From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-10


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

On Windows, the DDG browser isn't a separate browser engine like Chrome is.

It's more like an embedded web app using WebView2, or maybe it's best
described as a webview-based browser shell (or maybe an in-app browser).

Whatever it is, below is a first-pass test on Windows of installing it.

Note, what spawned this need for a dedicated AI sans login was that
MS CoPilot earlier in the year allowed unlimited chats sans account registration but as of yesterday, the last vestige of the no-registation Micorosoft CoPilot Edge-sidebar chat went away.
Newsgroups: alt.comp.os.windows-10,alt.comp.microsoft.windows,alt.comp.os.windows-11
Subject: Can anyone get Edge Copilot to work without logging in after July 2026?
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:20:53 -0700
Message-ID: <114905j$7bm$1@nnrp.usenet.blueworldhosting.com>

With that gone, and with ChatGPT limiting the output sometimes,
I needed a dedicated tasbar icon that launches only an LLM interface.

Moving forward, given Gemini limits free chats as does ChatGPT,
since I no longer run "searches" outside of an LLM (because the
LLM allows more natural search terms), I'm going to try, for the
first time in earnest, the duck.ai interface & browser.

I realize duck.ai works in any browser, after agreeing to the privacy
terms every time I use it, but maybe people have experience with
the dedicated ddg browser (which has its own separate AI interface)?

June 2023
*DuckDuckGo's Privacy-Enhanced Browser Waddles Into Windows*
*How It Compares To Chrome* <https://hothardware.com/news/duckduckgo-announces-privacy-focused-browser-on-windows>

"...it is not a fork of the open-source Chromium browser like
many other browsers but a standalone app that utilizes the
underlying operating system rendering API. On Windows, this
is Windows WebView2 over top of the Blink rendering engine,
all of which to say this is a stripped-down Microsoft Edge
under the hood"

Here's what I just did to install it on Windows.
Please add your experiences and improve this so others find it useful.
1. https://duckduckgo.com/app
2. https://duckduckgo.com/windows?origin=funnel_app_bing
3. C:\data\software\browser\chrome\ddg\
Name: DuckDuckGo.Installer.exe
Size: 9901448 bytes (9669 KiB)
SHA256: 348D3CDE37F1EE13FF585918A3FC166E5A332B0655DF79D45AAB6BFE9D683733
4. Hit the taskbar network killswitch toggle & doubleclick the installer
Let's start your install
(_)Search privately by default
(_)Chat privately with popular AI chatbots (optional)
(_)Block 3rd party trackers
(_)Block cookie pop ups
(_)Block targeted ads
[Install Now]
[x]Open DuckDuckGo when your computer starts up

Note that these buttons will play a role later in the install...

Drat. There's no option to tell it where to go.
The only option is to turn off the automatic startup with Windows.
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.
I don't see any of that (my default browser is a text log capture).

6. Eventually I toggle the network killswitch (adds the gateway back).
It doesn't restart, so the installer appears to be hung.
It won't even close when I hit the Window dressing [x] at top right.

Ah, when restarted the first button turns "green" from gray
when it is on the Internet and then it moves to the second button
and so on.

Then there is a "Welcome to DuckDuckGo" and a browser comes up.

7. The browser pops up to a "Start browser setup" button.
1 of 4
(x)Search privately by default
(x)Chat privately with popular AI chatbots (optional)
(x)Block 3rd party trackers
(x)Block cookie pop ups
(x)Block targeted ads
(x)Delete browsing data with one buton
(x)Play YouTube videos without ads
[Make DuckDuckGo your default] [Skip]

8. Import bookmarks and passwords
2 of 4
[Import Now][Skip]
[Next]
9. Show a bookmarks bar with your favorite sites
3 of 4
[Show Bookmarks Bar][Skip]
[Enable Session Restore][Skip]
[Show Home Button][Skip] (add a shortcut to the toolbar)

10. Want easy access to private AI Chat?
4 of 4
[Search & Duck.ai][Search Only]
[Start Browsing]

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

12. It defaults to
[Search]
But we can switch it to
[Duck.ai]
Tools of {Create image,Web search,Customize Responses}
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}

13. There's one more icon, a bunch of vertical lines (sound perhaps?),
which, when clicked, pops up a
Say hello to Duck ai
Free and private chats, anonymized by us.
No account required.
No AI raining on your conversations.
Popular AI models from GPT, Claude, Mistral, Llama
By clicking "Agree and Continue" you acept Duck.ai's privacy
policy and terms of service.
[Agree and Continue][Not Now][Disable Duck.ai]
If you click to agree, another [Enable Voice Chat] comes up.
Private by design
No audio gets stored
No audio identification
[Enable Voice Chat][Cancel]

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.
--
Once we understand the complexities, the whole thing becomes very simple.








--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-10

Maria Sophia wrote:

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.

BTW, I don't understand "what" this DDG webview2-whatever-that-is thingamagidgy is actually because the shortcut TARGET turns out to
be a zero-length file, created today at install time. Huh?

How does a shortcut target that is a 0-length file, actually work? TARGET=C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\DuckDuckGo.exe

Dated today, are thse two related zero-sized additions:
C:\Users\{me}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\DuckDuckGo.DesktopBrowser_ya2fgkz3nks94\DuckDuckGo.exe
But the hash on that empty file is an error:
Errors: 1
Files: 0
Size: 0 bytes
SHA256 checksum for data: 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
SHA256 checksum for data and names: 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

There is also an executable one level up though but of the same empty hash.
C:\Users\{me}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\DuckDuckGo.exe

What the heck?
What is this DDG thingey anyway?

Moving on to testing... drat. After only a handful of turns, I get the error:
You've reached the maximum chat length in this conversation.
Start a new chat to continue.

Which means we have to start all over again. Sigh.

I'll flip some switches (e.g., Reasoning vs Fast and/or mini versus nano)
to see if the character limit is extended, but this is a big limitation
on complex research which requires the chat mechanism to remember stuff.
--
Sometimes, what we should have known all along is only learned later.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-10

Maria Sophia wrote:

How does a shortcut target that is a 0-length file, actually work? TARGET=C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\DuckDuckGo.exe

Does it have any Alternate Data Streams?
Does a registry search for DuckDuckGo.exe show anything?
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-10

Andy Burns wrote:

How does a shortcut target that is a 0-length file, actually work?
TARGET=C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\DuckDuckGo.exe

Does it have any Alternate Data Streams?
Does a registry search for DuckDuckGo.exe show anything?

Hi Andy,

What I just found out in trying to answer your query, is insane.

It's way too complicated for me to even summarize, as nothing is
familiar when it comes to where the heck this "thing" resides.

However, to answer your question directly... as far as I can tell,
there are no alternate data streams attached to those stub EXEs.

At least these results make ADS an unlikely explanation.

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\checkforads.ps1

# -------------------------------------------------------------------
# checkforads.ps1
# Auto-discovers DuckDuckGo*.exe under the current user's WindowsApps
# folder and then checks for Alternate Data Streams (ADS).
# -------------------------------------------------------------------
# v1p0 20260808 Check for Alternate Data Streams on DDG webview thing
# -------------------------------------------------------------------
$base = Join-Path $env:LOCALAPPDATA "Microsoft\WindowsApps"
Write-Host "WindowsApps base: $base"
Write-Host ""

if (-not (Test-Path $base)) {
Write-Host "WindowsApps base not found."
exit 1
}

$paths = Get-ChildItem $base -Filter "DuckDuckGo*.exe" -Recurse -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |
Select-Object -ExpandProperty FullName |
Sort-Object -Unique

if (-not $paths -or $paths.Count -eq 0) {
Write-Host "No DuckDuckGo*.exe files found under WindowsApps."
exit 0
}

foreach ($p in $paths) {
Write-Host ""
Write-Host "== Checking: $p =="

$item = Get-Item -LiteralPath $p -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
if (-not $item) { Write-Host "Not found"; continue }

Write-Host ("Length : {0} bytes" -f $item.Length)

$item | ForEach-Object {
$_.AlternateDataStreams |
Select-Object Name, Length |
Format-Table -AutoSize
}
}

Write-Host ""
Write-Host "Done."

# end of checkforads.ps1

This outputs more useful information:
wmic process where "name like 'DuckDuckGo%%'" get ProcessId,Name,ExecutablePath /format:list

That proves these strange "things" are zero bytes:
C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\DuckDuckGo.exe (0 bytes)
C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\DuckDuckGo.DesktopBrowser_... \DuckDuckGo.exe (0 bytes)

But the actual running binaries are these, which are real files
inside the packaged install:

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

So the 0-byte stub in WindowsApps under the user directory is
acting like some kind of magical activation launcher/redirect
and Windows then starts the real packaged components under
C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\...

Whatever the heck it is, it's a strange beast making use of strange things.
--
If you never think how a system works, we'll never understand how it works.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-10

On Sun, 8/9/2026 2:34 PM, Maria Sophia wrote:

Maria Sophia wrote:

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.

BTW, I don't understand "what" this DDG webview2-whatever-that-is thingamagidgy is actually because the shortcut TARGET turns out to
be a zero-length file, created today at install time. Huh?

How does a shortcut target that is a 0-length file, actually work? TARGET=C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\DuckDuckGo.exe

Dated today, are thse two related zero-sized additions:
C:\Users\{me}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\DuckDuckGo.DesktopBrowser_ya2fgkz3nks94\DuckDuckGo.exe
But the hash on that empty file is an error:
Errors: 1
Files: 0
Size: 0 bytes
SHA256 checksum for data: 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
SHA256 checksum for data and names: 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

There is also an executable one level up though but of the same empty hash.
C:\Users\{me}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\DuckDuckGo.exe

What the heck?
What is this DDG thingey anyway?

Moving on to testing... drat. After only a handful of turns, I get the error:
You've reached the maximum chat length in this conversation.
Start a new chat to continue.

Which means we have to start all over again. Sigh.

I'll flip some switches (e.g., Reasoning vs Fast and/or mini versus nano)
to see if the character limit is extended, but this is a big limitation
on complex research which requires the chat mechanism to remember stuff.

That's the packaging method for a Windows.App .

At one time, the "blah.exe" file was a PE32 stub with zero execution time,
that could cause the screen to flash. The file was actually a manifest file, with the manifest text staged after the PE32 stub.

They liked the scheme so much, they reduced "blah.exe" to zero length.
Now, you cannot click on it and make things blink. The manifest is
still in the folder, somewhere. The manifest has sufficient signing
and crypto, to ensure the thing loaded is "authentic" and has not
been modified. If a hash of a file is incorrect, that should trigger
a re-download of the materials.

And for some of those, the folder is "access denied". Making your
study of the materials a bit more difficult. That's not really a problem
of course.

The SHA checksum of a zero length file is not 0.
It would be Bad Karma if that were to be true.

Name: BadKarma
Size: 0 bytes
SHA256: E3B0C44298FC1C149AFBF4C8996FB92427AE41E4649B934CA495991B7852B855

What happened there might well be Access Denied.

I dare you, to make a source file, where the SHA256 output is all zeros :-) I'll wait. If you could do that, if you could manage to make an
all zeros SHA256 legitimately, all the Bitcoins in the world
would be worthless. A worthy objective.

Paul

--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-10

Paul wrote:

That's the packaging method for a Windows.App .

At one time, the "blah.exe" file was a PE32 stub with zero execution time, that could cause the screen to flash. The file was actually a manifest file, with the manifest text staged after the PE32 stub.

They liked the scheme so much, they reduced "blah.exe" to zero length.
Now, you cannot click on it and make things blink. The manifest is
still in the folder, somewhere. The manifest has sufficient signing
and crypto, to ensure the thing loaded is "authentic" and has not
been modified. If a hash of a file is incorrect, that should trigger
a re-download of the materials.

And for some of those, the folder is "access denied". Making your
study of the materials a bit more difficult. That's not really a problem
of course.

The SHA checksum of a zero length file is not 0.
It would be Bad Karma if that were to be true.

Name: BadKarma
Size: 0 bytes
SHA256: E3B0C44298FC1C149AFBF4C8996FB92427AE41E4649B934CA495991B7852B855

What happened there might well be Access Denied.

I dare you, to make a source file, where the SHA256 output is all zeros :-) I'll wait. If you could do that, if you could manage to make an
all zeros SHA256 legitimately, all the Bitcoins in the world
would be worthless. A worthy objective.

Ah. That makes sense now. Windows is weird. They're using weird stuff.

Thanks Paul for summarizing that seemingly 0-length DuckDuckGo.exe file,
which was the target of the desktop shortcut, which had confused me so.

I looked up your statement. You are correct. It would be almost impossible
to make a file have all zeroes as the SHA256 hash.

python zero.py
nonce: 97169
sha256: 0000c858d777129d3cce827da7d78013efb6aedbaa4d08173f779541e8eeb2d1
saved as match.txt

# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# zero.py
# Use model: python zero.py => it will generate match.txt whose
# sha256 hash will start with the desired number of 0's
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
# v1p0 20260808 Generates files with 0000 hashes in a few seconds
# -----------------------------------------------------------------
import hashlib

base = b"hello world\n"
nonce = 0

while True:
data = base + str(nonce).encode()
digest = hashlib.sha256(data).hexdigest()
if digest.startswith("0000"):
with open("match.txt", "wb") as f:
f.write(data)
print("nonce:", nonce)
print("sha256:", digest)
print("saved as match.txt")
break
nonce += 1
# end of zero.py
--
If we don't understand how the OS works, we have no business being here.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-10

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.
--
On Usenet, we can combine the vast knowledge of many people together.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-10

Maria Sophia wrote:

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.

Drat! The Marketing guys never tell you the crappy stuff up front.

Daily usage limit reached!
You can continue this chat after Aug 10, 2026, 4:00 PM.
Learn more
<https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/duckai/usage-limits>

Given I only asked a few questions, this makes the DDG LLM worthless.
Sigh.
--
Sometimes we just have to test things empirically to figure 'em out.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.os.windows-10

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


--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2