SearchMob Desktop

Private, on-device metasearch for Windows, macOS, and Linux. A Python port of SearchMob for Android with the same engines, the same privacy proxy, and the same store-nothing-by-default behavior.

Status: released. Metasearch, the local HTTP server, encrypted storage, the suggestions endpoint, on-device correction, result personalization, network mode, and the PySide6 GUI are all implemented and shipped in the installers. Track the roadmap in ROADMAP.md.

What it does (parity with the Android app)

• Metasearch against DuckDuckGo, Mojeek, Marginalia, Mwmbl, and Wikipedia, plus optional bring-your-own Brave / Mojeek / Kagi API keys. Never scrapes Google. Results are de-duplicated and merged. BYO keys are read from the encrypted vault (saved in Settings) or, failing that, the SEARCHMOB_BRAVE_API_KEY, SEARCHMOB_MOJEEK_API_KEY, and SEARCHMOB_KAGI_API_KEY environment variables.
• Privacy proxy: no cookies, no referrer, no user/device identifier; the User-Agent is rotated per request.
• On-device "did you mean": a fully offline spell / "similar sounding" corrector (phonetic + edit-distance over a bundled word list, optionally augmented by your own history) suggests a correction for misspelled queries. No query ever leaves the device for this.
• Result personalization ("filter bubbles"), local and private: block / lower / raise / pin results by domain (right-click a result), plus saved scopes (domain/keyword filters; the ready-to-use samples are installed by default and selectable before you even search) and imported Brave Goggles-format rules. Rules live in the encrypted vault and are applied on-device to both the in-app and browser results; nothing is sent upstream.
• Search verticals: category tabs for Web, News, Forums, and Academic. Each is a scoped search over the same engines (a site: filter, no new third-party API) with a sensible default sort. Available in the app and on the served page (?vertical=).
• Result sorting: Freshest + Relevant (default), Date, or Relevance — in the app and via ?sort=.
• Contextual Wikipedia summary card above the results for entity-like queries (confidence-gated, fail-soft), in the app and on the served page.
• AI-slop / low-quality filter: a bundled, on-device domain blocklist that downranks (default) or hides results from AI content farms; off / downrank / hide in Settings. No query leaves the device.
• Settings in the browser: the served results page has its own owner-only (loopback) Settings page mirroring the app — default sort, the slop filter, the summary card, suggestions, full domain-rule and scope management, Goggles import, and history view/clear.
• Optional local-AI answer box (desktop only): when a local model server (Ollama / LM Studio) is running, a short cited answer summarizing your own results — off by default, loopback-only.
• MCP server (searchmob-desktop mcp): exposes the metasearch as a Model Context Protocol web_search tool over stdio, so a local AI agent (Claude Desktop, IDE assistants) can run its web searches through SearchMob's private metasearch instead of a third-party search API. Opt-in; the config snippet is in Settings → AI access.
• Outbound traffic disclosure: the only outbound traffic is the searches you run, plus an optional once-a-day update check to GitHub that you can turn off in settings.
• Local HTTP server so any browser can use SearchMob as its default search engine. Loopback-only by default; opt-in network mode (0.0.0.0) for Tailscale or LAN use, behind a warning gate and an access-token + DNS-rebind guard for off-device clients.
• Search-suggestions endpoint (OpenSearch application/x-suggestions+json) advertised in the descriptor, sourced from local history plus an opt-in upstream.
• Store-nothing by default. Opt-in encrypted history (SQLCipher + Argon2id); optional zero-knowledge passphrase.
• Three surfaces: a Qt-based GUI, a Typer CLI for headless and scripted use, and a background HTTP service.

Install

Grab the current version from the latest GitHub Release (the version history is in CHANGELOG.md). Two install paths:

End users: native installer (recommended)

Grab the installer for your OS from the latest GitHub Release:

• Windows: searchmob-desktop-<version>.msi
• macOS: searchmob-desktop-<version>.dmg
• Linux: searchmob-desktop_<version>_amd64.deb (Debian/Ubuntu), searchmob_desktop-<version>.rpm (Fedora/RHEL), or the .flatpak bundle. (The AppImage target was dropped — Briefcase's AppImage is unreliable for PySide.) You can also install via pipx (below).

Installers are unsigned. The .msi and .dmg are ad-hoc signed and will trigger SmartScreen / Gatekeeper warnings; Authenticode signing (Windows) and Apple notarization (macOS) are planned once the signing secrets are wired into CI. Verify any download against the published SHA256SUMS (below) before installing.

Verify your download

Every release ships a SHA256SUMS file listing the checksum of each installer (download it from the same release page into the same folder as your installer). The filenames in it match the release assets exactly. To check:

# Linux
sha256sum --ignore-missing -c SHA256SUMS

# macOS
shasum -a 256 -c SHA256SUMS   # add --ignore-missing on coreutils' gsha256sum

# Windows (PowerShell): compare the printed hash to the matching line in SHA256SUMS
(Get-FileHash .\SearchMob.Desktop-<version>.msi -Algorithm SHA256).Hash

--ignore-missing checks only the file(s) you actually downloaded. An OK line means the download is intact. (This guards against corruption and tampering in transit; it is not a substitute for the code-signing that is still to come.)

Developers / source install

pipx install git+https://github.com/FlintWave/SearchMob-Desktop@main
# or, with the GUI extra:
pipx install "searchmob-desktop[gui] @ git+https://github.com/FlintWave/SearchMob-Desktop@main"

searchmob-desktop --version
searchmob-desktop --help

CLI

searchmob-desktop search "privacy tools"   # one-shot metasearch, prints a table
searchmob-desktop serve                    # run the local HTTP server (browser integration)
searchmob-desktop gui                      # launch the desktop GUI
searchmob-desktop mcp                      # run the MCP server (stdio) for a local AI agent
searchmob-desktop vault --help             # manage the encrypted-storage vault
searchmob-desktop --version

Versioning

Same Ubuntu-style scheme as the Android app: YY.MM.VV (e.g. 26.05.00). Releases are tagged vYY.MM.VV.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. We use Conventional Commits and build each feature on its own branch with green CI before merging. Please also read CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md and, for security reports, SECURITY.md.

Credits

App icon: Search icons created by Freepik - Flaticon.

The bundled correction dictionary derives from hermitdave/FrequencyWords (word frequencies, CC BY-SA 4.0, from the OpenSubtitles corpus) and public-domain name lists; see src/searchmob_desktop/resources/dict/NOTICE.

Trademarks

SearchMob is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by DuckDuckGo, Mojeek, Marginalia, Mwmbl, Wikipedia, Brave, Kagi, Google, or Tailscale. All product names, logos, and brands are the property of their respective owners and are used here only to identify the services SearchMob interoperates with. The "Goggles" rule format is Brave's; "Brave" and "Goggles" are trademarks of Brave Software, Inc.

License

AGPL-3.0-or-later. If you run a modified version that users interact with over a network, you must offer them the corresponding source.

Copyright © 2026 FlintWave. Contact: flintwave@tuta.com