Vodou's default home page and search point at a local SearXNG instance at https://localhost/searxng. If that backend isn't running, the home page and address-bar searches won't load.

To fix it

  1. Start the Docker backend: cd docker && docker compose up -d (see Starting Vodou for the first time), then wait a few seconds before searching.
  2. If you don't want to run the Docker backend at all, switch to an external search engine instead — Start page, startup page & search engine — or simply type full web addresses into the address bar, which never depends on a search engine.