The Opera Browser has marked its place as one of the leading browsers around the world with its top-notch features and best-in-class services. It has gained immense popularity briefly and made its way to the top.
The sole credit goes to its creators for keeping it updated according to the demands of its users. They constantly make changes to fix minor or major bugs in the browser.
The Opera Browser offers many essential features for users who like experimenting and playing around with the UI of a browser. For instance, we can change the default search engine on the Opera Browser and change it to any search engine that we like. Be it Bing, Yahoo, or even DuckDuckGo.
The search engine is default set to Google to use in the address bar, but it can be changed in mere minutes using the Search Engine settings.
My brother is a website developer and loves experimenting with everything on the internet. It’s his favorite way to pass the time. Yesterday he approached me to help him change the search engine on Opera as he wanted to try the other options. I was happy to help. Let’s see how it’s done.
Change Search Engine on Opera Browser
Changing the default search engine on Opera from Google to any engine of your choice is straightforward. It allows you to choose from the preset well-known search engine or add a custom one.
Here are the steps to change the search engine used in the address bar on the Opera computer:
- Launch Opera for the Computer browser.
- Click on Opera
for the menu list. - Choose Settings from the list.
- Scroll down to the Search engine section.
- Click on the drop-down menu under the Search engine used in the address bar.
It will display a list of search engines like Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo!, Amazon, and Wikipedia. - Choose the desired Search Engine to set as the new default.
You can add a custom search engine or set the new default search engine from the Manage search engines tab.
- Select to open the Manage search engines tab.
- Click on the More
option against your preferred search engine, - Choose the Make default option.
Within the Manage search engines window, you can click on the command to enter a custom search engine with a query string. This will make the custom search engine used in the address bar.
The custom search engine is influential in setting up an organizational or internal search engine.
Hence, you can easily change the search engine in the Opera computer browser and explore the engine’s features of your choice. Adding a custom search engine opera browser is easy and practical.
Bottom Line: Change Search Engine Opera
The Opera Browser has always been unique in its approach. It has taken the tech game to a new level by being different from its contemporaries and offering features that are known only to them. Due to their constant enhancements and updates to their existing features, the users have no room to complain about anything.
With the feature that lets you change your search engine to any engine of your choice and even add a new one you recently discovered, Opera has opened new doors for people with experimental and analytical minds.
My brother was thrilled when he could add a search engine of his choice to the Opera Browser and make DuckDuckGo his default search engine.
Which is your new default search engine in the Opera browser? Why do you like using this new search engine?
For some reason the default search engine fails to appear when I open Opera. Although I have changed the default to Duck Duck on the search engine list it has no effect when I open Opera. There is Google bold as brass defying all attempts to replace it.
I really wish Opera had made it possible to edit /remove unwanted search engines.
ANY sugestions or solutions would be much appreciated.
Hello Rory, I don’t know why your Opera browser is behaving such. However, once you change the default search engine from the drop-down, any search queries you make in address omnibar will display the results from the new default search engine.
Can you just clear the cache and cookies from your Opera browser, perhaps you can perform a reset?
Unfortunately, the default preset search engines are non-editable.
Why can I only add Ecosia as a search engine but not set it as my default ??
I’m having the same problem. Would love to make Ecosia my default but it wont let me.
To add the Brave search engine I need to enter the URL and a “query string”. Would someone explain what a query string is and how I determine it? Thanks
If you search for “browserhow” on Brave search, the search URL will turn into
https://search.brave.com/search?q=browserhow&source=web. If you want to turn it into a query string, you should replace the ‘browserhow’ with ‘%s’ in the URL string. Hence, the query string for Brave search will behttps://search.brave.com/search?q=%s&source=web. I hope this explains.