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

On Sun, 8/9/2026 10:34 PM, Maria Sophia wrote:
>  
>>    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.
> 

Some of those seem to be local choices.

    gpt-oss 120B   Gemma 4 31B

The files for those are on the other machine.

The one on the left, the download for that performed OK.
The one on the right, the transfer kept stopping, I would
click Pause then Restore and the transfer would continue.

As for the package itself, at 1.22GB, I doubt Virustotal will
even scan that :-)

   Paul