The fast route
On a Mac, open the Safari menu, choose Settings…, click the Search tab, and pick from the Search engine pop-up menu. On an iPhone or iPad, open the Settings app, tap Apps, tap Safari, and tap Search Engine.
These paths describe Safari on macOS 26 and on iOS and iPadOS 26 as of August 2026. Two older-version notes matter: on macOS Monterey and earlier the menu item is Preferences… rather than Settings, and on iOS 17 and earlier Safari sits in the main Settings list instead of inside the Apps section. The Search tab and the Search Engine row are named the same throughout.
Safari on macOS
- With Safari open, click Safari in the menu bar at the top of the screen.
- Choose Settings… (keyboard shortcut Command-comma).
- Click the Search tab in the toolbar of the window that opens.
- Open the Search engine pop-up menu and choose an engine.
- If you want Private Browsing windows to use the same engine, leave Also use in Private Browsing ticked; untick it to choose a different engine for private windows.
The change is immediate and applies to the smart search field — the single bar that handles both addresses and queries — in every window and tab you open afterwards. The same Search tab also holds the toggles for search engine suggestions, Safari Suggestions, Quick Website Search and preloading the top hit. Those are separate from the engine choice: turning the engine over to a different provider does not by itself stop keystroke-level suggestions being sent while you type.
Safari on iPhone and iPad
- Open the Settings app — the system one, not a menu inside Safari.
- Tap Apps, then scroll to and tap Safari.
- Under the Search heading, tap Search Engine.
- Tap the engine you want. A tick marks the active one.
- Back on the Safari screen, tap Private Browsing Search Engine if you want private tabs to use something different.
On iOS 17 and earlier, skip step two: Safari appears directly in the main Settings list. Either way the setting is per device. Changing it on a Mac does not change it on an iPhone signed in to the same Apple Account, so a search that still lands on the old engine is often just a device you have not got to yet.
Why the list is so short
Safari does not let you add a custom search engine. Chrome, Edge and Firefox all accept an arbitrary query URL with a placeholder for the search term; Safari offers a fixed menu, and the contents of that menu are a commercial and regulatory artefact rather than a technical limit.
The list is also region-dependent. Which engines appear depends on where the device is configured, and it has changed over time as Apple has added options — DuckDuckGo, for instance, became a built-in Safari choice in 2014 with iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, which was the first large-scale distribution that engine ever received. In the European Union, the Digital Markets Act obliges designated gatekeepers to present defaults as a choice rather than a pre-selection, which is why some European users meet a selection screen instead of a silently pre-set engine.
The commercial background is not obscure. In United States v. Google LLC, the court found in August 2024 that Google's exclusive default-placement contracts — the Apple arrangement prominently among them — were unlawful monopoly maintenance. The September 2025 remedies banned exclusivity but expressly allowed paid, non-exclusive default placement on short terms, and ordered no divestiture. Whatever appears pre-selected in your Search menu is the outcome of that arrangement, and the menu is the only part of it an individual can act on.
If you want an engine Safari does not list
There are two workable approaches and one that is not worth the trouble.
- Use the engine's own site or app. Add it to your Favorites or Home Screen and start searches there rather than in the address bar. Crude, but it involves no extra software with access to your browsing.
- Install a Safari extension the engine itself publishes. Several engines ship one that redirects address-bar searches. This is a real trade-off: an extension that can rewrite your searches can by definition see them, so it is worth installing only from the operator of the engine you are choosing, and worth checking in Safari › Settings › Extensions afterwards.
- Do not install a general-purpose "search changer" utility. That category is where most Safari hijacks come from, and it is exactly the software that leaves a configuration profile behind.
Why the setting reverts, and what a hijack looks like
Safari does not reset the search engine on its own. On a Mac, the two mechanisms that override it are configuration profiles and extensions. A profile is the enterprise device-management format, and it can pin the search engine, the homepage and more; on a machine nobody manages, a profile you did not install is a red flag. Check System Settings › General › Device Management and remove anything unfamiliar. Then check Safari › Settings › Extensions and disable anything you cannot account for.
On iPhone and iPad, look in Settings › General › VPN & Device Management for a profile you did not add, and in Settings › Apps › Safari › Extensions for extensions with permission to read and change page content.
The distinction between a preference and a hijack is behavioural. You made the change, you can name the engine, and it persists — that is a preference. A search that visibly bounces through an unfamiliar domain before landing on a mainstream results page, an engine name you have never heard of, a greyed-out setting on a personal device, or a homepage that changed at the same time: those are the marks of software monetising a redirect, and repeatedly resetting the menu will not remove it.
Then the actual decision
Having found the menu, the question worth a minute is what to put in it. Safari's built-in options span very different things: Google and Microsoft Bing operate their own crawlers and indexes, Yahoo! Search has not run an index of its own for years and serves results sourced from a partner, and DuckDuckGo and Ecosia blend their own work over a partner's results rather than crawling the web independently. Picking a different name in the menu does not necessarily mean reading a different index — often it means the same results with different logging, which is a legitimate reason to switch, but a different one from wanting to see different pages.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the search engine setting in Safari?
On a Mac it is the Safari menu, then Settings, then the Search tab, then the Search engine pop-up menu. On iPhone and iPad it is the Settings app, then Apps, then Safari, then Search Engine. On iOS 17 and earlier Safari sits directly in the main Settings list rather than under Apps.
Can I add a custom search engine to Safari?
No. Unlike Chrome, Edge and Firefox, Safari has no facility for entering your own query URL, so you are limited to the engines Apple lists for your region. The workarounds are to search from the engine's own site or app, or to install a Safari extension published by that engine, which necessarily gives the extension sight of your searches.
How do I use a different search engine in Private Browsing?
Safari keeps a separate private setting. On a Mac, untick Also use in Private Browsing on the Search tab and choose a second engine. On iPhone and iPad, tap Private Browsing Search Engine on the Safari settings screen. Leaving them matched is fine; the option exists for people who want one engine for ordinary browsing and another for private tabs.
Does changing Safari's engine on my Mac change it on my iPhone?
No. In practice each device keeps its own search engine setting even when both are signed in to the same Apple Account, so the change has to be made on each one. This is a common source of confusion when searches on one device still reach the old engine after the setting was changed on another.
Why did my Safari search engine change by itself?
Something with configuration rights changed it. On macOS the usual causes are an installed configuration profile or a Safari extension; on iOS, a profile under General, then VPN and Device Management. A profile on a personal device that no employer or school manages should be treated as unwanted, and removing it is what unlocks the setting.
Does changing the engine stop Safari sending what I type as I type it?
Not on its own. Search engine suggestions, Safari Suggestions and preloading the top hit are separate toggles on the same Search screen, and they operate while you type rather than when you press Enter. If the reason for switching engines is to reduce what leaves the device, those switches matter as much as the engine dropdown.
Why is Safari's list of search engines so short?
Because it is a curated, region-dependent menu rather than an open field, and its contents reflect commercial agreements and, in the EU, regulatory obligations under the Digital Markets Act. Options have been added over time, DuckDuckGo in 2014 being the best-known example, but the list has never been user-extensible.