“The default is not attractive but there are some that are very attractive.”

And that’s precisely why most people will be turned off by it. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t use it because of a lack of a good UI, I’m saying that recommending it to people while it doesn’t offer a good default experience for the average user is certain to end in either confusion or disappointment for those people, which will probably end back to Google or DDG after giving it a shot and finding it ugly to look at.

The worst part is the work is all there. The new simple theme looks amazing, it just needs to be the default for most instances and maybe having a better logo and that’s it. That’s all you need.

searX is that good.