Search does not start in onion mode

[compis]

Using Linux and Tor browser 14.5 when Duckduckgo onion is selected and Tor browser is restarted the onion switch remains turned off instead of on. Why would a non onion search be the default?

[thorin]

@compis

Why would a non onion search be the default?

Why isn't DuckDuckGo .onion default search engine?

There is discussion about this on this ticket: DuckDuckGo Onion should be the default instead of DuckDuckGo (#21483) · Issues · The Tor Project / Applications / Tor Browser · GitLab Before that is going to happen we’d need some data on whether DDG can handle our load and how large the performance drop-down for searches would be. As mentioned in the ticket, this is a very important point to keep in mind.

[Redwave]

I have noticed, using DDG’s .onion site, that it’s very hit and miss. I don’t think they have any load balancing on their tor → search data path. I suspect their internal data path sends the tor searches to one search node. I don’t know how many searches one of their nodes can handle, but I find I am constantly getting search errors on the .onion that go away when I use the normal site.