How does DuckDuckGo’s Fire Button work on desktop browsers and what exactly does it delete?

1. What the Fire Button does in practice

The company describes the Fire Button as a simple way to clear the data that accumulates locally in the DuckDuckGo app—essentially an immediate purge of recent browsing state and an option to close tabs—bringing the browser back toward a “clean slate” without complex menus ^{[5] [1]}. On desktop and mobile, DuckDuckGo offers a Fire Window feature that isolates browsing activity from the rest of the browser in a way that is analogous to Chrome’s Incognito mode, and the Fire Button is the control that deletes the isolated session’s data when invoked or when the Fire Window is closed ^{[2] [1]}.

2. Exactly what is deleted (and what DuckDuckGo says it targets)

DuckDuckGo’s help pages and product reporting make clear the Fire Button is designed to clear the local artifacts that build up as sites are visited—things like cookies and other browser storage that live on the device—and to wipe recent browsing history and session state ^[5]. Independent and press previews characterize the feature as deleting cookies, cache, history entries and closing open tabs with one action ^{[1] [6]}. The company has also extended the Fire Button to optionally clear Duck.ai chat history in the browser when users enable that setting ^[7]. Product descriptions and third‑party writeups consistently present the Fire Button as a local-data wipe, not a network-level anonymizer; it clears local traces rather than erasing anything stored on the remote sites themselves ^{[5] [1]}.

3. Fireproofing: the important exception

A distinct, documented feature called “Fireproof this site” lets users mark specific websites to be excluded from future Fire Button purges so that logins and site cookies remain intact; this is explicitly intended to preserve sign‑in state and convenience for selected sites while still applying the Fire Button’s deletion to other sites ^{[3] [4]}. DuckDuckGo’s materials note that fireproofing can be used to stay logged into services and that the browser may still block third‑party trackers even for fireproofed sites, though fireproofing preserves first‑party cookies and other site state ^{[3] [5]}.

4. Limitations, platform differences and known bugs

DuckDuckGo warns of a specific platform bug: a WebView2 (Windows) component issue discovered in 2024 could temporarily prevent the Fire Button from instantly clearing fragments of browsing data; the company’s guidance is that the Fire Button still clears history and tabs and that restarting the browser will ensure leftover fragments are removed until the underlying OS component is fixed ^[5]. Desktop builds have been rolled out in stages and DuckDuckGo itself acknowledges feature parity is evolving across Windows, macOS and mobile—press coverage notes the desktop app brings many mobile protections but that some features were still on the roadmap when first released ^{[4] [2]}. Reporters also emphasize that DuckDuckGo built its desktop browser using system rendering APIs rather than forking Chromium, which affects behavior and integration compared with Chromium-based browsers ^[6].

5. What the Fire Button does not claim to do and commercial context

Reporting and DuckDuckGo’s own help pages frame the Fire Button as a local privacy control, not a replacement for network anonymity tools like VPNs or for erasing server‑side records; the feature clears device‑stored cookies, local storage and session state but cannot delete copies of data held by websites or third parties from prior visits ^[5]. Observers also note the company still monetizes search via contextual ads that are not based on per‑user long‑term tracking; this underscores that the product’s privacy posture is a designed feature of the browser and business model rather than a guarantee of comprehensive invisibility online ^[2].