To set this 4get instance up as your default search engine for Mozilla Firefox, right-click within the address bar and select Add "4get". Then visit about:preferences#search and select 4get in the dropdown menu.
To set this 4get instance up as your default search engine for Chromium, click on the three dots (...) and click on Settings, then search for default search engine, or visit chrome://settings/searchEngines.
Once there, click on the pencil icon on the last entry under "Search engines". A popup will appear, populate it with the following information:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Search engine | 4get |
| Shortcut | 4get |
| URL with %s in place of query | https://4get.sudovanilla.org/web?s=%s |
Once done, click Save. On the right handside of the newly created entry, open the dropdown and select Make default.
4get is a metasearch engine built by lolcat to retrieves search results from other well known search engines and then strips away all of the tracking parameters that these search engines put in that are unnessary and are invasive. Most other alternatives to large search engines such as Google and Microsoft Bing claim to be "Privacy Respecting" but fail on this promise such as Esosia for example. The developer, lolcat, was fed up with this situation and decided to build 4get, as other alternatives like Searx and YaCy don't live up to their expectation.
The goal of 4get is to aim at providing end-users with a privacy-oriented, extremely lightweight, ad-free, free as in freedom way to search for documents around the world wide web with mimimal optional JavaScript. The long-term goal would to eventfully get 4get to build it's own and provide users with an unbiased search engine, with no political inclinations.
When using this 4get instance, data is stored temporary to get the next page of of search results. Data such as search queries, filters, and tokens. These parameters are encrypted using libsodium on the server, for which will provide you with a decryption key.
When you make a request to get the next page, you supply the token, the data is decrypted and the requested is fulfilled. All encrypted data is deleted after 15 minutes, or after it's used, to whichever comes first.
SudoVanilla and 4get does not collect IP addresses, user agents, or anything else. The tokens are the only things that are stored, in memory, temporary, and encrypted.
While SudoVanilla has added a Umami tracker to it's Forgejo instance as of 2025, there are no plans what-so-ever to add such a thing to it's 4get instance.
Your search queries and supplied filters are shared with the scraper you chose. SudoVanilla and 4get don't share anything else like your IP address or location.There is no way for a site to know you're the one searching for the query you put in. SudoVanilla and 4get do not and never will serve advertisements or 3rd-party JavaScript applets or trackers on it's instance(s).
When you submit a search query through 4get, the scraper see's our server as the person sending the search, not you.
This instance is located in North America.
SudoVanilla has open sourced it's modified version this instance's source code to it's own Forgejo instance, called SudoVanilla Ark. If you have any conerns, contact SudoVanilla via Mastodon or Signal
As for trusting lolcat, all of the original source code of 4get is available on their Gitea instance.
This 4get instance and SudoVanilla do not host any of the content that is shown here such as images, web results, videos, music, etc. All data you see is proxied through the SudoVanilla Web Server and no moderation in place. Instead, reach out to the people, organization, or company that is hosting the infringing content.
If there is anything you'll like to know more about, you're welcomed to contact SudoVanilla.
This page has been modified by SudoVanilla. Source