Thanks for the feedback. We take the ability to search fast very seriously. There are a few home screen options in the app -- just look at the settings. Also our mobile web site is still accessible and maybe preferred over the app altogether.

It would be a very straight forward assumption that a DDG mobile app would laser focused on quick search. I'm curious: how did the stories feature come to be?

It has a long history, starting even before DuckDuckGo. https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=watrcoolr

Perhaps I should do a post on it on the DDG blog.

I'd gladly read that.

I'd also appreciate an option on the app to bypass the stories and cut straight to what ddg does best: no frills, no tracking search.

Just remember that as useful as this feedback could be, there's probably thousands of people that disagree with him silently and are happy with it. I think it looks pretty cool FWIW (which is not that much...).

Is there an iPad version of the app planned?

Yes indeed!

Did you even try the app out?

You can change the options from displaying stories, to instead display recent searches, or to save searches.

In any case, the stories feature is quite nice, but I agree that it's feature creepy. I'd rather use another dedicated app for stories / RSS.