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Android & OpenSearch auto-discovery

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Most Android browsers (and many desktop ones) support OpenSearch auto-discovery: after you search on a site once, the browser learns that site's search engine and lets you pick it as the default, with no manual URL typing. Suede serves a standard OpenSearch descriptor for exactly this.

This is the recommended path for Chrome for Android, where you cannot paste a custom engine URL but you can choose an auto-discovered one.

Chrome for Android

  1. Open suede.io in Chrome for Android and sign in.
  2. Run at least one search on the site (this is what makes Chrome remember Suede).
  3. Open Chrome → ⋮ → Settings → Search engine.
  4. Under Recently visited, choose Suede.

Address-bar searches now go to Suede. (If Suede does not appear yet, search on the site a couple more times and re-open the setting; Chrome adds recently-used sites that expose a search descriptor.)

How auto-discovery works

Every Suede page advertises a search descriptor in its <head>:

HTML
<link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" title="Suede" href="/opensearch.xml" />

and Suede serves that descriptor at https://suede.io/opensearch.xml. It declares the results URL and a private suggestions URL:

XML
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
  <ShortName>Suede</ShortName>
  <Description>Private, ad-free web search.</Description>
  <Url type="text/html" template="https://suede.io/search?q={searchTerms}" />
  <Url type="application/x-suggestions+json" template="https://suede.io/api/autosuggest?q={searchTerms}" />
</OpenSearchDescription>

A browser that implements OpenSearch (Chrome, Firefox, and others) reads this automatically — {searchTerms} is the placeholder it fills with your query.

Other Android browsers

  • Firefox for Android — supports a fully custom engine; see Firefox.
  • Samsung Internet, Brave, Vivaldi (Android), etc. — most read the same OpenSearch descriptor: search on suede.io once, then look for Suede under the browser's search-engine setting.
  • No luck setting a default? Use the native Suede Android app (and its home-screen search widget) to search Suede directly.
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