Open YouTube videos in Duck Player

[yyzguy]

I just recently discovered the Duck Player. It’s a feature of the DuckDuckGo browser that plays YouTube videos without all of the typical distractions.

Note: This works on iPad/iPhone only. Does not work on Mac (added August 6, 2025)

(first install DuckDuckGo browser )

To have Safari automatically open YouTube videos in the Duck Player, I merely duplicated the Yatti redirect rule from the library and made a small edit:

Change the redirect to: ddgquicklink://youtube.com/watch?$1

It works because ddgquicklink is the custom URL scheme for the DuckDuckGo browser.

There’s still a prompt asking to open the DuckDuckGo browser. I’m not sure if there’s a way to bypass the prompt, so if anyone has suggestions please advise.

I’m not posting the entire rule because my version is merely an edited version of a rule already available in the library and might have mistakes or peices leftover from the original.

[mshibanami]

This is awesome. Thanks for sharing, @yyzguy!

If you don't mind, could I add a rule for that to the library? I'll include you as a contributer. Thanks!

[yyzguy]

Of course!

[mshibanami]

Added it. Thanks a lot!

[yyzguy]

Oh, I didn't realize until today it only works on iOS. I didn't know the URL Scheme thing doesn't work on MacOS. Is there a way to make a rule detect which platform it's being used on?

[mshibanami]

Hi @yyzguy, rules currently can't automatically detect platforms, but you can reach your goal by manually disabling the rule on macOS only. This should work because the enabled/disabled state isn’t shared across devices as of now.

By the way, I published 2 separate rules: one for iPhone/iPad and one for macOS. The macOS rule uses the native app-opening feature provided by the open command, which works on macOS only. You can only download it from the library in the app for macOS as follows:

Still, I realize this can be confusing for anyone installing the rule, so I’ve already submitted a feature request yesterday asking DuckDuckGo to support this URL scheme on macOS: duckduckgo/apple-browsers#1603
I hope they adopt it soon. 🙂

Additionally, I’ll add a detailed warning to the rule’s description so users won’t be confused.

Sorry for the confusion, and thanks a lot for your feedback!

[yyzguy]

Fantastic! I didn’t know the setting weren’t synced. Apparently that works in our favor for these particular rules. If you ever do decide to sync, there might need to be an override setting, ugh.

Hopefully the folks at DDG will implement your FR..