Re: PSA: Quick startup on the dedicated Duck.ai LLM/AI WebView2 chat mechanism

 
>    The only option is to turn off the automatic startup with Windows.

We later found out where (most of) the webview thingy went, where that's:
 C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\DuckDuckGo.DesktopBrowser_0.168.2.0_x64__ya2fgkz3nks94\WindowsBrowser\DuckDuckGo.exe
 C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\DuckDuckGo.DesktopBrowser_0.168.2.0_x64__ya2fgkz3nks94\WindowsBrowser\DuckDuckGo.WebView.exe

But I had to turn on the automatic startup, 'cuz is' pretty slow.
Dunno why. But it's very slow if it's not already running in the bg.

> 5. It seems to do nothing but usually I see some kind of error.
>    Often I see the default browser pop up phoning home at least.

It didn't phone home after the install (AFAIK), but that download
is just a stub so here is the full offline installer (AFAIK).
 <https://staticcdn.duckduckgo.com/windows-desktop-browser/help-pages/DuckDuckGo.msixbundle>

Holy Moley! I's 1.22 Gigabytes! Why the heck is it that big?
 <https://duckduckgo.en.uptodown.com/windows>
   Date Aug 3, 2026
   File type MSIXBUNDLE
   Size 1.22 GB
   SHA256 89d46b043e736eec41c344193bd284481009150f2705ed9b6a45b85b643d80da

>      (x)Play YouTube videos without ads

I generally use Aloha VPN browser to play YouTube on Windows sans ads.
Aloha is super fast, but it's the most dangerous VPN browser on the planet.

I will test out the YouTube with the DuckDuckGo browser 'cuz if it blocks
YouTube ads, then it's a good alternative for most people who won't want
to write extensive scripts like I've had to do to keep Aloha on VPN.

> 11. It created a desktop shortcut:
>     Target
>     C:\Users\{you}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\DuckDuckGo.exe

We've covered this where Paul and others know more than I do about it.
That seemingly zero-sized DuckDuckGo.exe target is a freaky thing.

I do not understand what it is, but Paul proved it's not zero size.
It's simply just something that Windows magic knows how to deal with.

>     Choices of {Fast, Reasoning}
>     Engines of Choices of= {GPT-5.4 nano,GPT-5.4 mini, Claude Haiku 4.5,
>      Mistral Small 4, gpt-oss 120B, Gemma 4 31B}
>     Advanced Models (requires DDG subscription) {GPT-5.4, Claude Sonnet
> 4.6}

So far I've been testing the "Reasoning" "GPT-5.4 mini". 
Initially it seems kind of stupid compared to Copilot or Gemini. 

But it takes getting used to any LLM to know where they're blind.
They're each good at some things and absolute morons in other things.

> If you already use this interface, please let others know what you think.
> If you know of an unlimited no-registration chat on Windows, let us know.

Those are my initial takes, admittedly only after using for a short while.
Let us know what your take is on this dedicated ai browser from DDG.

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