CustomSearch 2 vs Ari Helper
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
CustomSearch 2
Take control of your web searches with a customizable engine selector. Choose from dozens of pre-built options or add your own, and use quick shortcuts to switch engines on the fly. Your privacy is protected as the extension only operates at the URL level.
- 29+ built-in search engines
- Add custom search engines
- Bang shortcuts for quick switching
- Native iOS and iPadOS app
- Privacy-focused operation
- Safari toolbar integration
Read full descriptionHide full description
Custom Search Engine 2.1 has been rebuilt from the ground up with SwiftUI. Faster, cleaner, and now including a full native iOS app for iPhone and iPad that syncs with iCloud. Take back control of where Safari sends your searches. Choose from 33 built-in engines or add your own. Enable, disable, and switch engines in seconds from the Safari toolbar. 33 Built-in Search Engines Brave Search, Kagi, DuckDuckGo, Startpage, SearXNG, Perplexity, Google, Bing, and 21 more, all pre-configured and ready to use. No setup needed. Bang Shortcuts Override your default engine for any single query. Type k! for Kagi, d! for DuckDuckGo, pp! for Perplexity, y! for YouTube... no settings change required. Works at the start or end of any search. Add Your Own Engines Any search engine works. Enter a URL with %s as the query placeholder, assign a bang shortcut, and go. Your Privacy, Protected The extension operates at the URL level only. It never reads page content, never stores your queries, and never makes network requests. What you search is yours alone. How It Works 1. Enable the extension in Safari Settings → Extensions 2. Tap the toolbar icon to pick your default engine 3. Search as you always do, Safari redirects automatically Available for Mac (Safari App Extension) and iPhone & iPad (Safari Web Extension). Free, no account, no subscription, no ads, no tracking.
Ari Helper
This AI assistant operates entirely offline, prioritizing user privacy by not collecting personal data. It integrates with Siri for hands-free activation and offers text-to-speech capabilities. Users can manage conversations, download custom models, and even interact with self-hosted or cloud-based AI services.
- Offline AI operation
- Siri and App Intents integration
- Privacy-focused, no data collection
- Text-to-Speech with voice options
- Conversation history sync via iCloud
- Downloadable custom AI models
- Code syntax highlighting
Read full descriptionHide full description
Introducing Ari - Your Easy-to-Use AI Assistant! Meet Ari, your personal AI assistant, right on your device! Ari runs its models on the device itself, so it works entirely offline — no internet connection required. Your privacy is our priority – Ari doesn't collect any of your personal data. Start Ari anywhere with Siri and App Intents — just say "Ask Ari," speak your question, and hear the answer back. Power users get a full Shortcuts catalog: Ask Ari with any model (Apple Intelligence, local, or cloud), start chats, generate and edit images, analyze PDFs, speak replies, change settings, queue Code Session tasks on Mac, and dispatch prompts to other devices — all chainable in Shortcuts. Ari is on your wrist too: the Apple Watch app remote-controls Ari on iPhone. Dictate from the "Ask Ari" complication or Smart Stack, watch answers stream in, hear them spoken, and hand long replies to iPhone. Questions queue when the phone is away; private chats stay off the watch. Conversations show up in Spotlight — including by what's in their images. Ari reads text and objects in chat pictures on-device so you can search for "that screenshot with the receipt". Private media is never indexed. With Sensitive Content Warning on, flagged images blur behind "Show Anyway" (verified adults can opt out). More to love: Text-to-Speech (device voice or Ava); long-press to copy or retry across models; syntax highlighting with one-tap code copy; Previous Chats synced via iCloud. On Apple Intelligence (iOS 26 / macOS 26 and later), Ari uses the on-device foundation model by default — private, no API key, no network. Attach images: on iOS 27 and macOS 27 the model sees them directly; on OS 26 Ari describes them on-device with the Vision framework (text, tables, barcodes, subjects). Prefer full vision models? Pick one from the menu. Download on-device models with a tap — Google's Gemma 4 for chat, Stable Diffusion converted for Core ML for pictures — or import a model folder of your own. Self-host with Ollama or any OpenAI-compatible server (LM Studio, vLLM, llama.cpp, LiteLLM), or generate images with Draw Things over gRPC. New in Ari 7: Ari makes pictures and films, and repairs the ones you already have. Films is a studio — write a film as a list of shots, render them one at a time, keep the ones that work, and watch the cut come together in a player above the timeline. Pictures get a canvas editor: brush over a crease and heal it, paint a leash or a stranger out of the frame, or treat the whole photograph — repair, denoise, sharpen camera shake, colorize, upscale four times. Every restoration model runs on your device and downloads on first use rather than shipping in the app. Point the camera at something and ask about it. Look at Something sends the frame to whichever model you have selected — on-device, self-hosted or cloud — captions the answer under the picture and speaks it if you like. Talk to it and it listens, answers, then listens again. It sits beside the microphone, and goes on the Lock Screen, Control Center, the Action Button or Siri. Cloud providers with your own keys: OpenAI (GPT-6 and GPT-5 families plus GPT Image), xAI Grok (4.7 plus Grok Imagine), Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini (plus Nano Banana and Omni video), and AWS Bedrock. Image-capable models accept photos; import text and source files. Cloud use reminds you each provider's privacy policy applies. On Mac, open a Code Session on a project folder with Grok for agentic tools — read, edit, search, git, shell, browser, web, and MCP — so Ari's GUI agent matches a terminal coding agent. Note: For strongest privacy with iCloud sync, enable Advanced Data Protection. Without it, conversations stay limited to your iCloud account but are not fully end-to-end encrypted. Optionally powered by Gemma 4 (HuggingFace) for offline chat and image understanding. Download Ari and keep your AI assistant at your fingertips!
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: CustomSearch 2 at $1.99 against Ari Helper's $24.99. CustomSearch 2 also leads on iOS requirement (18.6 vs 26.0). Ari Helper's advantage is rating (5.0 vs 2.5) and update cadence (weekly vs every 6 weeks). On ratings volume, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
CustomSearch 2 costs $1.99 and Ari Helper $24.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Ari Helper holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 2.5. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 2 and 1 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 77% of CustomSearch 2's written reviews are positive against 100% of Ari Helper's.
CustomSearch 2 ships an update every 6 weeks, Ari Helper weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 25, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | CustomSearch 2 | Ari Helper |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1.99 — better | $24.99 |
| Rating | 2.5 (2 ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 76.9% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 2 — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 6 weeks | Weekly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.6 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 4 MB | 92 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 17+ |
| Developer | Marco Cebrian Muino | Blaine Miller |
Customer experience
CustomSearch 2
Ari Helper
In-app purchases
CustomSearch 2
No in-app purchases
Ari Helper
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is CustomSearch 2 free?
Is Ari Helper free?
Which has better reviews, CustomSearch 2 or Ari Helper?
Do CustomSearch 2 or Ari Helper have ads?
Which is updated more often, CustomSearch 2 or Ari Helper?
Other comparisons















