How to change message context menu search to DuckDuckGo
If you select a word in a message and right click, you get a context menu with one of the choices being "Search Bing for '<selected word(s)' " </p>
How can I change that to DuckDuckGo. (They have more of the same values as Mozilla than M$ has!)
Chosen solution
I haven't been able to test this hands on (Thunderbird not installed on this computer), but based on some help articles and a blog post...
- Right-click this link and save the file to a convenient location: https://duckduckgo.com/opensearch.xml and rename it to something like duckduckgo.xml to avoid any name conflicts
- Open your Thunderbird profile folder from inside Thunderbird using Help > Troubleshooting Information, then in the first table on the page under Application Basics, click the "Show Folder" button
- If the profile folder does not contain a subfolder named searchplugins then go ahead and create one
- Move or copy the duckduckgo.xml file from step 1 into the searchplugins folder
- Exit out of Thunderbird and start it up again
- Use the search bar to find results with the current search engine
- When the results display, an icon for DuckDuckGo should now appear in the narrow bar along the left edge of the window: click DuckDuckGo and then click the heart icon at the bottom of that bar to make it your default
- Test the right-click context menu search to confirm that the switch worked
Success?
References:
- Profiles - Where Thunderbird stores your messages and other user data
- Add Search Engine to Open Search
- DuckDuckGo in Thunderbird – Bloggure | There is no place like ::1
Just saw this in another post, with nearly the same steps but they get the plugin from the Add-ons site instead of their own site: https://duck.co/help/desktop/thunderbird
Read this answer in context 👍 0All Replies (4)
I guess putting apostrophes, quotes, etc. messed up my post, so I'll try to clarify...
the context menu reads Search Bing for whatever word(s) you selected.
Chosen Solution
I haven't been able to test this hands on (Thunderbird not installed on this computer), but based on some help articles and a blog post...
- Right-click this link and save the file to a convenient location: https://duckduckgo.com/opensearch.xml and rename it to something like duckduckgo.xml to avoid any name conflicts
- Open your Thunderbird profile folder from inside Thunderbird using Help > Troubleshooting Information, then in the first table on the page under Application Basics, click the "Show Folder" button
- If the profile folder does not contain a subfolder named searchplugins then go ahead and create one
- Move or copy the duckduckgo.xml file from step 1 into the searchplugins folder
- Exit out of Thunderbird and start it up again
- Use the search bar to find results with the current search engine
- When the results display, an icon for DuckDuckGo should now appear in the narrow bar along the left edge of the window: click DuckDuckGo and then click the heart icon at the bottom of that bar to make it your default
- Test the right-click context menu search to confirm that the switch worked
Success?
References:
- Profiles - Where Thunderbird stores your messages and other user data
- Add Search Engine to Open Search
- DuckDuckGo in Thunderbird – Bloggure | There is no place like ::1
Just saw this in another post, with nearly the same steps but they get the plugin from the Add-ons site instead of their own site: https://duck.co/help/desktop/thunderbird
farmerguiguy said
If you select a word in a message and right click, you get a context menu with one of the choices being "Search Bing for '<selected word(s)' " How can I change that to DuckDuckGo. (They have more of the same values as Mozilla than M$ has!) </blockquote>
jscher2000, you are BRILLIANT! Thank you so much...
BTW, the link posted below the line has some useless instructions. I wrote DuckDuckGo about the problems with the post.
But, YOU, jscher2000, solved it perfectly. I'm a happy man!