Safe Search DNS locking for IT administrators

z64

Not off the table, but we haven't comitted to implementing this at this time, updated the status accordingly.

restisstillunwritten

ahhh ok 😕

RonB

I'm actually shocked that Kagi doesn't support this yet. My scenario is that I use cleanbrowsing.org on my daughter's laptop. It does a good job of blocking most anything I can think of. But it also blocks Kagi. This thread at least taught me that duckduckgo is an alternative option for me now.

To be clear, we're not just looking for a way to do safe web-searches - Kagi does a good job of filtering results to a safe level - it's about having a good way to block direct access to, say, porn sites (which is what cleanbrowsing's DNS settings do) and also at the same time being able to use Kagi as search engine of choice.

fxgn

I honestly don't really understand the usecase, especially for parental control. If a kid deliberately wants to look up NSFW content and can figure out how to bypass the family account limitations, surely they can also figure out how to use some other search engine that doesn't have this feature? Like one of the literally hundreds public SearX instances which you can't just wildcard block on your DNS? And if it's just to prevent them from accidentally opening a porn website, why not just use a network DNS filter like AdGuard Home or PiHole (or many other publicly hosted solutions)?

Intig

One common feature of network DNS filters is also to enforce search engine safesearch, which is what this feature request would enable for Kagi. Blocking just the external websites isn't a complete solution because images etc can still show up on the search engine site.

Re there being other search engines out there that don't allow blocking safesearch, this is true, but when you're thinking of which search engine to recommend, it's still a point against Kagi that it can't be rendered safe. There are Kagi kids' accounts now that do it, but they're quite restrictive (some features can't be turned off etc), and also not a great choice for IT admins with adult users.

dexbit

Every parent in our community uses Kagi search and has their respective kids using it. We all use porn blocking through DNS settings. Kagi currently doesn't respect safe search settings configured at the DNS level (e.g., NextDNS, ControlD), unlike all other search engines.

Expected behavior: When safe search is enforced via DNS provider, Kagi should honor these settings.

Current behavior: Kagi bypasses DNS-level safe search controls.

Impact: This prevents network-level content filtering from working effectively with Kagi.

Technical details:

Search engines that support DNS-level safe search provide special safe search subdomains that DNS providers redirect to:

Google: forcesafesearch.google.com
Bing: strict.bing.com
YouTube: restrict.youtube.com or restrictmoderate.youtube.com
Brave: safe.search.brave.com
DuckDuckGo: safe.duckduckgo.com

Parents, schools, and organizations using DNS filtering services (NextDNS, ControlD, CleanBrowsing, etc.) would automatically get safe search enforcement on Kagi without any additional configuration, and with users not being able to disable it. Users who have already configured safe search enforcement at the DNS level expect it to work across all search engines on their network.

fxgn

Duplicate of #3285?

Intig

Disappointing that this has been down-prioritised away from Planned. This is really a standard feature of all other serious search engines, and surely not a huge undertaking to support?

dexbit

Intig agree—we had to cancel our community’s subscription because of this. can’t risk our kids to find porn through it.

z64

This was already deprioritized a very long time ago, the status update was just making things more honest.

The lineage of this request is that is was essentially brought to us by another company in the business of parental/network control lobbying us, which left a bit of a bad taste, so it was decided by prior PMs to punt it until we saw real organic interest. Then we just got extremely busy with other things both internally and publicly.

It was also a confusing request at the time, as unlike other search engines, Kagi is

Not publicly accessible without an account to begin with
We have dedicated kids accounts already where safe search can't be changed and even more, parents can block sites, as well as limiting their entire search experience to just a lens (e.g. can only access ~10 sites at a time in results)

... exclusively more powerful than any DNS related feature could bring.

I think we are happy to take a stab at this, especially as certain things about access to Kagi will be changing soon. It just needs a proper technical review and scheduling; at which point we'll move it back to Planned.

_-chrismec-_

No, the lineage of this request was from my original post back in May of 2022. It was a request that arose organically from my personal use of Kagi in the home with small children and questionable "safe" results. Back then, there was a free account, so the request should have been less confusing. Pretty straight forward I would think...

dexbit

_-chrismec-_ @z64 is referring to something prior to you bringing this up.

@z64 thank you so much for the transparency, it's refreshing and good to see. It builds more trust 🙂
I did not know of Kagi for Kids, will have a look. I should also say that adults would love to have this enabled as well.
Thanks again for your input. I look forward to this entering the product.

Intig

Prior to May 2022? In 2024 in this thread, the founder/CEO told me that he had never heard of this feature.

Regardless, great to hear it's potentially being looked into. The option of kids' accounts is nice but they have other limitations that make me personally not so keen to use them, for example you can't disable the extra Search Widgets in the results (inline image results, "Interesting Finds" etc).

macro

It would be great indeed if such a feature can be prioritized again. Thank you

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