alt Hacker NewsUsing Kagi Search with Low Vision
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Kagi has been one of my all time favorite products. It has enriched my search experience drastically. One of my favorite features I don't see talked about enough is the keybindings. Using vim keys for navigating search results is such a fantastic user experience, and much like normal vim I'm not sure I could go back to navigating search any other way. I also really appreciate their AI quick-search feature is explicitly opt in and trigger by adding a "?" to the end of search. Their selection of widgets is also quite nice and I find my self reaching for them quite a bit.
I love when people make personal websites (seemingly) purely for themselves. The design of this website really reflects the perspective of the author in a way that was immediately apparent. I've never seen a website with a menu that large.
I've been using Kagi for a couple of years now. For awhile, my work Chrome profile was still set to use Google for search by default because I don't login to personal accounts on it. I didn't use search that often for programming work - I used ChatGPT or Claude much more often - so it was always incredibly shocking to me how terrible Google search was every time I used it.
The AI results were bad beyond all human understanding - the sort of product that I thought only a walking corpse like Microsoft could release so broadly. But, that is essentially what Google Search is now. Clearly no one in a position of responsibility knows or cares about product design or performance and it only continues to exist through sheer inertia.
Switching to Kagi is how it felt when I first used broadband internet in college , or when I switched from Alta Vista to Google: the internet works like it should.
I've been using Kagi for a while now and I'm never going back to Google. Everything is just so much better when you are not the product.
I really appreciate clearly custom websites. My eyes are also quite bad (legally blind.)
Nearly ironically, because the site is already created for low vision, it had issues with the things that I do. Dark Reader froze up (uncommon) and the font was, for the first time, too large.
I am glad to see someone else enjoying Kagi.
Observation on the author's site: it's cool you can tell their site is designed for them by them, or other people with low vision. big font, high contrast, etc...
Kagi was the best service provider change I've made in years and if anybody cares for an anonymous HN endorsement, they have mine.
I know it's a completely different thing- but the neurodiverse face similar struggles of having to wade through reams of completely superfluous content to get to anything usuable.
Having done plenty of text to speech testing of my own website, I've never thought to turn it onto a Google search results page. It's abysmal.
Of course Google is an accessibility nightmare.
Is anybody else old enough to remember when Kagi.com was a place to pay for shareware?
https://web.archive.org/web/19970105191743/https://kagi.com/
I don't have low vision (yet), but do a fair amount of my reading sitting ~3m from a 65" screen, and I gotta say, the UI of this blog is lovely for that.
I have been paying for Kagi since last year and love it. I am not going back to using Google crap.
> In the Site Search section, click Add and fill in the following:
> Name: Kagi
> Shortcut: k
> URL: `https://kagi.com/search?q=%s`
looks like one can do this and use search without needing to be logged in. pleasantly surprised to see this. i wonder how they would rate limit users this way.
I just tried it and the search results are terrible. Maybe because Google knows things about me, I guess I can give them the benefit of that doubt.
Clearly inferior to Google though.
the thing I really miss when I use magic, is recommended places from Google maps, where to watch certain movie/series, a lot of things like that, where you can infer recommendations based on your location. Kagi might be good to filter everything scored "bad", but makes you work more.
I love Kagi, but it is soooo slow compared to Google. Really annoying...
The custom css is tight, love using inky blacks on my oled devices with just a single style sheet.
I paid $10/month to Kagi for 3 months. During that time I quickly learned that Kagi's image results were just repackaged google image search; literally the same images returned in the same order as google image search.
I also noticed that Kagi does not ever return more than 250 results. Just 250. Kagi is not the kind of search engine that is useful for someone who is used to web surfing in the kind of style that emerged in the 90s/00s. It is more of a curated corporate search engine that tells you what it thinks you want to see. You are never allowed the resources/results to actually look for yourself.
In the end it was the later that put me off using it. Even though other search engines have been gimped as well (Google only returns a maximum of 400 search results these days, Bing 900, etc) 250 was just far too small to be useful.
Hmm. This page eats memory on both Safari and Vivaldi and Orion even with Javascript off.
So far, so good. I just let Kagi renew after my first year. The nicest thing is getting relevant search links on the first page or two and not pages of SEO links or ads masked as links that are irrelevant to my search. I haven't even used the advanced features yet but just using it in base mode is a huge time (and frustration) saver for me.
One more reason to love Kagi Search.
Kagi is one of the few services that I will never use, it’s a privacy nightmare. Imagine all your search history are tied to one account, an account that id you with your payment information, and is hosted in the US? Google is better at this point, at least you can use it without an account.
I have been using Kagi for years. I use the family plan for my wife and I. I love it and will continue to use it until it either gets bad, they sell it, or get an ipo. There is no noise. Google, to me is just filled with noise. I used to love the innovation and used many of their products. Their search is now filled with ads and you no longer get good results, in my opinion. Their AI will also have ads: https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/google-marketing-l... Kagi is refreshing, the results have gotten very good. Occasionally there have been poor results with items at the top that should not have been, but I have noticed that it has been corrected quite quickly. Kagi does not retain any of your search terms nor does Kagi Assisstant. To me, Kagi gives me results like google used to, there are No ads, and they do not retain your search terms. I will gladly pay for that.