managed far more often than iPhones — they are the standard one-to-one device in schools — and a managed iPad can have this setting locked. If Search Engine is greyed out, missing, or snaps back the moment you leave Settings, look at Settings → General → VPN & Device Management. A configuration profile listed there means an administrator, through Mobile Device Management or Apple School Manager, is setting the value for you. That is working as designed and cannot be overridden from the device; nor can it be fixed by reinstalling a browser, because the restriction is applied to the operating system rather than to an app.
Screen Time is the domestic version of the same thing. Under Screen Time → Content & Privacy Restrictions, web content limits can strip Safari's options down or hide Safari from the Home Screen altogether. If a family organiser set that up, the passcode that unlocks it is theirs, not the device passcode.
Every other browser keeps its own preference
Because iPadOS gives each browser its own storage rather than a shared system value, a change in Safari is invisible to the rest. Each one is set from inside the app:
- Chrome: … menu (top right on iPad) → Settings → Search Engine.
- Firefox: ☰ menu → Settings → Search.
- Brave: … menu → Settings, which holds separate defaults for ordinary and private tabs.
- Edge: … menu → Settings, then the search entry.
These lists are usually longer than Apple's, and several of these browsers accept a custom engine defined by its query URL, which is the only route on iPad to something like Kagi or a self-hosted SearXNG instance in the address bar.
Which app opens links from Mail, Messages or a PDF is a third, separate setting: Settings → Apps → Default Apps on iPadOS 18.2 and later, or the Default Browser App row inside a browser's own settings entry on earlier versions. In the European Union, iPadOS has shown a browser choice screen since the Digital Markets Act was applied to it — that screen chooses a browser, not an engine, and whichever browser you pick then applies its own default.
Spotlight is not Safari
Swiping down on the Home Screen, or pressing Command–Space if you have a Magic Keyboard attached, opens Spotlight. Spotlight indexes the iPad — apps, documents, mail, notes — and adds suggestions drawn from Apple's own services. It is not running a web search on your behalf in the way the address bar does. When a Spotlight result does take you to the web it hands the query to your default browser, so the engine you eventually land on is that browser's, which may not be Safari's.
The practical consequence: setting Safari to DuckDuckGo while Chrome is the default browser produces search results from Chrome's engine every time you start from Spotlight, which is a confusing symptom with a dull cause.
Then decide whose index you want
Having found the switch, the useful question is where the results should come from. Very few engines run a crawler and an index of their own: Google and Bing do, Brave Search and Mojeek do at smaller scale, Yandex and Baidu do in their own markets. Most of the rest license or resell those indexes — DuckDuckGo's web results lean heavily on Bing, Startpage serves Google's results without passing on the identifying details, Ecosia has drawn on both while directing advertising revenue to tree planting.
That distinction is what determines whether switching changes the results you see or only who watches you see them. Both are legitimate reasons to switch, but they are different reasons, and Apple's five-item list on iPad covers only two underlying indexes between them.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the search engine setting on an iPad?
In the Settings app, not in Safari: Settings → Apps → Safari → Search Engine on iPadOS 18 and 26. On iPadOS 17 and earlier, Safari is listed in the Settings sidebar directly and the Apps step does not exist. Typing search engine into the Settings search field jumps to the same row from any version.
Can each Safari profile on iPad have its own search engine?
No. Profiles separate tab groups, favourites, history, cookies and extensions, but the search engine is set once for Safari as a whole and every profile uses it. The only split iPadOS offers is between normal and Private Browsing, using the Also Use in Private Browsing switch under the Search Engine row.
Why is the search engine option greyed out on my school iPad?
Because the iPad is supervised. Mobile Device Management and Apple School Manager can set or lock Safari's search engine, and the device cannot override it. Check Settings → General → VPN & Device Management for an installed configuration profile. Screen Time content restrictions, set by a family organiser, can produce the same symptom on a home iPad.
How do I use Kagi or Startpage on an iPad?
Not through Safari's Search Engine menu, which is a closed list. Use the engine's own iPad app if it has one, install a third-party browser that lists it, or define it as a custom engine by query URL in a browser that allows that. Adding the engine's page to the Home Screen also works and costs one extra tap.
Does changing Safari's engine change Chrome on the same iPad?
No. Each browser on iPadOS stores its own default inside its own app, so Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Brave and Edge can all be set to different engines simultaneously, and often are without the owner realising. If a search produced an unexpected engine, the first thing to check is which browser the query was actually typed into.
Will switching engines close my tabs or lose my history?
No. The change affects only where the next query is sent. Open tabs stay open, tab groups are untouched, and history, bookmarks and saved passwords are unaffected. A results page already on screen keeps showing the old engine's results until you run the search again, which is normal and not a sign the change failed.
Does the European browser choice screen set my iPad search engine?
No. The Digital Markets Act choice screen asks which browser should be the default; it does not ask about search engines. After choosing, that browser applies whatever default engine it ships with, which you then change inside that browser. Safari's own engine setting stays where it always was, in Settings under Apps.