settings.yml

This page describe the options possibilities of the git://searx/settings.yml file.

Further reading ..

settings.yml location

First, searx will try to load settings.yml from these locations:

  1. the full path specified in the SEARX_SETTINGS_PATH environment variable.

  2. /etc/searx/settings.yml

If these files don’t exist (or are empty or can’t be read), searx uses the git://searx/settings.yml file.

Global Settings

general:

general:
    debug : False # Debug mode, only for development
    instance_name : "searx" # displayed name
    git_url: https://github.com/searx/searx
    git_branch: master
    issue_url: https://github.com/searx/searx/issues
    docs_url: https://searx.github.io/searx
    public_instances: https://searx.space
    contact_url: False # mailto:contact@example.com
    wiki_url: https://github.com/searx/searx/wiki
    twitter_url: https://twitter.com/Searx_engine
debug :

Allow a more detailed log if you run searx directly. Display detailed error messages in the browser too, so this must be deactivated in production.

contact_url:

Contact mailto: address or WEB form.

git_url and git_branch:

Changes this, to point to your searx fork (branch).

docs_url

If you host your own documentation, change this URL.

wiki_url:

Link to your wiki (or False)

twitter_url:

Link to your tweets (or False)

server:

server:
    port : 8888
    bind_address : "127.0.0.1"      # address to listen on
    secret_key : "ultrasecretkey"   # change this!
    base_url : False                # set custom base_url (or False)
    image_proxy : False             # proxying image results through searx
    default_locale : ""             # default interface locale
    default_theme : oscar           # ui theme
    default_http_headers:
        X-Content-Type-Options : nosniff
        X-XSS-Protection : 1; mode=block
        X-Download-Options : noopen
        X-Robots-Tag : noindex, nofollow
        Referrer-Policy : no-referrer
port & bind_address:

Port number and bind address of the searx web application if you run it directly using python searx/webapp.py. Doesn’t apply to searx running on Apache or Nginx.

secret_key :

Used for cryptography purpose.

base_url :

The base URL where searx is deployed. Used to create correct inbound links.

image_proxy :

Allow your instance of searx of being able to proxy images. Uses memory space.

default_locale :

Searx interface language. If blank, the locale is detected by using the browser language. If it doesn’t work, or you are deploying a language specific instance of searx, a locale can be defined using an ISO language code, like fr, en, de.

default_theme :

Name of the theme you want to use by default on your searx instance.

default_http_headers:

Set additional HTTP headers, see #755

outgoing:

outgoing: # communication with search engines
    request_timeout : 2.0        # default timeout in seconds, can be override by engine
    # max_request_timeout: 10.0  # the maximum timeout in seconds
    useragent_suffix : ""        # informations like an email address to the administrator
    pool_connections : 100       # Number of different hosts
    pool_maxsize : 10            # Number of simultaneous requests by host
# uncomment below section if you want to use a proxy
#    proxies:
#        http:
#            - http://proxy1:8080
#            - http://proxy2:8080
#        https:
#            - http://proxy1:8080
#            - http://proxy2:8080
# uncomment below section only if you have more than one network interface
# which can be the source of outgoing search requests
#    source_ips:
#        - 1.1.1.1
#        - 1.1.1.2
request_timeout :

Global timeout of the requests made to others engines in seconds. A bigger timeout will allow to wait for answers from slow engines, but in consequence will slow searx reactivity (the result page may take the time specified in the timeout to load). Can be override by Engine settings

useragent_suffix :

Suffix to the user-agent searx uses to send requests to others engines. If an engine wish to block you, a contact info here may be useful to avoid that.

proxies :

Define one or more proxies you wish to use, see requests proxies. If there are more than one proxy for one protocol (http, https), requests to the engines are distributed in a round-robin fashion.

  • Proxy: see.

  • SOCKS proxies are also supported: see

source_ips :

If you use multiple network interfaces, define from which IP the requests must be made. This parameter is ignored when proxies is set.

locales:

locales:
    en : English
    de : Deutsch
    he : Hebrew
    hu : Magyar
    fr : Français
    es : Español
    it : Italiano
    nl : Nederlands
    ja : 日本語 (Japanese)
    tr : Türkçe
    ru : Russian
    ro : Romanian
locales :

Locales codes and their names. Available translations of searx interface.

Engine settings

Further reading ..

- name : bing
  engine : bing
  shortcut : bi
  base_url : 'https://{language}.wikipedia.org/'
  categories : general
  timeout : 3.0
  api_key : 'apikey'
  disabled : True
  language : en_US
  #proxies:
  #    http:
  #        - http://proxy1:8080
  #        - http://proxy2:8080
  #    https:
  #        - http://proxy1:8080
  #        - http://proxy2:8080
  #        - socks5://user:password@proxy3:1080
  #        - socks5h://user:password@proxy4:1080
name :

Name that will be used across searx to define this engine. In settings, on the result page…

engine :

Name of the python file used to handle requests and responses to and from this search engine.

shortcut :

Code used to execute bang requests (in this case using !bi or ?bi)

base_urloptional

Part of the URL that should be stable across every request. Can be useful to use multiple sites using only one engine, or updating the site URL without touching at the code.

categoriesoptional

Define in which categories this engine will be active. Most of the time, it is defined in the code of the engine, but in a few cases it is useful, like when describing multiple search engine using the same code.

timeoutoptional

Timeout of the search with the current search engine. Be careful, it will modify the global timeout of searx.

api_keyoptional

In a few cases, using an API needs the use of a secret key. How to obtain them is described in the file.

disabledoptional

To disable by default the engine, but not deleting it. It will allow the user to manually activate it in the settings.

languageoptional

If you want to use another language for a specific engine, you can define it by using the full ISO code of language and country, like fr_FR, en_US, de_DE.

weigthdefault 1

Weighting of the results of this engine.

display_error_messagesdefault True

When an engine returns an error, the message is displayed on the user interface.

Note

A few more options are possible, but they are pretty specific to some engines, and so won’t be described here.

use_default_settings

use_default_settings: True

The user defined settings.yml is loaded from the settings.yml location and can relied on the default configuration git://searx/settings.yml using:

use_default_settings: True

server:

In the following example, the actual settings are the default settings defined in git://searx/settings.yml with the exception of the secret_key and the bind_address:

use_default_settings: True
server:
    secret_key: "uvys6bRhKHUdFF5CqbJonSDSRN8H0sCBziNSrDGNVdpz7IeZhveVart3yvghoKHA"
    bind_address: "0.0.0.0"
engines:

With use_default_settings: True, each settings can be override in a similar way, the engines section is merged according to the engine name. In this example, searx will load all the engine and the arch linux wiki engine has a token:

use_default_settings: True
server:
    secret_key: "uvys6bRhKHUdFF5CqbJonSDSRN8H0sCBziNSrDGNVdpz7IeZhveVart3yvghoKHA"
engines:
  - name: arch linux wiki
    tokens: ['$ecretValue']
engines: / remove:

It is possible to remove some engines from the default settings. The following example is similar to the above one, but searx doesn’t load the the google engine:

use_default_settings:
    engines:
       remove:
         - google
server:
    secret_key: "uvys6bRhKHUdFF5CqbJonSDSRN8H0sCBziNSrDGNVdpz7IeZhveVart3yvghoKHA"
engines:
  - name: arch linux wiki
    tokens: ['$ecretValue']
engines: / keep_only:

As an alternative, it is possible to specify the engines to keep. In the following example, searx has only two engines:

use_default_settings:
    engines:
       keep_only:
         - google
         - duckduckgo
server:
    secret_key: "uvys6bRhKHUdFF5CqbJonSDSRN8H0sCBziNSrDGNVdpz7IeZhveVart3yvghoKHA"
engines:
  - name: google
    tokens: ['$ecretValue']
  - name: duckduckgo
    tokens: ['$ecretValue']