The answer: it is in Settings, not in Safari
On an iPhone, Safari's search engine is changed in the Settings app rather than anywhere inside Safari itself: open Settings → Apps → Safari → Search Engine and tap the one you want. That setting governs Safari only — Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Edge and DuckDuckGo's own browser each carry a separate default that lives inside their own app and is untouched by it.
The steps below describe iOS 26, the version shipping on iPhones as of August 2026, and they hold unchanged on iOS 18. On iOS 17 and earlier there is no Apps screen: Safari sits directly in the main Settings list, and the rest of the path is identical.
- Open Settings from the Home Screen, the App Library or Spotlight.
- Scroll to the bottom of the list and tap Apps. Every app that exposes system settings is listed here alphabetically. If scrolling is tedious, pull down on the Settings list and type Safari into the search field instead.
- Tap Safari.
- Under the Search heading at the top, tap Search Engine.
- Tap an engine. A tick appears beside it. There is no save button and no confirmation dialog — the change is already made.
- Tap back out of Settings. Safari uses the new engine immediately, in tabs that are already open as well as new ones.
What the list contains, and why it is short
Safari does not let you type in an arbitrary engine. It offers a fixed list, which on a US-region iPhone is Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia. The list varies by the region the device is set to: Baidu has appeared on iPhones configured for mainland China and Yandex on Russian-region devices. Engines that are not on the list — Kagi, Startpage, Mojeek, Brave Search, Perplexity — cannot be installed into that menu.
That does not mean they are unusable in Safari; it means they need a different mechanism. Some of them ship a Safari extension or an app that registers as a browser; several are perfectly usable simply as a bookmarked home page, which costs one extra tap per search. If the engine you want is not in the five, the practical route on iOS is usually to use that engine's own app or a third-party browser that does list it, rather than to fight Safari.
Apple has never published a criterion for what earns a slot in this menu, and the arrangement with Google that makes Google the pre-selected entry is a commercial one that has been examined in court in the United States. Treat the shortness of the list as a business fact rather than a technical limit.
Private Browsing can run a different engine
Since iOS 17, the Search section of Safari's settings has carried an Also Use in Private Browsing switch directly beneath Search Engine. Leave it on and Private Browsing tabs use the same engine as ordinary tabs. Turn it off and a second row appears, letting you nominate a separate engine that only Private Browsing uses.
This is more useful than it first looks and it is worth understanding what it does and does not do. Private Browsing already discards the tab's history, cookies and site data when you close it, but the search engine still receives the query and still sees your IP address. Pointing Private Browsing at an engine that does not build a profile — DuckDuckGo, Startpage, Mojeek — changes who receives the query in the first place, which is a different and larger effect than not writing it to local history.
Chrome, Firefox, Brave and Edge each keep their own
This is where most of the confusion on iPhone comes from. Changing Safari's engine changes nothing anywhere else, because on iOS each browser stores its own preference inside its own app rather than reading a system-wide value.
- Chrome: tap the … menu, then Settings, then Search Engine.
- Firefox: tap the ☰ menu, then Settings, then Search, where the default engine sits at the top of the screen.
- Brave: open Settings from the … menu; Brave keeps two entries, one for ordinary tabs and one for private tabs, in the same way Safari now does.
- Edge: open Settings from the … menu and look for the search entry there.
Third-party browsers generally offer a longer list than Safari does, and several let you add an engine that is not on their list at all by pointing at its query URL. If your requirement is an engine Apple does not ship, that is the usual answer.
Making one of those browsers the phone's default is a separate step again: in iOS 18.2 and later it is Settings → Apps → Default Apps; on earlier releases you open the browser's own entry in Settings and tap Default Browser App. Setting a default browser does not change any engine — it changes which app opens when another app hands off a link.
Siri, Spotlight and the search field on the Home Screen
Swiping down on the Home Screen opens Spotlight, which is not a browser and is not covered by the Safari setting in a simple way. Spotlight first searches the phone itself — apps, contacts, messages, files — and mixes in suggestions from Apple's own services. When a Spotlight result sends you to the open web, it opens your default browser, so an ordinary Safari user with Safari set to DuckDuckGo will land on DuckDuckGo; a user whose default browser is Chrome will land on whatever Chrome is set to.
Siri is separate again. Siri answers from its own sources and from Apple's arrangements with data providers, and asking Siri a factual question does not run a query on your chosen engine at all. There is no setting that repoints Siri at Mojeek. If the outcome you want is that no query of yours ever reaches a particular company, the Safari setting is one piece of that and the assistant is another.
When the setting will not stick
A genuine preference change on iOS survives a reboot and an app switch. If yours does not, there are three realistic explanations and one of them is not malware.
The first is device management. A work, school or family-configured iPhone can be supervised through Mobile Device Management, and a supervised device can have Safari's search engine forced or restricted by profile. Check Settings → General → VPN & Device Management; if a configuration profile is installed, the greyed-out or reverting setting is policy, not a fault. Screen Time content restrictions can also hide Safari's options.
The second is that you changed the wrong app. Changing Safari and then searching from Chrome produces exactly the symptom of a change that did not take. Check which browser you are actually typing into.
The third is a hijacker, and it is genuinely rare on iOS because App Store sandboxing prevents an app from writing another app's settings. What does happen is a browser you installed yourself, often bundled with a VPN or a "cleaner", quietly setting itself as the default browser with its own engine. The tell is that the redirection follows one app rather than the whole phone, and that removing that app ends it. iOS has no equivalent of the desktop browser hijacker that rewrites a shortcut, so if every browser on the device is being redirected the more likely cause is the network — a DNS setting, or a profile installed by a VPN.
Then the part that actually matters: whose index
The mechanics take twenty seconds. The choice is the part worth thinking about, and the useful distinction is not privacy branding but where the results come from. Google and Bing run their own crawlers and their own indexes. DuckDuckGo's web results are substantially Bing's, served without the tracking, and Ecosia has historically drawn on Bing and Google while spending its advertising revenue on tree planting. Startpage is Google's index served anonymously. Mojeek and Brave Search operate crawlers and indexes of their own, which is rare and which is why their results feel different rather than merely cleaner.
On an iPhone specifically, the constraint bites: three of the five engines Apple offers are wrappers around two indexes. If independence from those indexes is the point of switching, Safari's own list cannot deliver it and a third-party browser is the only route.
Frequently asked questions
Why is there no search engine setting inside the Safari app on iPhone?
Because Apple keeps app configuration in the Settings app rather than inside each app. Safari on iPhone has no settings screen of its own; everything configurable about it — search engine, downloads location, tab layout, extensions — is under Settings → Apps → Safari. The Mac version does have its own Settings window, which is why instructions written for a Mac do not match the phone.
Can I add Kagi, Startpage or Perplexity to Safari on iPhone?
Not to the Search Engine menu, which is a fixed list of five in the United States. The practical alternatives are to use that engine's own iOS app, to install a third-party browser that lists it, or to set the engine's page as a bookmark or Home Screen icon. Some engines also ship a Safari extension that redirects searches after the fact.
Does changing the search engine affect tabs that are already open?
The setting applies immediately to any new search, including one typed into a tab that was already open. Pages already loaded do not change — a results page from your old engine stays on screen until you search again. Nothing is closed and no tabs or history are lost when you switch.
Why did my iPhone search engine change back to Google by itself?
On a personal iPhone this is almost always because the search was run in a different browser than the one you changed, or because the device is supervised by an employer or school whose configuration profile forces the value. Check Settings → General → VPN & Device Management for an installed profile. iOS sandboxing makes a rogue app rewriting Safari's setting very unlikely.
Is the default browser the same thing as the default search engine?
No, and they are set in different places. The default browser decides which app opens when you tap a link in Mail or Messages; the search engine decides who answers a query typed into that app's address bar. Setting Chrome as your default browser leaves Safari's engine exactly as it was, and Chrome will use whatever engine Chrome is set to.
Does the setting change what Siri or Spotlight use?
Only indirectly. Spotlight searches the device first and hands web results to your default browser, which then uses that browser's engine. Siri answers from Apple's own sources and its data partnerships, and there is no user setting that points Siri at a chosen search engine. Changing Safari's engine does not change what Siri asks.
Does the choice screen shown in Europe apply to iPhone search engines?
The Digital Markets Act choice screen Apple shows in the European Union is a browser choice screen: it appears when Safari is opened on a new device and asks which browser you want as the default. It does not set a search engine. Whichever browser you pick then applies its own default engine, which you can change inside that browser.