The private beta had empty placeholders where ads should be, but the open beta version now removes them to make pages look better. This means that while DuckDuckGo doesn’t specifically have an “ad blocker” built in per se, it ends up blocking most ads by default because most ads and ad networks are just loaded with trackers.

That doesn’t mean everything is blocked–there are less-invasive trackers used for things like auditing web traffic, and non-tracking plugins that do things like load fonts are allowed through. It blocks what the company calls “invasive trackers” before they even load, which can save a lot of data transmission and make pages load faster and operate more smoothly. The main conceit of DuckDuckGo is that it helps prevent you from being tracked online.

That works on web pages as expected, but middle-clicking bookmarks (from the menu or bar) does nothing. For example, I’m a heavy bookmarks bar user, and I middle-click to open links in a new tab quite often. Some of these things still need a bit of polish. Since DuckDuckGo never saves your browsing history online, they implemented a browser history that is just a list saved to your local machine. A number of features have been added since the invite-only beta began earlier this year, including pinned tabs and a bookmark bar.

Duckduckgo mobile browser review