You might have noticed recently that Safe Search on Google is turned on by default and can’t be switched off. It seems local internet providers were asked by the MOC to switch it on and lock it so that it can’t be turned off. Luckily for iPhone users, there is an easy way to bypass it on your phone while at the same time being more private. I just found out about this so I’m assuming a lot of people don’t know about it either.
If you have the latest iOS update installed, head to Settings then click on your Apple ID at the top, and then iCloud. In the list, you’ll find an option called “Private Relay (Beta)”. Just turn that on and problem solved, you’ll now be able to use google with Safe Search off.
Thanks Nasser!
28 replies on “How to turn Safe Search Off”
yup, but it requires a subscription as its included in the iCloud+ . so if you don’t have the iCloud+ subscription then it will not work.
^ plus isn’t Private Relay just a VPN?
You can also connect with Vpn then go to the google settings and it will toggle on and off.
Posting this type of shit on a popular blog is very unwise. MOC can easily ask Apple to turn off private relay in Kuwait. So far China, Belarus, Colombia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkmenistan, Uganda, and the Philippines have asked Apple to stop the service in their countries.
Remember what happened to blackberry here in Kuwait? Within 2 or 3 days there will be a ‘report’ about how Apple devices are allowing access to porn/gambling/hacking sites and within a week there will be some MP screaming about it asking to grill (or bbq) the minister. Then poof, just like that its gone (because someone had to post about it in their blog).
Chill lol he’s just trying to help
What happened to Blackberry? I don’t remember 🤔
There was a big issue about censorship which started the same way I mentioned above. First a newspaper reported how those with Blackberrys were able to access porn, gambling sites, and IP telephony (which at the time was a big deal). Next the Minster of Information was grilled and broiled, within a month Blackberry service was banned (In almost all the GCC simultaneously). Eventually RIM agreed to have servers in the GCC which would block blacklisted sites and allow the governments to access the phone records and messages of the people.
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/blackberry-maker-willing-to-block-porn-allow-spying
Rip blackberry!
On a side note, anyone know where to buy blackberry batteries ?
This comment made me want to turn my old phones on
Damn I don’t remember that
It was posted on this blog back then!
https://248am.com/mark/kuwait/porn-on-the-blackberry/
lol sorry I have nearly 20,000 posts so there is no way I can remember anything 😅
They could have disabled the internet at night too so I don’t use it past my bed time
Yup its awesome. For the first time I can actually see popular porn videos in my area (arabic porn) in pornhub and xhamster.
You’re welcome Mark! You think you can remove my twitter account from the hyperlink please? 😀
Lol done!
Switching to Google Public DNS will turn Safe Search Off https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using
Doesn’t work when on cellular
You can use https://nextdns.io and pretty easy to set up. It passes both your wifi and cellular DNS traffic to their DNS servers instead if you use encrypted dns. I do that on my android device under the “Private DNS” setting so it’s all encrypted and it has a ton of other privacy related features like ad and tracking blacklists etc. I rarely get ads within my mobile apps after using this.
iPhone doesn’t allow you to customize the DNS of mobile operators sadly
Maybe you couldn’t with older iOS versions but since iOS 14, you should be able to. Try Settings > VPN & Network > DNS or you could download a configuration profile (image link below) from your private DNS service that sets it up for you. This should apply both to Wifi and cellular since native DNS overrides the DNS set by your ISP.
https://i.postimg.cc/hhWRmQ3Z/Screenshot-2021-11-27-at-11-32-23-pm.png
There is no DNS option when using a mobile operator, only wifi. I can add a VPN of course, but it’s just a much simpler experience to turn Internet Relay on and use that instead.
It doesn’t work on bing though.
Instead of switching on private relay, you can just use a dns like cloudflare (1.1.1.1) or even google’s own dns (8.8.8.8) so you wont suffer any performance problems (private relay is basically vpn)
if you’re on cellular, you can just download the cloudflare app https://apps.apple.com/us/app/1-1-1-1-faster-internet/id1423538627
Why download an app and activate it manually when you can just turn relay on?
Because theres a speed hit. its a VPN. VPNs connect to another server and therefore effect your overall speed, they also dont have any local servers since its banned in Saudi and UAE so your response time is taking a huge hit as well (at least 1~2 seconds on a good day). changing your DNS alone, will in fact improve response times. If you dont like downloading the app you can do it through a profile –> https://dns.notjakob.com/ .. theres no pretty way to fix this. i can tell you though, if you have it setup at home using your router, most of the time google will remember your reference even when youre not connected to your router.
To be clear its not as safe as a VPN (like OpenVPN or wireshark) but its still something that depends on an external server (basically a tunneling service or a type of vpn). I had tested it thoroughly while ios 15 was in beta and response times suffer significantly (tested in dubai on du internet and 5g while it was working in beta)