The message you’re reading applies to the checkbox above for encryption, not the preferences url. The preferences key only needs to be set if you want to encrypt the configuration URL, it doesn’t affect what OP wants to do.

My memory is a bit fuzzy because I switched to Searxng after playing with Whoogle briefly, but I thought Whoogle stored preferences in a cookie or something similar; the preferences URL is for when you want to transfer the preferences for your current machine to another. So OP is misunderstanding what it’s for.

OP: if your preferences aren’t sticking, are you maybe blocking cookies entirely or something? I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t need to do anything with the preferences URL for your preferences to stick if everything is set up correctly, it’s only for transferring your preferences to another machine.

It’s not useless, it removes a lot of the tracking cookies and such and sponsored links loaded with telemetry. Theoretically you can also get the benefits of anonymity if you proxy through Tor or a VPN, which I originally tried to do but turns out Google at least blocks requests from Tor and at least the VPN endpoint I have and probably most of them. Google or whatever upstream SE can still track you by IP when you self host, but its tracking is going to much less without the extra telemetry cookies and tracking code it gets when you use Google results directly.

But yes, practically you either have to trust the instance you’re using to some extent or give up some of the anonymity. I opted to self host and would recommend the same over using a public instance if you can, personally. And if privacy is your biggest concern, only use upstream search providers that are (or rather, claim to be) more privacy respecting like DDG or Qwant. My main use case is primarily as a better frontend to search without junk sponsored results and privacy is more of a secondary benefit.

FWIW, they have a pretty detailed discussion on why they recommend self-hosting here.

I’ve always gotten the impression it was mostly intended to be self hosted. I’ve self hosted it for something like a couple years now, runs like a clock. It still strips out tracking and advertising, even if you don’t get the crowd anonymity of a public instance.

No, I used it with Alot mostly in the terminal. Can’t really speak to the front ends, I was kind of assuming you don’t need to search your old emails that often.

As another poster pointed out, it sounds like you want more of a mail search and archival tool than a mail server. I would suggest you pull the emails in maildir format from Google Takeout, and then index/search them with the amazing Notmuch. Notmuch is way more capable than Gmail search ever has been. Look at the Arch Wiki page page as well for info, the official docs are a bit obtuse but it’s not actually hard to use.

Not sure if it tracks like your actual portfolio breakdown, it might have access to that info but for Actual Budget it just shows the balance on the account.

Has worked really well for me. Like I mentioned I’ve had a couple instances where the banks change their login flow and I had to open a support ticket to get it fixed, but they (SimpleFIN) were very responsive in working on it when I opened a support request and had it fixed within a couple days. Two of my accounts also have to be re-authenticated every time I wanna pull data into Actual, but that’s also the banks’ fault and it’s not that big of a deal to do.

As for integration with Actual is basically flawless and just works. Setup is super easy, just paste in a token from SimpleFIN and boom you see all the accounts you have linked and can attach them to accounts in Actual. Sync is rock solid too, I don’t have any issues with it messing up transactions with duplicates etc.

It varies by bank but for all mine you have to use the username and password unfortunately. My understanding is that it’s just how the underlying bank APIs work in general, because that’s what I have to do when I link accounts for my banks elsewhere too, not just in SimpleFIN. I don’t think they actually store your credentials though, I think it proxies it to the bank login and then caches a token. You can probably ask their support about the details if you’re concerned, they have been pretty responsive to me and willing to answer technical questions.

It does support investment accounts, I have my retirement and investment accounts in there. It supports just about every account I have, actually, credit cards included which is super handy. I think it’s all read-only access through, so you can only use it to import data not make new transactions.

In the US it has integration with SimpleFIN. SimpleFIN isn’t free but it’s pretty cheap ($1.50/mo) and supports most banks out there, even my obscure local credit union. It works pretty well, though sometimes the banks fuck with stuff and seem hell bent on breaking any kind of API access, but SimpleFIN support was really responsive for me to get it fixed when it happened. I do also have to reauthenticate my bank every day when I want to sync, but that’s also just the banks being assholes and isn’t too bad to do.