> Most people switch browsers for one reason: speed.
Is that true? Maybe it is and I'm out of the loop but I can't remember the last time someone complained about browser speed. The bottleneck seems to be website bloat more than anything else. Would love to see this argument quantified.
Nowadays users switch browsers to escape from AI nonsense. But in all seriousness, just enabling an ad-blocker significantly increases the speed of the browser, because, as you correctly noticed, website bloat is the largest bottleneck. And usually "raw" website content is only small fraction of all other stuff that gets loaded from various remote sources to show you ads and track you better.
And to take speed point even further - disabling JavaScript does wonders to website speeds, you won't believe how quickly some websites are loading. Logging in to banking website might not work at all, though.
I've been playing Dragon Age Origins recently, and I've been popping into the Steam overlay browser to look up some stuff, which frequently leads me to the wiki. And oh my god, I can't believe how bad the internet is without adblock these days. Every page visit, it pops up ginormous video ads that cover 90% of the web page, and it needs to chug along to get the initial render done before I can collapse it.
> You will probably already feel this difference every time you launch it.
How many times a day / week / month do you launch your browser from scratch ?
It is also a moot point with modern processors and modern OSs.
Even more so in Orion's target macOS market where you can leave an app open without any windows open (not minimized, I mean not open at all) , so its ready to go at a click.
Unless you are regularly using all your RAM, there is a very good chance the browser's files are going to stay in disk cache and be effectively instant to load. 100MB is an imperceptible load time difference on a modern system where memory speed is 50-100GB/s or more.
When all my windows are in one big stack (Windows, macOS), then multiple windows just get in the way and I’d agree.
But over the last couple months using better window managers like sway or niri, I tend to open new app/browser windows next to the windows they are related to.
It was true, and it was what made Google Chrome popular in the first place. Internet Explorer and Firefox were dead slow to start at the time while Chrome started instantly.
We just don’t know how bad slow browsers can be because all others have caught up.
That was a funny period of time because you could very transparently see the clear application of a corporate team that was tasked with improving the “startup speed KPI”.
During that time IE startup time went from a dozen or so seconds to also instantaneous. It was even faster than chrome sometimes. But that was just the startup. The application wasn’t ready to accept any user input or load anything for another 10 or 15 seconds still. Sometimes it would even accept input for a second then block the input fields again.
It’s the same mentality all those insanely slow webapps do when they think some core react feature for a “initial render” or splash screen etc will save them from their horrific engineering practices.
Google did a great job communicating Chrome's improvements over speed (both with startup and prefetch) and reliability (isolated and sandboxed tabs) during its launch. When you saw it, you knew that it was basically game over for any browser that had chosen to stagnate until then. They destroyed the competition.
I think Google gained more users with its aggressive advertising campaign than with its speed (except for power users). If someone used a Google product like search, email or youtube in a non-google browser, Google would always show an ad encouraging them to switch to Chrome.
At the time, the argument for Chrome was that Firefox and IE were bloated and their memory requirements were too high.
A system with less than 64 Megabytes of RAM (most computers of the time) would have to lean heavily on spinning rust virtual memory, making everything slow.
However, since then Chrome has become one of the biggest memory hogs that people commonly run.
I don't think lean memory use was the biggest claim Chrome had made. That was the game between IE and Firefox. Google had specifically promoted faster startup times, faster web browsing experience, and tab isolation / sandboxing so a crashing tab wouldn't bring down other tabs with it.
Netscape 6, which was released in 2000 and based on the Mozilla Suite (now SeaMonkey) recommended 64MB of RAM. The Mozilla Suite was the basis of the Phoenix project (later renamed to Firefox) and they shared the same technological underpinnings: Gecko engine, SpiderMonkey JS engine, XUL interface, XPCOM, etc. Phoenix/Firefox was about using the Mozilla technology to deliver just a browser, independent of the suite, with aim of being lighter weight. So while Firefox didn't exist yet its heavier predecessor did.
Unless it's ungodly slow, to the point where it's beyond being noticeable, speed is the last thing I care about when it comes to browser. Most of the options available are reasonably fast and differences are not huge enough.
Gentle reminder that if you're commenting on hacker news articles you are likely the outlier in the "why people switch browsers" reasoning. Friends and family constantly surprise me with their tech choices and how they interface with the digital world whenever I'm home on holidays.
It was the primary motivating factor behind the previous major browser shift, though there were also other large factors.
Remember that users often don’t correctly figure out which part of the stack is causing something. I’m guessing people generally don’t ID the browser as the performance bottleneck unless they’re familiar with browsers of significantly differing speed, and when not it comes out as asking for faster internet, faster websites, or a faster computer, all of which we hear constantly.
I wouldn't say it's only speed.
I've been Firefox for years, but eventually ended up surrendering Apple eco-system. with Apple silicon, Firefox at least then wasn't sleeping that well, and the tab sync of FF between my devices was also less than I've desired.
So performance is general is more like it...
that includes not hurting my battery life.
I've used all 3 browsers (chrome/safari/ff) daily doing web dev for years now and I'm convinced Safari just feels faster as a cohesive Mac app, with the animations and what not, but isn't in general when using the internet day-to-day. FF is little different than Chrome/Safari.
Also as a dev Safari is becoming the new IE. I've had a whole suite of Safari-only bugs in the past 2yrs and lots of browser crash reports from users.
Hmm, I did switch to Safari from Firefox because I couldn't put up with how slow everything felt. Ironically I now find Safari quite laggy, whereas Orion or Brave with uBlock make for a better experience. I do agree most people either don't switch browsers or switch to something they heard is good. Maybe Kagi have better intel than us.
I have definitely switched in iOS to orion for the support of firefox and chrome extensions. Have not the slightest idea how different browsers in mobile compare in speed. But if it was abysmally slow I would have had seconds thoughts about it probably.
I switch(ed) for simplicity and privacy. Haven't found any yet. Camino and Firefox used to be that; and the browser on ElementaryOS (which IIRC was just a cleaned Firefox but not sure). Not anymore. Stopped using ElementaryOS, and every other browser collectively decided to aspire for FUBAR.
Now I think I'll just keep switching until there's one decent browser left which hasn't been AIed.
From my perspective, all browsers are fast enough and within a couple of percent the same performance. I value features, privacy, etc. More than raw speed.
A lot of people switched away from Firefox / IE to Chrome when it launched.
Orion is faster than Safari on the same Mac. And it isn't rendering speed, but basic UI interface, multi-tabs usage. It is annoying because you see what Webkit is capable of and somehow Apple is not doing such as great job for Mac Safari. The difference is especially true on x86 Mac.
I use Kagi as my daily driver on mobile, and have it constantly as my second browser (next to FF Dev) on desktop for the same reason I use Kagi Search, support of the concept. It doesn't hurt that the browser is pretty good performance and experience-wise.
Applications that use browser engines for rendering tend to be a bit sluggy compared to native applications, yes. But I don't think a common complaint is that a web browser as a standalone application is particularly slow either running or starting up. People tend to say stuff gets slow once they have a ton of tabs open, which makes sense.
Don't know how common it is, after all, people are used to all the slow stuff out there, maybe they don't even complaint when it's less frequent actions like opening a browser. Though at least for a ton of tabs, there are hibernating solutions, so very annoyed people can at least find a workaround, unlike with the unfixable startup delay
tbh, it's been 10 years I don't use Chrome... When I used Windows, my main browser was Edge, and was quite fast to open as far I remember, but I believe on Windows Edge stays open in background all the time anyway...
Also, what's "instantly", how much time exactly on a cold/hot start does it take after you press a key and a fully drawn/functional window is shown?
Checked on an old Windows desktop (hot start), and while the empty window is shown in 0.8 sec (not too slow, but still not instant, those would be some old native apps taking 4 times less time), the fully drawn/functional window takes 2-3 sec, so definitely nothing instant
Recently as in the last 8 years when they overhauled it. It really was slow as heck back in 2016, but the e10s effort really, really paid off in terms of performance.
It runs noticeably faster than chrome on my 12 year old laptop. Plus, it isn't riddled with invasive tracking garbage.
Even before then, 99% of the difference came down to whether chrome and firefox were properly using gpu acceleration. (Both could be easily misconfigured.)
I never saw a situation where the actual engine performance mattered in real world scenarios.
These days, all the engines are comparable, except that Google sabotages safari and firefox on its own sites.
I love Orion, but it's pretty unusable with 1Password set up - delay on keyboard input is unbearable with the extension enabled and it slows everything down significantly. I just ran a few benchmarks with BrowserBench Speedometer:
1Password extension disabled: 17
1Password extension enabled: 10 (and the test takes much longer)
Vivaldi with extension enabled: 25
I really, really want to move back to Orion as my daily driver but as a pretty heavy 1Password user this is absolutely a dealbreaker.
I opened this link intending to post exactly this. 1Password is just extremely broken on Orion. It's a testament to how much I like the browser that I'm still using it despite that (and despite the fact that Github was completely broken on Webkit this summer, but that's not Orion's fault).
I was in that camp, but then switched to Vivaldi and the experience is much better. Would love to move back to Orion since I do like just about everything else that it does better.
I have the same issue, but I also think their extension model is simply not cutting it. I run both Orion and Brave with uBlock, and the Orion experience is basically Safari's pitfalls + a slightly broken extension model.
Then again 1Password itself is problematic, from old bugs to the slowness of it all. I also dislike how their overlay thingie gets on top of everything, even form fields that make no sense. It's a bit pricey for the decrease in quality over time.
I have the same problem. I would move back (and even subscribe to) Orion if 1Password worked properly. I've tried it out a few times since it was originally released and it just didn't work well with 1P.
Yep! I gladly pay money for Kagi since it's great, but I'm not going to pay for a browser that's broken in fundamental ways. I'd be willing to pay for it if they start actually fixing long standing bugs like this.
I like the direction and keep checking in on it, but while Orion remains closed source there's no chance of it ever being more than a curiosity for me.
There's a lot of different reasons that people ask for open sourcing of Orion / software in general; could I ask you to expand a bit more as to which issues being open source would address for you?
I can assume of course, but I'd rather listen to you articulate it, even if it's usual reasons.
Trust with regards to...? Orion doesn't have any telemetry, doesn't force any updates on you, doesn't require any account. You can audit the application's behavior with standard tools to verify that it isn't "phoning home", etc., it doesn't need to be open source to do that, nor would making it open source obviate auditig the final executable anyways.
What do you perceive as the risk to "trusting" Orion in this case?
edit: Sandboxing the app also further reduces the surface area for "trust", though I'm unfamiliar with MacOS as a platform when it comes to that.
Personally, I have some software engineering skills. For me it’s about trust in your development team and product direction.
To be at least somewhat certain of the future, I want to own critical pieces of software, not rent it from someone no matter how benevolent-looking.
While things are well, I want to be able to contribute. There are myriads of minor things that your development teams would never get time to look into. If something is a wart, I might have skills to do it myself and - hopefully - ask you to incorporate my patches. I did that to a few pieces of software I trust and use, and I consider the ability to do this as fairly important, even though I do this very rarely.
And if things go sour, it could be impossible to keep up with long-term maintenance of this complex machinery but I still want that option open too. I want to know that if you folks decide to do something unpleasant to the browser, I’ll be able to begrudgingly take over and still fully own the software at least while I’m investigating the replacement options. Not be at someone’s else’s mercy.
To be persuaded otherwise, I need to be aware about your reasons for not providing users software freedoms and agree they’re serving our mutual interests.
(Needless to say, Orion is a very different product from Kagi Search, which is why I apply different set of requirements. I can switch search engines much more easily than user agent software.)
> it doesn't need to be open source to do that, nor would making it open source obviate auditig the final executable anyways
It doesn't need to be open source to do that, but it really helps. Ideally you'd publish source and have reproducible builds, so that users could look at the code to see that it's not doing anything objectionable and a handful of people could make sure that that code matched the official binaries.
> You can audit the application's behavior with standard tools to verify that it isn't "phoning home", etc.
Can you? Practically? Lots of programs are easy: You put them in a sandbox with zero network access, or very carefully restricted access, and that eliminates 90% of likely problems. But this is a web browser; it's purpose is to connect over the network, all day every day, to arbitrary, dynamic domains in large numbers, such that I would seriously question whether it is in fact practical to audit in a black-box approach.
It may not phone home now, but it can do it tomorrow, or it can in be enabled and immediately disabled in some minor releases.
Even if people didn't catch those shenanigans immediately it will be evident from the commit history. I'd say opensource forces certain discipline.
Also there is point of rugpull, or the product is getting cancelled. Few people will step up to maintain it; atleast until most users migrate to a different product.
As a paying kagi customer that uses orion, I’ll just point out that there’s a reason “enshittification” was the word of the year recently.
Much of it had to do with testimony during the Google antitrust trial. It’s hard to understand how Kagi wouldn’t be ultra-sensitive to guaranteeing there will be escape hatches if it enshittifies. (Your funding model is a great first step!)
>Orion doesn't have any telemetry, doesn't force any updates on you, doesn't require any account.
Source: "Trust me".
As another person mentioned, telemetry could be sent out Sundays @ 2:00am, so my use of standard tools to verify that it isn't phoning home on a Tuesday afternoon is useless. This is just one isolated example.
>it doesn't need to be open source to do that, nor would making it open source obviate auditig the final executable anyways.
Trust is not a single bit that is flipped from "Fully trust" to "Fully distrust". Things become more trustworthy when the source can be reviewed, and less trustworthy when an employee says "We don't do this, trust us, but we're keeping the box closed because ~reasons~".
In my eyes, Kagi has a lot of trust-building to do, despite being the darling child that can do no wrong in many HNers eyes (for whatever reason).
Browser handling is way more personal than any other piece of software. It need not be open source licensed but being able to compile and install it from source the exact binary (minus signing) is a huge plus is today's world. Otherwise is "not" doing much from chrome, brave, firefox etc of today. Open source would be cherry on top.
Trust of Kagi search is already there w.r.t both the tool and the company but it is not transferable to Trust to the Orion Browser.
It's relatively hard to audit a binary. You can audit the behavior of single runs, you can't nearly as easily audit the behavior of the program itself though. What if it pings only on Tuesdays, what if it does some sort of dns reach out that's a false positive for something else you didn't realize the browser was doing, what if there are platform specific differences in behavior.
The same goes for auditing the final executable. Open source gives two options on that: build it, trust it. The latter may seem 0 gain but, again, it is actually a big difference trying to audit a blackbox for every possible behavior vs seeing what the baseline behavior is supposed to be and looking if any differences occur in the premade binaries. There is a 3rd option: reproducible builds... but I doubt that's a reasonable goal in this case.
I'm not saying Kagi/Orion should necessarily care about providing that level of audibility, just that the response a pre-made binary is as trustable as a binary with its source code falls quite flat.
It really isn’t, and especially not when one of the browser’s unique selling points is its multi-browser extension compatibility that no other browser offers.
Also some of us simply don’t want to learn new UIs and/or risk dealing with an “AI” infused alternative if we have a tool that already Just Works. Switching away from Just Works sucks.
The worst part about opera dying was the email client imnho - and it wasn't trivial to find a replacement.
I'm not sure what I'd seek in a browser I'd pay for - but it would be features not present or great in foss browsers.
Maybe email, podcast, rss client, a modal vi like browsing (like vimperator, but first class), a good reader mode/style override, proper editor for text input (like "it's all text"), automatic force support for select text, save as... for images)...
But whatever would be useful enough to pay for, would likely be a pain to lose.
By pushing back on someone over trust, you’ve eliminated the interest I briefly held in evaluating Orion. It would’ve been far better to acknowledge the concern than nitpick it.
What? Since when was asking questions to clarify someones position considered "pushing back?"
Can you help me understand what about the questions make you uncomfortable?
I am completely unaffiliated with Kagi. I find it concerning that we've come to a world were we can't ask questions without it being taken as something hostile to the person/people/idea being questioned. Is that not what science is?
If you don’t think “you can just audit the binary with tools” is pushing back, then I don’t know what is, and especially so when you’ve framed the invitation with “I'd rather listen”.
I’m reminded of the number of times I’ve had vendors sit across the table from me and argue that our fixed requirements for <whatever> are just a preference or a nice-to-have. This generally doesn’t bode well for their prospects.
Fair enough. I personally did not read push back in the questions/statements asked/made.
> Trust with regards to...?
I took this to be a good faith ask for clarification
> Orion doesn't have any telemetry... You can audit the application's behavior with standard tools to verify that it isn't "phoning home", etc...
I took this as a statement if what I could do, not specifically what I should do instead of getting it open sourced.
Maybe I read it with more good faith intention and curiosity than I should have. I see your point on how that could be perceived as push back, but I landed somewhere different from where you might have.
That statement also said you have to audit binary even if the code is open source. Which isn't entirely true as other comments pointed out - reproducible builds - but the idea doesn't seem like pushing back to me. It was to point out that open source doesn't automatically imply any level of trust when it comes to security/privacy.
I'm assuming the people who are asking for Orion to be open source are not paying for it.
I think a blog post on Orion's transparency is enough. The fact that there is Orion+ is enough to warrant no need to have tracking or 'enshittification'.
If you like Kagi and Orion, supporting development by paying for it makes sense.
Open sourcing everything of Orion means that Orion+ will be open source which defeats the point of supporting development of Orion directly.
I've seen projects start open source, change to closed source and then add in the enshittification later. It doesn't matter if the code is 'open' the source code would eventually be unmaintained and have security holes which there is no time in the world for anyone else to maintain.
> I'm assuming the people who are asking for Orion to be open source are not paying for it.
I think this is an odd/slightly-disingenuous statement.
I mean, I'm on linux, so I'm not, I'm happily paying for kagi though, and would pay for Orion+ if it was available to me :)
I would also very much like it if Orion was open source, it would make me feel a lot better committing to and recommending a browser if I had actual assurances it's behaving appropriately, beyond a company saying "trust me", no matter how nice/cool they seem at the time.
Honestly, I kinda wish Orion+ was the only option, I think having a free option (and the incentives that can create) is kind of antithetical to Kagi's whole raison detre.
> I would also very much like it if Orion was open source, it would make me feel a lot better committing to and recommending a browser if I had actual assurances it's behaving appropriately, beyond a company saying "trust me", no matter how nice/cool they seem at the time.
Kagi isn't 100% open source but you still use it and recommend it?
How do you know they aren't spying on the backend?
There's not really a reasonable local alternative to running something like Kagi, so one kind of just have to hope for the best with the least shady looking option or not use web search at all. It would be nice if they at least had a 3rd party audit validate their privacy claims... but Kagi is at least a step in a better direction than any common search option, even if they might still actually be spying on you for all you know (and keep that in mind if you choose to use it).
The same is not true of browsers, to the extent you can even build/use privacy conscious versions of Google's browser project because Chromium is open source! To trade that away for closed source on the promise of another company who was only able to build a browser because of an open source engine is an unnecessary step backwards and should be bothering people, as much as Kagi appears like the nice company for now.
> I'm assuming the people who are asking for Orion to be open source are not paying for it.
I don't know about the others, but I'm an Orion+ lifetime purchaser just because I like what they are trying to do and it's a good phone browser for my work phone. I'm not sure I follow why specifically people who pay are supposed to be uninterested in it being open sourced?
> If you like Kagi and Orion, supporting development by paying for it makes sense.
> Open sourcing everything of Orion means that Orion+ will be open source which defeats the point of supporting development of Orion directly.
Sure, one should support the development costs. Can you elaborate why you feel that relates to Orion being freeware vs open source or why it defeats the point of Orion+? The two aren't differentiated by functionality, Orion+ is a token of development support.
> I've seen projects start open source, change to closed source and then add in the enshittification later. It doesn't matter if the code is 'open' the source code would eventually be unmaintained and have security holes which there is no time in the world for anyone else to maintain.
Open source isn't a promise that the code will be maintained forever, nothing can guarantee that, it's a promise if the company decides to go closed source the community can decide what to do. Or, even if you don't care about that, a promise of easy/public auditing and hacking. Just look how many Chromium/Firefox build customization, UI tweaks, and forks people have made despite the possibility Google stop contributing to Chromium in the future.
Only my 2c, but being able to modify commodity software (including, but not limited to browsers, text editors, etc.) I am running on my computer is table stakes.
Linux distro portability without having to rely on third-party package management like Flatpak. I'd prefer there'd be independent maintainers and packagers for Debian and Arch and all others.
I expect a lot of people saying trust. My reason is simpler - a browser is not like an email service, it's not like an IM, it's not like a social network, not that these as FOSS wouldn't be better, but a browser is literally the most fundamental end-user software to access the Internet and I don't want to bother spending even 10 mins to support another browser that is not FOSS. This sounds harsh but I am not shitting on Kagi or Orion. While I have not much positive views on Kagi Search either, I understand that and accept that and hence I acknowledge that, but the closed-source browser - nope! In some twisted way it feels like paying public taxes to build a private road. It's not a great analogy, I know, but that's the closest I could come to in terms of a connotation.
As much as I'd appreciate more open source for the sake of transparency, binaries provided on websites aren't guaranteed to match the source code provided and I'd assume most users are pulling binaries versus building themselves.
Practically every platform has multiple software stores these days and many FOSS stores make their build logs available. Some take it a step further and provide reproducible builds, which is more or less there as far as source to binary traceability and binary trustworthiness is concerned. These are good enough reasons to open up the source, ignoring the other advantages just this once.
This is true, and this is where trusted repositories come in.
I don't necessarily have to trust each individual app on fdroid or in the Debian repos. I have trust the maintainers are building them properly, and those people are not the same people developing the core app.
The ability to do so provides some protection. If someone pulls and builds and cannot reproduce the binaries, they can at least try to get the word out. Closed-source prevents even the opportunity. Even source-available is better than closed.
My concern is Kagi isn't/doesn't make as much as they need/hope to with their brand model. If they are ever disappointed in the results of building their brand, it's quite easy to see why they would be fine selling out.
Hell, WhatsApp started out as a privacy focused messaging app before selling out to Facebook/Meta. Now it's getting ads, nobody believes a privacy focus anymore, it's had a commercial message channel push, and so on. They are far from the first example of a tech company/product trading the mission/brand value for more money.
Bless the VLC developer for refusing offers for millions of dollars to put crap in VLC even though he knows the project could just be forked after and bless Gorhill for the same on uBO but the real trust in these things comes from the code being open source rather than faith the developers would never sell out.
tl;dr: I'm a tinkerer, an idealist, and someone who wants to retain control over my digital life and deny influence over it to the likes of Google, Apple, Meta, et al. at pretty much all costs, and there are absolutely good enough open source options that I couldn't bring myself to use a proprietary browser unless I absolutely have to.
To elaborate…
First off, there are a few reasons I always prefer to use open source software:
- I like being able to open things up, see how they work, chops bits off them, attach other things too them, use them in unexpected ways and general use (and abuse) them however I see fit. After all, I can do that with all the physical stuff I own, so why not the digital stuff too…?
- Code costs nothing to copy and is trivial to copy perfectly. This means that the potential compounding benefits of everyone sharing not only their complete software products but individual libraries, algorithms, and solutions to common (and not-so-common) problems are huge. When we use and contribute to open source software we help build those benefits for everyone.
- Closed source code is always open to being abandoned or moving in a direction we don't care for with nothing we can do about it. When it's open source, the question is "will I submit a PR", or "will I maintain a fork" (even if just for me). When it's closed, the question is "will I build a replacement". These are not the same category of thing! I can start running a fork any time[0]. Building a replacement may take months or years, if it's even feasible. But there are individuals who run their own fork of my favourite text editor (Helix).
- I'm a big believer in the value of communities and efforts made primarily for the benefit of one's community rather than financial gain. Open source can act as a kind of insurance against the latter.
Secondly, I think this is all uniquely important for browsers because the web is so dominant and it's therefore so important to me (and I think to Kagi's mission) to protect that platform for everyone, for all time. Even though Chromium and Webkit are open source, Google and Apple exert huge influence and control through their ownership of Chrome and Safari. Firefox is better but even that project is not free of Google's influence, which is steadily making the web worse for everyone.
Kagi probably won't be the next Google, in that respect. As a long time payed user of Kagi[1], I really do believe they want to build a good browser that does not abuse an exploit it's users. But Google's motto used to be "Don't be evil", and many of us believed that for a while too. My point is not that Kagi will or is likely to become evil, it's that when Firefox/Zen, ungoogled Chromium, and maybe one day Ladybird and others exist, *I can't invest time, effort, and attention into something that could in theory go down such a path without the community even retaining the option to fork it[2]. This is especially true when using a closed source browser would also simultaneously weaken those more open efforts, however slightly, by subtracting from their community.
So there you have it. I hope that's helpful.
[0] Case in point: I've used Firefox for years. Sometime last year I start using Zen (a fork/derivative of Firefox) alongside it with no drama or fanfare. Now I rarely open Firefox.
[1] Honestly, I couldn't imagine going back. It's a genuinely excellent product and I believe the company is generally doing, and certainly trying to do the right thing.
[2] Just look at the cautionary tale/disaster that is Arc/Dia. For a while I was worried I was missing out on something special. Then Zen came a long and I worried less. Then the whole Dia thing… boy am I glad I didn't invest my time in that.
What's the bug situation? It sucked last I checked, over a year ago.
Is there a way to get a useful visualization like a burndown chart out of their bug tracker? The people who have created it seem unaware that one important task of such a tracker is to reveal the big picture and help answer questions like "Is the project getting better or worse?" They should study the Github Insights tab. https://orionfeedback.org/
I've tried Orion a couple of times. I even used it as my default browser for ~3 months about two years ago. Most recently, I tried to use it again about 2 months ago, but it still had loads of bugs and, most of all, was painfully slow.
The truth is, Orion being based off of WebKit comes with the obvious limitation that....it's based off of WebKit! So much slower than chrome or firefox, and plagued with decisions that are just not to my taste. For example, just the way it behaves when I hit the back button (or, rather, when I swipe back) feels incredibly sluggish. Loading is often terrible, with constant repaints of the screen as well. A bunch of websites don't work properly either.
The only true reason why I wanted Orion to work was because I wanted a browser that would be good for my battery life and "optimized for the mac". But, since then, I've realized I don't really use the battery that much (or that I don't notice it being a problem), and that, whatever "optimized for the mac" means, it definitely isn't speed.
After Arc went around and poo-pooed on its users, I migrated to Zen (I did try Orion again, like I mentioned). Zen is also filled with bugs, but at least I don't want to throw my computer out the window because of it being slow.
WebKit is not slower than Chrome/FF, this is just plain wrong, they tend to trade off over the years and over the last 5 years WebKit spent much of the time on top of a significant amount of the benchmarks people care about.
It's also by far the most resource efficient, especially on Mac, though Chrome invested heavily more recently to close the gap.
Overall in terms of "feel", Safari is hands down the best browser in terms of performance.
Maybe it's a matter of the websites I use and my specific usage patterns.
I've used many browsers throughout the years: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Arc, Zen, Orion. For many years I ran safari because it was so energy-efficient and the integration was absolutely great. I would LOVE to get back to safari!...
For my usage patterns, though, Safari is noticeably slower and much more sluggish. I can't really put it any other way.
Things that are pretty terrible for me in Safari: YouYube, Google Docs, GitHub diff viewer, just to name a few. Safari was also noticeably terrible on pages that do HTML animations via JS and not CSS (they shouldn't do it, but they do, and I can instantly tell on Safari).
I will add that although I did have Safari as my main browser several years ago, it was never for its speed. It felt "OK" in terms of speed (a bit slower, but not too noticeable back then), but it felt AMAZING in terms of better life and OS integration.
Man I wrote out a whole reply but accidentally closed it... anyway Youtube I use daily never had an issue, GH had a real bug but was caused by them just refusing to fix a specific issue. Beyond that I've never had any site that gave me trouble. I do make heavy animations all the time for websites, and Chrome is often a bit better there but only at pretty extreme limits.
Meanwhile as a daily driver though Safari hands down feels better. Every little thing feels faster from browser open/close, page open/close, tab open/close/switch, scroll, text selection, window resize smoothness, just the e2e experience is so much smoother in so many ways. Yes heavy JS/animations maybe marginally slower, but even in benchmarks it's very close.
Yeah, imo, it’s nowhere near ready for 1.0. I was a big advocate for this browser but recently changed because of exactly this. That, and it’s very slow after having it running constantly, I found myself routinely quitting and re-opening it every hour or two to get normal speed back, or my RAM for that matter.
Thank you offering Orion outside the App Store. I am excited to try it. But where is the offline installer? If you don't collect data, why does the "installer", that has already been downloaded from the internet, need to again connect to the internet to download the browser, which is what the "installer" should already be having within it??
Good point. The world however has made me cynical, and I prefer full offline installers. One of the (many) reasons is that I also tend to save the full installers, of softwares I like, in case they suddenly disappear from the web.
Yeah, except it's pure bullshit. I'm actually a tiny bit irritated they worded it like this because it's insultingly misleading.
"From day one, we made the deliberate choice to build Orion on WebKit, the open‑source engine at the heart of Safari and the broader Apple ecosystem."
Chromium's Blink is based on Webkit and was for YEARS. While Blink and Webkit had some major differences now, it's not Webkit that's the better core now.
They picked Webkit because it's fast and easy, what ships on both MacOS and iOS. They couldn't put an alternative engine in the iOS and distribute it outside of Europe, so they stuck with webkit. For an Apple-only application, it's a smart choice for fast development, but it's NOT an act of resistance AT ALL. It's completely caving to Apple.
This is not a bold new choice in the browser space, it's just another privacy focused Webkit browser. That's great, but pretending this is sticking it to the man is delusional.
I'm curious about your definition of "better". It's nice that Google is catching up to Safari on Speedometer benchmarks (Blink was 20% slower a year ago), so at minimum one can appreciate Safari for being the mechanical hare that triggers Google's prey instinct. Bun chose WebKit's JavaScriptCore for performance reasons. Safari's supposedly-poor support for web standards is mostly Google propaganda.
Amongst many other things, I need to deal with web sites and webapps, and without fail Safari users are the ones who hit the most bugs. Sometimes to the point I'll straight up state ahead of time that we will not spend extra time supporting Safari on MacOS. If it's propaganda, then it's incredibly effective.
Google propaganda or not, Mac owners aren't sticking with this "superior" preeinstalled browser tech. And I get it, as a Linux user I find WebKit intolerable compared with Blink and even Gecko.
Installing Chrome on MacOS is a cargo cult thing. Devs tell everyone to install Chrome, and everyone tells everyone else to install Chrome. (Except some devs who tell some friends to install Firefox.)
Zero devs say install Safari, it's already there. And there's no hip narrative for just using what's there even though it saves energy, protects privacy, seamlessly works across devices, and more.
Safari's problem: it doesn't signal tech savvy (Chrome) or anti-establishment (Firefox).
I don't think using an engine that's equally controlled by a different big evil corporation is exactly an act of resistance. I don't disagree with their decision, but c'mon.
I've attempted to switch to Orion on iOS a few times in the past and could never quite stick with it due to reliability issues. I'm giving it another try now to see if this 1.0 release gets it over that hurdle. Vivaldi is still a lot more polished than Orion on mobile, but Orion's support for Chrome extensions is a pretty compelling feature. I'm a very happy Kagi search user, so I'm rooting for them to succeed here.
We rewrote a large part of the code to make it more reliable and faster.
I suggest downloading version 1.4, which just came out, to see for yourself (even if a few fixes related to Liquid Glass still need to be fixed ... by Apple). https://apps.apple.com/us/app/orion-browser-by-kagi/id148449...
I see this sentiment expressed often here, but I have never experienced a single issue using Orion on iOS. I've been using it for 3-4 months now. With uBlock Origin it actually makes it possible to use the web on iOS.
It's the only browser I remember crashing (not a page, the app itself) from time to time and has a few less critical ones. Like the latest version made it impossible to view what you type in a url field untill a few restarts made it just have the wrong position with the keyboard visible
But also, what ublock origin??? It doesn't work on iOS even if you can install it, are you not mixing it up with their internal adblocker or something else? Just checked and disabled all images, works on a desktop, fails in Orion ios, images are still visible
I often see the inverse of this - tabs I've closed spontaneously reappear in later sessions. Wish they would put a little more polish into the iOS version, but for lack of better alternatives, I still use it.
I have nearly 1000 tabs open in Orion on my iPhone and have never had this happen. If they were falling off the front of the list I'd still notice the count going down.
this is a macOS release, ios is already past 1, it's 1.4.0
Though I've made the mistake of updating it following this announcement, and now I couldn't even type the url since the url bar didn't jump up to be on top of a keyboard. After a few restarts it does jump up, but it's still positioned incorrectly, either too high or too low depending on the keyboard
So yea, unfortunately, not reliable yet...
I want to be able to sync Orion with Firefox. I use non Apple operating systems on some computers, and I would love to have Orion sync with Firefox on them.
I would understand this project much better on Windows, which:
1. Doesn't have an established WebKit browser, which 110% sucks due to issues with testing for Mac and iOS. This is a long standing issue.
2. Relies on a Chromium-based browser with its own integrity issues, as well as a Microsoft approach to telemetry.
I don't associate Safari nearly as much to neither invasive telemetry, tracking, or ads beyond those on the web, nor poor performance on Mac. In fact, I often find it excellent especially in terms of battery life, and Safari has integrated content blocking and tracking protections. Maybe not as powerful as here (?) but telling of Apple's approach to caring for this.
Edit: I saw there's work on Windows support. That's good news. IMHO, this browser should be Windows-first. It makes far more sense there to me. But maybe you like Mac more as a platform?
I love everything about Orion except it steals focus when I click a link in e-mail or another application. Does anyone know if there's a way to change the behavior to be like Safari's background link behavior?
Remember around the early 2000s, every company had a toolbar you could install in your browser? They’d do search, news, IM, plugins, all kinds of things… on many occasions they’d try to squeeze entire websites into these things. You could install more than one toolbar. Some were malware, but there were toolbars that promised security and privacy too (though probably still malware by today’s standards).
Well, if you’ve seen one of those screenshots where 80% of the screen was toolbars and only a fraction left for the viewport … that’s a bit how I feel now when I look at the landscape of browsers today.
Browsers… everywhere, each one trying to grab your attention long enough so you give them clicks, cookies, “anonymised” search queries and who knows what else…
There are no more browsers that fight for the user.
I'm a happy Kagi subscriber and look forward to Orion on Linux. Every well supported browser other than Chrome is a win.
I'd love Kagi to fund people working full time on web standards in the W3C and WHATNG, too.
I've been mainlining Orion on my iOS devices for a while now, over a year. Certainly have some issues here and there but overall it's been a solid experience for me, glad to see this hit 1.0. Congrats to the Orion team!
My favorite feature by far is the ability to disable the stupid "hide the address bar if you're not scrolled all the way to the top of a page" behavior every mobile browser does.
I switched to Orion from Safari a few months ago and so far loving it. I tried Orion a couple of years ago but it wasn't as reliable. Now it seems very stable and the kagi search integration is really nice.
On a side note - I don't know why Apple still doesn't let you set a custom search engine in Safari even today, so random.
Same. Sadly haven't been able to find a working twitch ad mute extension after they made latest anti adblock changes. At least Youtube Live is still in growth phase so I don't get ads there yet
Really liked orion when trying it out but extensions that changed the theme (namely using dark mode with RES) flashed the original theme first, so I was getting flash banged any time I changed the page.
There was a bug[0] for this that was marked as done but I tried after the fact and it was still happening. And looking at the comments on that report suggest I am not the only one still experiencing it.
If it weren’t for that I would probably be using it as my daily browser.
Yes, but Orion uses WebKit intentionally on desktop as well, unlike Chrome or Firefox which use their own engines on desktop but WebKit on iOS, so it's a bit different in this case.
Yes, at least outside of the EU. However, companies don't seem to be developing for it yet, probably due to the investment not being worth it until similar laws are more widespread. However, Orion in also on macOS, which does allow other engines. And Kagi is developing Orion for Linux and Windows.
This looks neat but the biggest question I have and care about... UBO? Not the limited manifest v3 version or whatever it's referred to as, but the full bore block lists like in FF.
> Because something fundamental has been lost.
> Zero telemetry, privacy‑first access to the internet: a basic human right.
> We believe there needs to be a different path: a browser that answers only to its user.
So basically they have just re-invented Firefox Focus and/or Mullvad Browser ?
Disable Daily Ping and Crash Reports in Firefox Focus and you too have a telemetry-free browser on iOS.
I dropped firefox 9 months so after they updated their privacy policy and removed "we don't sell your data" from their FAQ.
Besides, it doesn't seem like I'm able to install sponsorblock, ublockock origin etc on iOS firefox. I love using sponsorblock and several other add-ons from both Mazzella in chrome in Orion on my phone.
> I dropped firefox 9 months so after they updated their privacy policy and removed "we don't sell your data" from their FAQ.
"Firefox" != "Firefox Focus"
Please do not conflate the two.
> it doesn't seem like I'm able to install sponsorblock, ublockock origin etc on iOS firefox
There are other options though. For example a DoH DNS profile pointing at DNS servers that do that for you (for example Mullvad's `adblock.dns.mullvad.net` DNS servers).
Mozilla has hired a lot of execs from Meta and bought an ad company, looking through a lot of their privacy policy at the time, a lot of it involves rewriting it to say that they can serve you sponsored suggestions when you're searching for things in their search bar and stuff and sharing out some of that data with third parties etc.
Firefox was bringing in half a billion a year for the last decade, if they would've just invested that money in low risk money market accounts (instead of paying their csuite executives millions of dollars in salary and putting the rest on non-Firefox related related social causes), the company would be able to easily survive off the interest alone.
I've been using Firefox since like 2006 and have defended it for decades even when they've made questionable decisions that have gotten everybody upset with them. But this time it wasn't just making stupid decisions to try and fund the company, this time they actuality sold out their own customers.
In public announcement in the above link explaining why they removed "we don't sell your data" from the FAQ, the rationality was that some jurisdictions define selling data weirdly, they cited California's definition as an example but California's definition is exactly what I would consider the definition of selling my personal data.
They're justifying this by saying that they need it to stay alive since they're not going to be getting money from Google anymore, but I argue that you shouldn't sell out your customer base on the very specific reason anyone would choose you. I would rather pay a monthly fee to use Firefox to support them, but even if you gave them $500 million today they would just squander it away like they've done since forever so I really don't have any solution I can think of which frustrates me.
It's absolutely Firefox that I'm trying to avoid completely at this point.
> There are other options though. For example a DoH DNS profile pointing at DNS servers that do that for you (for example Mullvad's `adblock.dns.mullvad.net` DNS servers
DNS adblock doesn't automatically skip sponsored segments of videos like sponsorblock does.
Because their blog makes a big song and dance about the items I quoted above as the answer to their self-imposed question "why the heck do we need a new browser?".
They are saying "we need a new browser" because "Zero telemetry, privacy‑first access has been lost".
However the reality is that zero-telemetry has NOT been lost. It is there in Firefox Focus, Mullvad Browser and doubtless others too.
Therefore, I quite rightly am returning to their question "why the heck do we need a new browser?".
Because "there are no zero telemetry browsers" is factually incorrect as an answer to their headline question.
At the very least they should address their competitor products and why they consider themselves different. Don't just bury your head in the sand and pretend your product has no competitors.
But really they should have picked a better headline topic to base their blog on.
Is there any info with a bit more details on extensions on the desktop version? More specifically, is Orion going to have its own extension ecosystem? Is it compatible with chrome or FF extensions? If it is gonna be its own thing, are there dev docs available anywhere?
Asking because I’ve read the article, and I noticed extensions being mentioned a few times (including in one of the subchapter titles). However, I couldn’t find any actual info about extensions there.
Orion is compatible with a large number of extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
Not all of them work, and yes, we plan to offer documentation for creating extensions that are immediately compatible with Orion.
To be clear, I didn't mean for my original comment to be a dig at Orion at all. I am just genuinely excited for it, but an extension ecosystem is something I value a lot in a browser. So I was a little bit miffled, when the original post namedropped extensions, but didn't provide any details beyond that.
However, thanks for clarifying the current state of affairs in terms of extensions, and I am eagerly looking forward to checking out the docs.
Orion has been trying to integrate / extend the WebExtensions API to its fork of webkit, with a goal to make uBlock Origin 100% compatible in Orion. It's still a work in progress ...
I wish it touched on its approach to very common finger printing data. Does it send browser window size? Your time zone? Your OS? The languages you've previously chosen to translate?
Unless it meaningfully closes the loop on not sending data to fingerprint with, I'm not sure "zero telemetry" is really a selling point at all
I switched my mobile browser to Orion a few weeks ago and it's so great to have built-in support for Kagi. Before, I'd have to manually go to the Kagi page when I wanted to search for something since Safari doesn't support custom search engines.
Currently looking to switch from Arc to Orion. The one thing I'm gonna miss is Arc's Portrait Mode.
I love the profiles feature of Safari. I find it a bit odd that profiles are entire browser instances in Orion, unlike Safari which I find a lot easier to use. Maybe I just need to get use to it…
I hope I don't come across too harsh in my criticism here, but this is in my wheelhouse and I like to keep tabs on the privacy browser market in comparison to Waterfox.
> A bold technical choice: WebKit, not another Chromium clone
I don't find this a bold technical choice at all for a macOS only browser? I think this would be more impressive if it was Windows as well, as back (maybe ~5 or so years ago) when I was investigating WebKit on Windows, builds were not on an equal playing field[1]. So the engineering to get that up and running would be impressive.
> Speed by nature
Unfortunately, as of 16:40 UTC, I am unable to run the browser (installer?) to benchmark it due to "An error occurred while parsing the update feed.", but I recall 2 years ago when I tested Orion it was the slowest of all the browsers on macOS and Safari had quite a lead. I'd also be curious, being based on WebKit, how much faster it will actually be on macOS vs Safari?
I dropped speed as a focus point on Waterfox after compilation flags started making less of a difference compared to the actual architectural changes Mozilla were making for Firefox.
> Privacy etc
I think comparing to other major browsers such as Chrome the points are valid, but against Safari I'm not convinced it holds up as much. I know there is some telemetry related to Safari, but privacy is a big selling point for Safari as well and I'd be curious to see actual comparisons to that?
Safari includes iCloud Privacy Relay (MPR based on MASQUE[2]) and Oblivious DNS[3] - arguably two very valuable features that a company at a scale like Apple can subsidise.
The entire AI section also feels like trying to have it both ways as well. They criticise other browsers for rushing AI features, position themselves as the "secure" alternative, then immediately say they'll integrate AI "as it matures." This reads more like "we're behind on AI features" than a principled stance. If security is the concern, explain your threat model and what specific architectural decisions you're making differently? Currently Firefox has kept AI out of the "browser core" as it's been put, and I don't see them ever changing that.
Kudos that they have >2000 people paying for the browser directly, but I will say it doesn't excite me to see another closed source browser entering the market (I don't see any mention here of open-source apart from mention of WebKit being open source).
I do realise this is more a marketing post than an actual technical deep dive, but so much is just a rehash of every feature almost every modern web browser has?
I'll keep updating this comment as and when I can explore the browser itself a bit more.
WebKit on Windows has progressed since ~5 years ago. The gap between the Windows port and the Linux WPE/GTK ports is shrinking over time.
Every JIT tier has been enabled for JSC on Windows[1], and libpas (the custom memory allocator) has been enabled.
The Windows port has moved from Cairo to Skia, though it's currently using the CPU renderer AFAIK. There's some work to enable the COORDINATED_GRAPHICS flag which would enable Windows to benefit from Igalia's ongoing work on improving the render pipeline for the Linux ports. I go into more detail on my latest update [2], though the intended audience is really other WebKit contributors.
Webkit's CI (EWS) is running the layout tests on Windows, and running more tests on Windows is mostly a matter of test pruning, bug fixes and funding additional hardware.
There's a few things still disabled on the Windows port, some rough edges, and not a lot of production use (Bun and Playwright are the main users I'm aware of). The Windows port really needs more people (and companies) pushing it forward. Hopefully Kagi will be contributing improvements to the Windows port upstream as they work on Orion for Windows.
I tried Orion before and It was good to me. The closed-source part It is also something I don't like. I wish they do the browser open-source. I want to see if they use rust underneath :p.
Although, let's be honest few people look at the entire codebase. However i believe It would be beneficial to make It open-source for them so they could have contributors. Also new features would be easier to add. For example, i know some protocols like Multicast QUIC which was almost impossible to be added in Safari and Chrome.
By the way, I am trying right now Orion on MacOS and it goes quite fast as now. Actually, it is faster than Firefox at least when trying against speed.cloudflare.com under a VPN. Nonetheless the speed difference is not significant.
Also, there are two features which I would like to know/see in Orion:
- I use quite a lot the Containers and Group tabs in Firefox. The containers allow me to have different active accounts in the same browser. I use it a lot when managing AWS accounts.
- Change the behaviour of Cmd+Shift+F to be the same as Firefox, doing the full screen instead of the hide the tabs.
Extensions still default to the English language, this is a bug I reported two years ago and it's still there... kinda disappointed. Not everyone uses or wants to use English.
The iOS/iPad builds have been getting a bit… rough on their adblocking lately.
For some reason, Orion is now getting slammed by Ad-Shield on my iPad on so many blogs and sites it’s not even funny. Endless “an error occured loading this page” blaming my ad blocker.
I'd love to use Orion but it's just too buggy for me. I downloaded the iOS app to try it out and immediately noticed that when typing in the URL bar, three quarters of it is covered by the toolbar above the keyboard.
I've seen similar issues with Japanese keyboards. If you can please share some details on your setup here or on orionfeedback.org so we can investigate further. Thank you.
I used it on and off many times. I think the main reason has always been able to run extensions in “safari”. Can’t remember what made me switch back, probably integration, or not having Linux versions? I’ll give it another try!
>While doing so, it expands Kagi ecosystem of privacy-respecting, user-centric products (that we have begun fondly naming “Kagiverse”) to now include: Search, Assistant, Browser, Translate, News with more to come.
Are people really interested in those other than Search?
>A bold technical choice: WebKit, not another Chromium clone
Only real choice for iOS so not sure what the bold choice is for an Apple-centric browser.
I don't speak for everyone obviously but if they only provided search and it led to a lower price I'd be happy. I say this as a user of Orion (iOS); I really only use it because it's half-decent and supports uBO (though it feels pretty buggy and I'm not totally sure it's working most of the time...I really do wish more people were squashing bugs, it seems like a very small team).
I know speed to market is important, but it's always a huge turn off to see new desktop apps be non multi-platform. It makes me question if other OS platforms are really a priority, even if they get added later.
They use webkit, so macos/ios was the natural place to start, but they have started working on a linux version. If they had gone to make another chromium fork they could have probably have it multiplatform by now, but I am glad they did not.
Orion for Linux and windows is actually a huge thing. I'm sick of having to choose between chromium clone and gecko clone, I find WebKit to be very efficient and Orion on my Mac was very good.
The only reason I didn't use it is because safari, I already paid for all the extension i need and I found safari to be better on iphone. But compared to Firefox or chrome, this is so much better.
my initial, 15min impression is.. wow so much to like here! It feels very snappy, really nice UI, supports "real" version of uBlock Origin, has built-in Vertical Tabs with nesting and Tab Groups, and also the iOS-like grid of tabs if you prefer.
What I don't like: Seems like no way to disable two-finger back/forward gesture? I hate that one and managed to disable a similar feature in Chrome. Also either it doesn't have any kind of Developer Tools, or I couldn't find it yet in my 15min speedrun. (edit: found it)
I really love to hate Safari (extensions, ad blocking, dev tools amongst many other reasons) but love using a non chromium browser.
I discovered Orion a few years back and it has been my go-to standalone browser but never strong enough to be my primary browser.
So many daily drivers of mine refuse(d) to work from time to time (1P, Netflix, Youtube, Slack, Gmaps, Hey & the list goes on). I eventually started relying on Orion RC instead of Orion to band-aid fix these problems.
I truly hope they succeed but a few hours of driving the 1.0, it doesn't feel like a 1.0 yet.
I'm a keen Orion user, and general Kagi user - early adopter since June 2022 (So kool-aid? ;-) )
That said, I have Chrome installed for mandated office work (profile managed by IT ;-( ), Brave for LinkedIn & YouTube... but for everything else I use Orion.
Recent versions have been rock solid, and it does exactly what it says on the tin.
My only gripe is that the favourites bar isn't right-click editable like Chrome or Brave - assume this is down to Webkit.
Apart from that, joy to use and develop against.
I think there's just an instinctual draw to building a new browser, partly because so much of our modern software is dependent on web apps. Not sure if SerenityOS has been progressing as much as it originally did now that Andreas is all enamored with Ladybird.
A large % of desktop Windows installations are on employer-owned/managed hardware. And the % of users who are interested in trying newer alternate browsers and/or care about privacy also skews heavily away from Windows. So it might be more rational than it first seems.
> A large % of desktop Windows installations are on employer-owned/managed hardware
What's a "large %"?
> And the % of users who are interested in trying newer alternate browsers and/or care about privacy also skews heavily away from Windows
I mean, enterprise users wouldn't try anything new of course, but I don't see the relevance to Windows. Would enterprise Mac users be any more inclined to try new things?
Mac users pay for quality software. Linux users would never pay for anything. Windows users only pay for video games and corporate software if they're a corporation.
So that's why boutique software makers always focus on Mac first.
Well, paying money for consumer apps/services (besides games) has always seemed a bit more normalized in the iOS ecosystem, and I imagine it must be a _somewhat_ simpler interface than the lovecruftian monolith of windows-N
saying this as a Linux user, I've never owned an apple device in my life (nor do I want to)
Sure, but Kagi isn't a Mac shop; their only source of revenue is subscriptions. Majority of their desktop customers must be Windows users too. So, their prioritization just looks strange to me.
> Most people switch browsers for one reason: speed.
Is that true? Maybe it is and I'm out of the loop but I can't remember the last time someone complained about browser speed. The bottleneck seems to be website bloat more than anything else. Would love to see this argument quantified.
Nowadays users switch browsers to escape from AI nonsense. But in all seriousness, just enabling an ad-blocker significantly increases the speed of the browser, because, as you correctly noticed, website bloat is the largest bottleneck. And usually "raw" website content is only small fraction of all other stuff that gets loaded from various remote sources to show you ads and track you better. And to take speed point even further - disabling JavaScript does wonders to website speeds, you won't believe how quickly some websites are loading. Logging in to banking website might not work at all, though.
I've been playing Dragon Age Origins recently, and I've been popping into the Steam overlay browser to look up some stuff, which frequently leads me to the wiki. And oh my god, I can't believe how bad the internet is without adblock these days. Every page visit, it pops up ginormous video ads that cover 90% of the web page, and it needs to chug along to get the initial render done before I can collapse it.
Fandom.com is terrible for this.As are their business practices.
Check out Indie Wiki Buddy: https://getindie.wiki
It uses a Free frontend to display Fandom pages, and suggests an alternative non-Fandom wiki when available.
Orion already weighs 100 MB less than Chrome. You will probably already feel this difference every time you launch it.
> You will probably already feel this difference every time you launch it.
How many times a day / week / month do you launch your browser from scratch ?
It is also a moot point with modern processors and modern OSs.
Even more so in Orion's target macOS market where you can leave an app open without any windows open (not minimized, I mean not open at all) , so its ready to go at a click.
> How many times a day / week / month do you launch your browser from scratch ?
Every morning / day across multiple machines. I don't leave them sleeping or hibernated.
Don't think I'd notice a slightly faster browser start; a 50% faster start would be nice though.
> How many times a day / week / month do you launch your browser from scratch ?
Personally, around 5 times per day, every day. When I don't browse, I close the browser
Unless you are regularly using all your RAM, there is a very good chance the browser's files are going to stay in disk cache and be effectively instant to load. 100MB is an imperceptible load time difference on a modern system where memory speed is 50-100GB/s or more.
When all my windows are in one big stack (Windows, macOS), then multiple windows just get in the way and I’d agree.
But over the last couple months using better window managers like sway or niri, I tend to open new app/browser windows next to the windows they are related to.
It’s pretty nice for mental organization.
[flagged]
It was true, and it was what made Google Chrome popular in the first place. Internet Explorer and Firefox were dead slow to start at the time while Chrome started instantly.
We just don’t know how bad slow browsers can be because all others have caught up.
That was a funny period of time because you could very transparently see the clear application of a corporate team that was tasked with improving the “startup speed KPI”.
During that time IE startup time went from a dozen or so seconds to also instantaneous. It was even faster than chrome sometimes. But that was just the startup. The application wasn’t ready to accept any user input or load anything for another 10 or 15 seconds still. Sometimes it would even accept input for a second then block the input fields again.
It’s the same mentality all those insanely slow webapps do when they think some core react feature for a “initial render” or splash screen etc will save them from their horrific engineering practices.
Google did a great job communicating Chrome's improvements over speed (both with startup and prefetch) and reliability (isolated and sandboxed tabs) during its launch. When you saw it, you knew that it was basically game over for any browser that had chosen to stagnate until then. They destroyed the competition.
It wasn't just the startup time. They published regular updates to v8 speed which sparked the nodejs project.
I think Google gained more users with its aggressive advertising campaign than with its speed (except for power users). If someone used a Google product like search, email or youtube in a non-google browser, Google would always show an ad encouraging them to switch to Chrome.
At the time, the argument for Chrome was that Firefox and IE were bloated and their memory requirements were too high.
A system with less than 64 Megabytes of RAM (most computers of the time) would have to lean heavily on spinning rust virtual memory, making everything slow.
However, since then Chrome has become one of the biggest memory hogs that people commonly run.
Chrome was launched in 2008. At that time it was commmon to have 2~4GB of RAM.
Windows Vista, for example, required 512MB but really needed 1GB or more to work.
A year latter, in 2009, Windows 7 was launched, it required 1GB at minimum, but really needed 4GB or more.
I don't think lean memory use was the biggest claim Chrome had made. That was the game between IE and Firefox. Google had specifically promoted faster startup times, faster web browsing experience, and tab isolation / sandboxing so a crashing tab wouldn't bring down other tabs with it.
Ouch. When computers had 64 MB of RAM, Firefox did not even exist yet.
Netscape 6, which was released in 2000 and based on the Mozilla Suite (now SeaMonkey) recommended 64MB of RAM. The Mozilla Suite was the basis of the Phoenix project (later renamed to Firefox) and they shared the same technological underpinnings: Gecko engine, SpiderMonkey JS engine, XUL interface, XPCOM, etc. Phoenix/Firefox was about using the Mozilla technology to deliver just a browser, independent of the suite, with aim of being lighter weight. So while Firefox didn't exist yet its heavier predecessor did.
Unless it's ungodly slow, to the point where it's beyond being noticeable, speed is the last thing I care about when it comes to browser. Most of the options available are reasonably fast and differences are not huge enough.
Gentle reminder that if you're commenting on hacker news articles you are likely the outlier in the "why people switch browsers" reasoning. Friends and family constantly surprise me with their tech choices and how they interface with the digital world whenever I'm home on holidays.
“My friend told me Chrome was faster”
It was the primary motivating factor behind the previous major browser shift, though there were also other large factors.
Remember that users often don’t correctly figure out which part of the stack is causing something. I’m guessing people generally don’t ID the browser as the performance bottleneck unless they’re familiar with browsers of significantly differing speed, and when not it comes out as asking for faster internet, faster websites, or a faster computer, all of which we hear constantly.
I wouldn't say it's only speed. I've been Firefox for years, but eventually ended up surrendering Apple eco-system. with Apple silicon, Firefox at least then wasn't sleeping that well, and the tab sync of FF between my devices was also less than I've desired.
So performance is general is more like it... that includes not hurting my battery life.
I've used all 3 browsers (chrome/safari/ff) daily doing web dev for years now and I'm convinced Safari just feels faster as a cohesive Mac app, with the animations and what not, but isn't in general when using the internet day-to-day. FF is little different than Chrome/Safari.
Also as a dev Safari is becoming the new IE. I've had a whole suite of Safari-only bugs in the past 2yrs and lots of browser crash reports from users.
I haven't had these issues with Safari. What types of applications are you writing? What web technologies are they relying on?
Hmm, I did switch to Safari from Firefox because I couldn't put up with how slow everything felt. Ironically I now find Safari quite laggy, whereas Orion or Brave with uBlock make for a better experience. I do agree most people either don't switch browsers or switch to something they heard is good. Maybe Kagi have better intel than us.
(Safari with adblocker, of course.)
I have definitely switched in iOS to orion for the support of firefox and chrome extensions. Have not the slightest idea how different browsers in mobile compare in speed. But if it was abysmally slow I would have had seconds thoughts about it probably.
On iOS its all WebKit anyway (for most regions).
Or seconds to think about it
True. I could probably catch more typos if I had to wait looking at a comment for 2 minutes before finally getting posted.
I wasn't correcting you, it's just how I read it and I realized it worked just as well.
Website bloat also slows you down cognitively, not just in load time.
I switch(ed) for simplicity and privacy. Haven't found any yet. Camino and Firefox used to be that; and the browser on ElementaryOS (which IIRC was just a cleaned Firefox but not sure). Not anymore. Stopped using ElementaryOS, and every other browser collectively decided to aspire for FUBAR.
Now I think I'll just keep switching until there's one decent browser left which hasn't been AIed.
People switch browsers because they are accidentally tricked by a dark pattern in Windows 11 to do so.
From my perspective, all browsers are fast enough and within a couple of percent the same performance. I value features, privacy, etc. More than raw speed.
A lot of people switched away from Firefox / IE to Chrome when it launched.
Orion is faster than Safari on the same Mac. And it isn't rendering speed, but basic UI interface, multi-tabs usage. It is annoying because you see what Webkit is capable of and somehow Apple is not doing such as great job for Mac Safari. The difference is especially true on x86 Mac.
It is definitely the features that draw me to trying new browsers. The difference in a few milliseconds is not a big deal to me.
I use Kagi as my daily driver on mobile, and have it constantly as my second browser (next to FF Dev) on desktop for the same reason I use Kagi Search, support of the concept. It doesn't hurt that the browser is pretty good performance and experience-wise.
I switch browsers a couple times a day for one reason: compatibility.
That’s how often I find myself having to do something in a web app that only supports Chrome. Meet the new IE, same as the old IE…
The last time most people changed browsers, it was to Chrome, and it was related to speed. But that was over a decade ago.
Browsers are slow to startup, that's a common complaint for various browser-based apps, you must've heard that?
Applications that use browser engines for rendering tend to be a bit sluggy compared to native applications, yes. But I don't think a common complaint is that a web browser as a standalone application is particularly slow either running or starting up. People tend to say stuff gets slow once they have a ton of tabs open, which makes sense.
Don't know how common it is, after all, people are used to all the slow stuff out there, maybe they don't even complaint when it's less frequent actions like opening a browser. Though at least for a ton of tabs, there are hibernating solutions, so very annoyed people can at least find a workaround, unlike with the unfixable startup delay
They are? My Linux PC have horrible perf (a 2014 Core M, 4gb RAM), and yet, Firefox opens instantly.
And Windows? And Chrome?
tbh, it's been 10 years I don't use Chrome... When I used Windows, my main browser was Edge, and was quite fast to open as far I remember, but I believe on Windows Edge stays open in background all the time anyway...
Also, what's "instantly", how much time exactly on a cold/hot start does it take after you press a key and a fully drawn/functional window is shown? Checked on an old Windows desktop (hot start), and while the empty window is shown in 0.8 sec (not too slow, but still not instant, those would be some old native apps taking 4 times less time), the fully drawn/functional window takes 2-3 sec, so definitely nothing instant
It is. That's why I dropped Firefox.
Have you tried it out recently? On Mac and Android it is now very good.
It used to be slow for me, but now on the same hardware it is fast enough that I don't see any difference compared to chrome.
Recently as in the last 8 years when they overhauled it. It really was slow as heck back in 2016, but the e10s effort really, really paid off in terms of performance.
It runs noticeably faster than chrome on my 12 year old laptop. Plus, it isn't riddled with invasive tracking garbage.
Even before then, 99% of the difference came down to whether chrome and firefox were properly using gpu acceleration. (Both could be easily misconfigured.)
I never saw a situation where the actual engine performance mattered in real world scenarios.
These days, all the engines are comparable, except that Google sabotages safari and firefox on its own sites.
It was definitely slower than Chrome with numerous tabs when I switched (again) some time in the last two years.
Brave is still faster on Android. It probably helps that it has adblocking built-in, instead of a separate extension.
i definitely feel that notion and google ai studio are lagging on firefox and not on chrome.
I'm on a mac if that matters
I switched from Firefox to Chromium because of speed.
I switched to zen browser. It was not for speed but feel. It feels nice.
I love Orion, but it's pretty unusable with 1Password set up - delay on keyboard input is unbearable with the extension enabled and it slows everything down significantly. I just ran a few benchmarks with BrowserBench Speedometer:
1Password extension disabled: 17
1Password extension enabled: 10 (and the test takes much longer)
Vivaldi with extension enabled: 25
I really, really want to move back to Orion as my daily driver but as a pretty heavy 1Password user this is absolutely a dealbreaker.
Bitwarden just had a similar bug with keyboard lag in their browser extension: https://github.com/bitwarden/clients/issues/17090
I wish browsers offered some kind of autofill extension API so password managers don't have to inject their own bullshit into every page.
On macOS, they do! It's not clear why 1Password and Bitwarden don't utilize it.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/authenticationserv...
I opened this link intending to post exactly this. 1Password is just extremely broken on Orion. It's a testament to how much I like the browser that I'm still using it despite that (and despite the fact that Github was completely broken on Webkit this summer, but that's not Orion's fault).
I was in that camp, but then switched to Vivaldi and the experience is much better. Would love to move back to Orion since I do like just about everything else that it does better.
I have the same issue, but I also think their extension model is simply not cutting it. I run both Orion and Brave with uBlock, and the Orion experience is basically Safari's pitfalls + a slightly broken extension model.
Then again 1Password itself is problematic, from old bugs to the slowness of it all. I also dislike how their overlay thingie gets on top of everything, even form fields that make no sense. It's a bit pricey for the decrease in quality over time.
I have the same problem. I would move back (and even subscribe to) Orion if 1Password worked properly. I've tried it out a few times since it was originally released and it just didn't work well with 1P.
Yep! I gladly pay money for Kagi since it's great, but I'm not going to pay for a browser that's broken in fundamental ways. I'd be willing to pay for it if they start actually fixing long standing bugs like this.
Orion Browser is free
You can pay for Orion+. https://kagi.com/onboarding?p=orion_plan
I feel the same. It was very difficult to log in to websites, and I struggled with their own autofill overlay. The issue was much much worse on iPad.
I did file bugs for issues I came across, and I'll try it again if I hear this is addressed.
Yeah I just tried this release out and it feels really sluggish with 1Password
since there is so much in common with safari, i hope that the devs will port them over as proper extensions with support
the whole idea of firefox/chrome extensions in a webkit browser is weird
I like the direction and keep checking in on it, but while Orion remains closed source there's no chance of it ever being more than a curiosity for me.
(I work at Kagi, but do not work on Orion)
There's a lot of different reasons that people ask for open sourcing of Orion / software in general; could I ask you to expand a bit more as to which issues being open source would address for you?
I can assume of course, but I'd rather listen to you articulate it, even if it's usual reasons.
Single word answer: trust.
Y’all seem like nice people but trust isn’t automatic these days.
Trust with regards to...? Orion doesn't have any telemetry, doesn't force any updates on you, doesn't require any account. You can audit the application's behavior with standard tools to verify that it isn't "phoning home", etc., it doesn't need to be open source to do that, nor would making it open source obviate auditig the final executable anyways.
What do you perceive as the risk to "trusting" Orion in this case?
edit: Sandboxing the app also further reduces the surface area for "trust", though I'm unfamiliar with MacOS as a platform when it comes to that.
Personally, I have some software engineering skills. For me it’s about trust in your development team and product direction.
To be at least somewhat certain of the future, I want to own critical pieces of software, not rent it from someone no matter how benevolent-looking.
While things are well, I want to be able to contribute. There are myriads of minor things that your development teams would never get time to look into. If something is a wart, I might have skills to do it myself and - hopefully - ask you to incorporate my patches. I did that to a few pieces of software I trust and use, and I consider the ability to do this as fairly important, even though I do this very rarely.
And if things go sour, it could be impossible to keep up with long-term maintenance of this complex machinery but I still want that option open too. I want to know that if you folks decide to do something unpleasant to the browser, I’ll be able to begrudgingly take over and still fully own the software at least while I’m investigating the replacement options. Not be at someone’s else’s mercy.
To be persuaded otherwise, I need to be aware about your reasons for not providing users software freedoms and agree they’re serving our mutual interests.
(Needless to say, Orion is a very different product from Kagi Search, which is why I apply different set of requirements. I can switch search engines much more easily than user agent software.)
> it doesn't need to be open source to do that, nor would making it open source obviate auditig the final executable anyways
It doesn't need to be open source to do that, but it really helps. Ideally you'd publish source and have reproducible builds, so that users could look at the code to see that it's not doing anything objectionable and a handful of people could make sure that that code matched the official binaries.
> You can audit the application's behavior with standard tools to verify that it isn't "phoning home", etc.
Can you? Practically? Lots of programs are easy: You put them in a sandbox with zero network access, or very carefully restricted access, and that eliminates 90% of likely problems. But this is a web browser; it's purpose is to connect over the network, all day every day, to arbitrary, dynamic domains in large numbers, such that I would seriously question whether it is in fact practical to audit in a black-box approach.
It may not phone home now, but it can do it tomorrow, or it can in be enabled and immediately disabled in some minor releases. Even if people didn't catch those shenanigans immediately it will be evident from the commit history. I'd say opensource forces certain discipline.
Also there is point of rugpull, or the product is getting cancelled. Few people will step up to maintain it; atleast until most users migrate to a different product.
As a paying kagi customer that uses orion, I’ll just point out that there’s a reason “enshittification” was the word of the year recently.
Much of it had to do with testimony during the Google antitrust trial. It’s hard to understand how Kagi wouldn’t be ultra-sensitive to guaranteeing there will be escape hatches if it enshittifies. (Your funding model is a great first step!)
>Orion doesn't have any telemetry, doesn't force any updates on you, doesn't require any account.
Source: "Trust me".
As another person mentioned, telemetry could be sent out Sundays @ 2:00am, so my use of standard tools to verify that it isn't phoning home on a Tuesday afternoon is useless. This is just one isolated example.
>it doesn't need to be open source to do that, nor would making it open source obviate auditig the final executable anyways.
Trust is not a single bit that is flipped from "Fully trust" to "Fully distrust". Things become more trustworthy when the source can be reviewed, and less trustworthy when an employee says "We don't do this, trust us, but we're keeping the box closed because ~reasons~".
In my eyes, Kagi has a lot of trust-building to do, despite being the darling child that can do no wrong in many HNers eyes (for whatever reason).
Browser handling is way more personal than any other piece of software. It need not be open source licensed but being able to compile and install it from source the exact binary (minus signing) is a huge plus is today's world. Otherwise is "not" doing much from chrome, brave, firefox etc of today. Open source would be cherry on top.
Trust of Kagi search is already there w.r.t both the tool and the company but it is not transferable to Trust to the Orion Browser.
It's relatively hard to audit a binary. You can audit the behavior of single runs, you can't nearly as easily audit the behavior of the program itself though. What if it pings only on Tuesdays, what if it does some sort of dns reach out that's a false positive for something else you didn't realize the browser was doing, what if there are platform specific differences in behavior.
The same goes for auditing the final executable. Open source gives two options on that: build it, trust it. The latter may seem 0 gain but, again, it is actually a big difference trying to audit a blackbox for every possible behavior vs seeing what the baseline behavior is supposed to be and looking if any differences occur in the premade binaries. There is a 3rd option: reproducible builds... but I doubt that's a reasonable goal in this case.
I'm not saying Kagi/Orion should necessarily care about providing that level of audibility, just that the response a pre-made binary is as trustable as a binary with its source code falls quite flat.
I think Kagi / Orion should go down the independent auditor route like TrailOfBits, Cure53 and others.
That way the software would be audited and it doesn't have to be open source.
Also trust that it won't be abandoned like Opera was.
Would you pay for Orion not to be abandoned?
There is Orion+ that can be paid for that keeps development going.
I paid for opera too :)
But, sure, I could imagine paying for a browser again - although I don't immediately see what features would be worth paying for.
For opera it was the custom, fast rendering engine and the email client.
Now with basically two equivalent rendering engines, I don't imagine performance in that area will be enough to pay for.
Maybe a smalltalk like developer mode with better debugger and repl support?
If it gets abandoned—so what? Switching browsers is trivial.
It really isn’t, and especially not when one of the browser’s unique selling points is its multi-browser extension compatibility that no other browser offers.
Also some of us simply don’t want to learn new UIs and/or risk dealing with an “AI” infused alternative if we have a tool that already Just Works. Switching away from Just Works sucks.
It is completely trivial to switch browser. Anybody who doubts it can try it in this very moment.
The worst part about opera dying was the email client imnho - and it wasn't trivial to find a replacement.
I'm not sure what I'd seek in a browser I'd pay for - but it would be features not present or great in foss browsers.
Maybe email, podcast, rss client, a modal vi like browsing (like vimperator, but first class), a good reader mode/style override, proper editor for text input (like "it's all text"), automatic force support for select text, save as... for images)...
But whatever would be useful enough to pay for, would likely be a pain to lose.
By pushing back on someone over trust, you’ve eliminated the interest I briefly held in evaluating Orion. It would’ve been far better to acknowledge the concern than nitpick it.
What? Since when was asking questions to clarify someones position considered "pushing back?"
Can you help me understand what about the questions make you uncomfortable?
I am completely unaffiliated with Kagi. I find it concerning that we've come to a world were we can't ask questions without it being taken as something hostile to the person/people/idea being questioned. Is that not what science is?
If you don’t think “you can just audit the binary with tools” is pushing back, then I don’t know what is, and especially so when you’ve framed the invitation with “I'd rather listen”.
I’m reminded of the number of times I’ve had vendors sit across the table from me and argue that our fixed requirements for <whatever> are just a preference or a nice-to-have. This generally doesn’t bode well for their prospects.
Fair enough. I personally did not read push back in the questions/statements asked/made.
> Trust with regards to...?
I took this to be a good faith ask for clarification
> Orion doesn't have any telemetry... You can audit the application's behavior with standard tools to verify that it isn't "phoning home", etc...
I took this as a statement if what I could do, not specifically what I should do instead of getting it open sourced.
Maybe I read it with more good faith intention and curiosity than I should have. I see your point on how that could be perceived as push back, but I landed somewhere different from where you might have.
> you can just audit the binary with tools”
That statement also said you have to audit binary even if the code is open source. Which isn't entirely true as other comments pointed out - reproducible builds - but the idea doesn't seem like pushing back to me. It was to point out that open source doesn't automatically imply any level of trust when it comes to security/privacy.
[flagged]
I'm assuming the people who are asking for Orion to be open source are not paying for it.
I think a blog post on Orion's transparency is enough. The fact that there is Orion+ is enough to warrant no need to have tracking or 'enshittification'.
If you like Kagi and Orion, supporting development by paying for it makes sense.
Open sourcing everything of Orion means that Orion+ will be open source which defeats the point of supporting development of Orion directly.
I've seen projects start open source, change to closed source and then add in the enshittification later. It doesn't matter if the code is 'open' the source code would eventually be unmaintained and have security holes which there is no time in the world for anyone else to maintain.
> I'm assuming the people who are asking for Orion to be open source are not paying for it.
I think this is an odd/slightly-disingenuous statement.
I mean, I'm on linux, so I'm not, I'm happily paying for kagi though, and would pay for Orion+ if it was available to me :)
I would also very much like it if Orion was open source, it would make me feel a lot better committing to and recommending a browser if I had actual assurances it's behaving appropriately, beyond a company saying "trust me", no matter how nice/cool they seem at the time.
Honestly, I kinda wish Orion+ was the only option, I think having a free option (and the incentives that can create) is kind of antithetical to Kagi's whole raison detre.
> I would also very much like it if Orion was open source, it would make me feel a lot better committing to and recommending a browser if I had actual assurances it's behaving appropriately, beyond a company saying "trust me", no matter how nice/cool they seem at the time.
Kagi isn't 100% open source but you still use it and recommend it?
How do you know they aren't spying on the backend?
There's not really a reasonable local alternative to running something like Kagi, so one kind of just have to hope for the best with the least shady looking option or not use web search at all. It would be nice if they at least had a 3rd party audit validate their privacy claims... but Kagi is at least a step in a better direction than any common search option, even if they might still actually be spying on you for all you know (and keep that in mind if you choose to use it).
The same is not true of browsers, to the extent you can even build/use privacy conscious versions of Google's browser project because Chromium is open source! To trade that away for closed source on the promise of another company who was only able to build a browser because of an open source engine is an unnecessary step backwards and should be bothering people, as much as Kagi appears like the nice company for now.
> I'm assuming the people who are asking for Orion to be open source are not paying for it.
I don't know about the others, but I'm an Orion+ lifetime purchaser just because I like what they are trying to do and it's a good phone browser for my work phone. I'm not sure I follow why specifically people who pay are supposed to be uninterested in it being open sourced?
> If you like Kagi and Orion, supporting development by paying for it makes sense.
> Open sourcing everything of Orion means that Orion+ will be open source which defeats the point of supporting development of Orion directly.
Sure, one should support the development costs. Can you elaborate why you feel that relates to Orion being freeware vs open source or why it defeats the point of Orion+? The two aren't differentiated by functionality, Orion+ is a token of development support.
> I've seen projects start open source, change to closed source and then add in the enshittification later. It doesn't matter if the code is 'open' the source code would eventually be unmaintained and have security holes which there is no time in the world for anyone else to maintain.
Open source isn't a promise that the code will be maintained forever, nothing can guarantee that, it's a promise if the company decides to go closed source the community can decide what to do. Or, even if you don't care about that, a promise of easy/public auditing and hacking. Just look how many Chromium/Firefox build customization, UI tweaks, and forks people have made despite the possibility Google stop contributing to Chromium in the future.
In return, could we ask Kagi to expand on which problems they find in open sourcing it?
Business model from Orion+ would likely take a hit in the long run.
Only my 2c, but being able to modify commodity software (including, but not limited to browsers, text editors, etc.) I am running on my computer is table stakes.
I think the bigger question is: why not open-source it? At bare minimum provide the debug symbols for it (even chrome provides them!).
Linux distro portability without having to rely on third-party package management like Flatpak. I'd prefer there'd be independent maintainers and packagers for Debian and Arch and all others.
I expect a lot of people saying trust. My reason is simpler - a browser is not like an email service, it's not like an IM, it's not like a social network, not that these as FOSS wouldn't be better, but a browser is literally the most fundamental end-user software to access the Internet and I don't want to bother spending even 10 mins to support another browser that is not FOSS. This sounds harsh but I am not shitting on Kagi or Orion. While I have not much positive views on Kagi Search either, I understand that and accept that and hence I acknowledge that, but the closed-source browser - nope! In some twisted way it feels like paying public taxes to build a private road. It's not a great analogy, I know, but that's the closest I could come to in terms of a connotation.
I would contribute to it if it was FOSS.
Can't speak for OP, but open source allows the community to check for spyware inserted to exfil data to the company and its partners.
As much as I'd appreciate more open source for the sake of transparency, binaries provided on websites aren't guaranteed to match the source code provided and I'd assume most users are pulling binaries versus building themselves.
Practically every platform has multiple software stores these days and many FOSS stores make their build logs available. Some take it a step further and provide reproducible builds, which is more or less there as far as source to binary traceability and binary trustworthiness is concerned. These are good enough reasons to open up the source, ignoring the other advantages just this once.
This is true, and this is where trusted repositories come in.
I don't necessarily have to trust each individual app on fdroid or in the Debian repos. I have trust the maintainers are building them properly, and those people are not the same people developing the core app.
The ability to do so provides some protection. If someone pulls and builds and cannot reproduce the binaries, they can at least try to get the word out. Closed-source prevents even the opportunity. Even source-available is better than closed.
Why would and what incentive does Kagi have to put 'spyware' in a browser?
??? why does any company do it? Money?
Any company?
Don't you think if Kagi introduced spyware it would ruin their reputation quickly, why would Kagi want to quickly ruin that brand reputation?
The answer is that there is no incentive for 'spyware' on Orion as you can pay for Orion+ to support development.
https://kagi.com/onboarding?p=orion_plan
My concern is Kagi isn't/doesn't make as much as they need/hope to with their brand model. If they are ever disappointed in the results of building their brand, it's quite easy to see why they would be fine selling out.
Hell, WhatsApp started out as a privacy focused messaging app before selling out to Facebook/Meta. Now it's getting ads, nobody believes a privacy focus anymore, it's had a commercial message channel push, and so on. They are far from the first example of a tech company/product trading the mission/brand value for more money.
Bless the VLC developer for refusing offers for millions of dollars to put crap in VLC even though he knows the project could just be forked after and bless Gorhill for the same on uBO but the real trust in these things comes from the code being open source rather than faith the developers would never sell out.
Sure :)
tl;dr: I'm a tinkerer, an idealist, and someone who wants to retain control over my digital life and deny influence over it to the likes of Google, Apple, Meta, et al. at pretty much all costs, and there are absolutely good enough open source options that I couldn't bring myself to use a proprietary browser unless I absolutely have to.
To elaborate…
First off, there are a few reasons I always prefer to use open source software:
- I like being able to open things up, see how they work, chops bits off them, attach other things too them, use them in unexpected ways and general use (and abuse) them however I see fit. After all, I can do that with all the physical stuff I own, so why not the digital stuff too…?
- Code costs nothing to copy and is trivial to copy perfectly. This means that the potential compounding benefits of everyone sharing not only their complete software products but individual libraries, algorithms, and solutions to common (and not-so-common) problems are huge. When we use and contribute to open source software we help build those benefits for everyone.
- Closed source code is always open to being abandoned or moving in a direction we don't care for with nothing we can do about it. When it's open source, the question is "will I submit a PR", or "will I maintain a fork" (even if just for me). When it's closed, the question is "will I build a replacement". These are not the same category of thing! I can start running a fork any time[0]. Building a replacement may take months or years, if it's even feasible. But there are individuals who run their own fork of my favourite text editor (Helix).
- I'm a big believer in the value of communities and efforts made primarily for the benefit of one's community rather than financial gain. Open source can act as a kind of insurance against the latter.
Secondly, I think this is all uniquely important for browsers because the web is so dominant and it's therefore so important to me (and I think to Kagi's mission) to protect that platform for everyone, for all time. Even though Chromium and Webkit are open source, Google and Apple exert huge influence and control through their ownership of Chrome and Safari. Firefox is better but even that project is not free of Google's influence, which is steadily making the web worse for everyone.
Kagi probably won't be the next Google, in that respect. As a long time payed user of Kagi[1], I really do believe they want to build a good browser that does not abuse an exploit it's users. But Google's motto used to be "Don't be evil", and many of us believed that for a while too. My point is not that Kagi will or is likely to become evil, it's that when Firefox/Zen, ungoogled Chromium, and maybe one day Ladybird and others exist, *I can't invest time, effort, and attention into something that could in theory go down such a path without the community even retaining the option to fork it[2]. This is especially true when using a closed source browser would also simultaneously weaken those more open efforts, however slightly, by subtracting from their community.
So there you have it. I hope that's helpful.
[0] Case in point: I've used Firefox for years. Sometime last year I start using Zen (a fork/derivative of Firefox) alongside it with no drama or fanfare. Now I rarely open Firefox.
[1] Honestly, I couldn't imagine going back. It's a genuinely excellent product and I believe the company is generally doing, and certainly trying to do the right thing.
[2] Just look at the cautionary tale/disaster that is Arc/Dia. For a while I was worried I was missing out on something special. Then Zen came a long and I worried less. Then the whole Dia thing… boy am I glad I didn't invest my time in that.
Thank you!
You’re welcome. Keep up the great work!
What's the bug situation? It sucked last I checked, over a year ago.
Is there a way to get a useful visualization like a burndown chart out of their bug tracker? The people who have created it seem unaware that one important task of such a tracker is to reveal the big picture and help answer questions like "Is the project getting better or worse?" They should study the Github Insights tab. https://orionfeedback.org/
I've tried Orion a couple of times. I even used it as my default browser for ~3 months about two years ago. Most recently, I tried to use it again about 2 months ago, but it still had loads of bugs and, most of all, was painfully slow.
The truth is, Orion being based off of WebKit comes with the obvious limitation that....it's based off of WebKit! So much slower than chrome or firefox, and plagued with decisions that are just not to my taste. For example, just the way it behaves when I hit the back button (or, rather, when I swipe back) feels incredibly sluggish. Loading is often terrible, with constant repaints of the screen as well. A bunch of websites don't work properly either.
The only true reason why I wanted Orion to work was because I wanted a browser that would be good for my battery life and "optimized for the mac". But, since then, I've realized I don't really use the battery that much (or that I don't notice it being a problem), and that, whatever "optimized for the mac" means, it definitely isn't speed.
After Arc went around and poo-pooed on its users, I migrated to Zen (I did try Orion again, like I mentioned). Zen is also filled with bugs, but at least I don't want to throw my computer out the window because of it being slow.
I know it's just a google away, but I use Arc and I'm not in the loop on them poo-pooing on their users. Can you elaborate?
They shut down development on Arc and then started a new browser focused on AI features… then sold to Atlassian
There are worse outcomes for startups.
Good on them then! But it's still poopooing on the users.
WebKit is not slower than Chrome/FF, this is just plain wrong, they tend to trade off over the years and over the last 5 years WebKit spent much of the time on top of a significant amount of the benchmarks people care about.
It's also by far the most resource efficient, especially on Mac, though Chrome invested heavily more recently to close the gap.
Overall in terms of "feel", Safari is hands down the best browser in terms of performance.
Maybe it's a matter of the websites I use and my specific usage patterns.
I've used many browsers throughout the years: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Arc, Zen, Orion. For many years I ran safari because it was so energy-efficient and the integration was absolutely great. I would LOVE to get back to safari!...
For my usage patterns, though, Safari is noticeably slower and much more sluggish. I can't really put it any other way.
Things that are pretty terrible for me in Safari: YouYube, Google Docs, GitHub diff viewer, just to name a few. Safari was also noticeably terrible on pages that do HTML animations via JS and not CSS (they shouldn't do it, but they do, and I can instantly tell on Safari).
I will add that although I did have Safari as my main browser several years ago, it was never for its speed. It felt "OK" in terms of speed (a bit slower, but not too noticeable back then), but it felt AMAZING in terms of better life and OS integration.
Man I wrote out a whole reply but accidentally closed it... anyway Youtube I use daily never had an issue, GH had a real bug but was caused by them just refusing to fix a specific issue. Beyond that I've never had any site that gave me trouble. I do make heavy animations all the time for websites, and Chrome is often a bit better there but only at pretty extreme limits.
Meanwhile as a daily driver though Safari hands down feels better. Every little thing feels faster from browser open/close, page open/close, tab open/close/switch, scroll, text selection, window resize smoothness, just the e2e experience is so much smoother in so many ways. Yes heavy JS/animations maybe marginally slower, but even in benchmarks it's very close.
Yeah, imo, it’s nowhere near ready for 1.0. I was a big advocate for this browser but recently changed because of exactly this. That, and it’s very slow after having it running constantly, I found myself routinely quitting and re-opening it every hour or two to get normal speed back, or my RAM for that matter.
So I’m back on Safari.
It was using 46G of ram the other day. But I prefer it over any other browser so I just kill it every now and again.
How many hundreds or thousands of tabs took 40+ gigs?
Like maybe 100?
Thank you offering Orion outside the App Store. I am excited to try it. But where is the offline installer? If you don't collect data, why does the "installer", that has already been downloaded from the internet, need to again connect to the internet to download the browser, which is what the "installer" should already be having within it??
This doesn’t have to be malicious, it might check for patch updates.
Good point. The world however has made me cynical, and I prefer full offline installers. One of the (many) reasons is that I also tend to save the full installers, of softwares I like, in case they suddenly disappear from the web.
Money quote: "In a world dominated by Chromium, choosing a rendering engine is an act of resistance"
Yeah, except it's pure bullshit. I'm actually a tiny bit irritated they worded it like this because it's insultingly misleading.
"From day one, we made the deliberate choice to build Orion on WebKit, the open‑source engine at the heart of Safari and the broader Apple ecosystem."
Chromium's Blink is based on Webkit and was for YEARS. While Blink and Webkit had some major differences now, it's not Webkit that's the better core now.
They picked Webkit because it's fast and easy, what ships on both MacOS and iOS. They couldn't put an alternative engine in the iOS and distribute it outside of Europe, so they stuck with webkit. For an Apple-only application, it's a smart choice for fast development, but it's NOT an act of resistance AT ALL. It's completely caving to Apple.
This is not a bold new choice in the browser space, it's just another privacy focused Webkit browser. That's great, but pretending this is sticking it to the man is delusional.
> …it's not Webkit that's the better core now.
I'm curious about your definition of "better". It's nice that Google is catching up to Safari on Speedometer benchmarks (Blink was 20% slower a year ago), so at minimum one can appreciate Safari for being the mechanical hare that triggers Google's prey instinct. Bun chose WebKit's JavaScriptCore for performance reasons. Safari's supposedly-poor support for web standards is mostly Google propaganda.
Amongst many other things, I need to deal with web sites and webapps, and without fail Safari users are the ones who hit the most bugs. Sometimes to the point I'll straight up state ahead of time that we will not spend extra time supporting Safari on MacOS. If it's propaganda, then it's incredibly effective.
> Safari's supposedly-poor support for web standards is mostly Google propaganda.
I don't think that users "mostly" agree. Safari's market share on macOS craters compared to Chrome: https://radar.cloudflare.com/reports/browser-market-share-20...
Google propaganda or not, Mac owners aren't sticking with this "superior" preeinstalled browser tech. And I get it, as a Linux user I find WebKit intolerable compared with Blink and even Gecko.
> Mac owners aren't sticking with preinstall...
Installing Chrome on MacOS is a cargo cult thing. Devs tell everyone to install Chrome, and everyone tells everyone else to install Chrome. (Except some devs who tell some friends to install Firefox.)
Zero devs say install Safari, it's already there. And there's no hip narrative for just using what's there even though it saves energy, protects privacy, seamlessly works across devices, and more.
Safari's problem: it doesn't signal tech savvy (Chrome) or anti-establishment (Firefox).
I don't think using an engine that's equally controlled by a different big evil corporation is exactly an act of resistance. I don't disagree with their decision, but c'mon.
I've attempted to switch to Orion on iOS a few times in the past and could never quite stick with it due to reliability issues. I'm giving it another try now to see if this 1.0 release gets it over that hurdle. Vivaldi is still a lot more polished than Orion on mobile, but Orion's support for Chrome extensions is a pretty compelling feature. I'm a very happy Kagi search user, so I'm rooting for them to succeed here.
We rewrote a large part of the code to make it more reliable and faster. I suggest downloading version 1.4, which just came out, to see for yourself (even if a few fixes related to Liquid Glass still need to be fixed ... by Apple). https://apps.apple.com/us/app/orion-browser-by-kagi/id148449...
I see this sentiment expressed often here, but I have never experienced a single issue using Orion on iOS. I've been using it for 3-4 months now. With uBlock Origin it actually makes it possible to use the web on iOS.
It's the only browser I remember crashing (not a page, the app itself) from time to time and has a few less critical ones. Like the latest version made it impossible to view what you type in a url field untill a few restarts made it just have the wrong position with the keyboard visible
But also, what ublock origin??? It doesn't work on iOS even if you can install it, are you not mixing it up with their internal adblocker or something else? Just checked and disabled all images, works on a desktop, fails in Orion ios, images are still visible
It doesn’t lose the tabs at the end of the tab list, for you? Tabs just disappearing after being opened is a daily issue, for me.
I often see the inverse of this - tabs I've closed spontaneously reappear in later sessions. Wish they would put a little more polish into the iOS version, but for lack of better alternatives, I still use it.
I have nearly 1000 tabs open in Orion on my iPhone and have never had this happen. If they were falling off the front of the list I'd still notice the count going down.
I never have more than a few tabs open, so I don't see that.
this is a macOS release, ios is already past 1, it's 1.4.0 Though I've made the mistake of updating it following this announcement, and now I couldn't even type the url since the url bar didn't jump up to be on top of a keyboard. After a few restarts it does jump up, but it's still positioned incorrectly, either too high or too low depending on the keyboard So yea, unfortunately, not reliable yet...
I want to be able to sync Orion with Firefox. I use non Apple operating systems on some computers, and I would love to have Orion sync with Firefox on them.
I would understand this project much better on Windows, which:
1. Doesn't have an established WebKit browser, which 110% sucks due to issues with testing for Mac and iOS. This is a long standing issue.
2. Relies on a Chromium-based browser with its own integrity issues, as well as a Microsoft approach to telemetry.
I don't associate Safari nearly as much to neither invasive telemetry, tracking, or ads beyond those on the web, nor poor performance on Mac. In fact, I often find it excellent especially in terms of battery life, and Safari has integrated content blocking and tracking protections. Maybe not as powerful as here (?) but telling of Apple's approach to caring for this.
Edit: I saw there's work on Windows support. That's good news. IMHO, this browser should be Windows-first. It makes far more sense there to me. But maybe you like Mac more as a platform?
I love everything about Orion except it steals focus when I click a link in e-mail or another application. Does anyone know if there's a way to change the behavior to be like Safari's background link behavior?
Remember around the early 2000s, every company had a toolbar you could install in your browser? They’d do search, news, IM, plugins, all kinds of things… on many occasions they’d try to squeeze entire websites into these things. You could install more than one toolbar. Some were malware, but there were toolbars that promised security and privacy too (though probably still malware by today’s standards).
Well, if you’ve seen one of those screenshots where 80% of the screen was toolbars and only a fraction left for the viewport … that’s a bit how I feel now when I look at the landscape of browsers today.
Browsers… everywhere, each one trying to grab your attention long enough so you give them clicks, cookies, “anonymised” search queries and who knows what else…
There are no more browsers that fight for the user.
I'm a happy Kagi subscriber and look forward to Orion on Linux. Every well supported browser other than Chrome is a win. I'd love Kagi to fund people working full time on web standards in the W3C and WHATNG, too.
”We have officially started development on Orion for Windows, with a target release scheduled for late 2026”
Fantastic news!
I've been mainlining Orion on my iOS devices for a while now, over a year. Certainly have some issues here and there but overall it's been a solid experience for me, glad to see this hit 1.0. Congrats to the Orion team!
My favorite feature by far is the ability to disable the stupid "hide the address bar if you're not scrolled all the way to the top of a page" behavior every mobile browser does.
I still use Safari as my primary browser as the integration with passwords is so seamless, but I pay for Orion because I want it to succeed.
I switched to Orion from Safari a few months ago and so far loving it. I tried Orion a couple of years ago but it wasn't as reliable. Now it seems very stable and the kagi search integration is really nice.
On a side note - I don't know why Apple still doesn't let you set a custom search engine in Safari even today, so random.
I have Safari on iOS set to use Kagi by default - works fine?
It’s very much a hack, but it’s largely functional.
Google pays Apple billions of dollars to be the default search engine on iDevices. So they have no incentive to allow you to change search engines.
I love Orion on iOS especially because the ability to use desktop extensions in it (some may not work)
Same. Sadly haven't been able to find a working twitch ad mute extension after they made latest anti adblock changes. At least Youtube Live is still in growth phase so I don't get ads there yet
The floating sidebar totally breaks UI\UX on any web site with a header.
And I still can't select multiple tabs with shift\cmd\whatever button pressed down to do something with a group of tabs instead of a single one.
And a feel no difference in speed on my M1 Pro.
For now this 1.0 feels just as beta as it was.
Really liked orion when trying it out but extensions that changed the theme (namely using dark mode with RES) flashed the original theme first, so I was getting flash banged any time I changed the page.
There was a bug[0] for this that was marked as done but I tried after the fact and it was still happening. And looking at the comments on that report suggest I am not the only one still experiencing it.
If it weren’t for that I would probably be using it as my daily browser.
[0] https://orionfeedback.org/d/324-dark-reader-has-a-slightly-d...
Isn't every browser on iOS restricted to being a safari/webview shell?
Yes, but Orion uses WebKit intentionally on desktop as well, unlike Chrome or Firefox which use their own engines on desktop but WebKit on iOS, so it's a bit different in this case.
Yes, at least outside of the EU. However, companies don't seem to be developing for it yet, probably due to the investment not being worth it until similar laws are more widespread. However, Orion in also on macOS, which does allow other engines. And Kagi is developing Orion for Linux and Windows.
This news seems to be about the macOS version of Orion reaching 1.0...
Yes, but that leaves almost everything anyone cares about. Everything except rendering.
Extensions
Orion
So they're just Safari extensions? I.e. no uBlock origin, just some filters with the restricted API?
This looks neat but the biggest question I have and care about... UBO? Not the limited manifest v3 version or whatever it's referred to as, but the full bore block lists like in FF.
Excited to see where this goes!!
It doesn’t support the APIs ublock requires.
Huh? But I see it says "uBlock Origin" when I install it and the UI looks like what I remember from the full version.
It says "Firefox" when I check the extensions page, so maybe that's where it manages to bring the full version from.
Yes it lets you do it. It doesn’t work.
https://browser.kagi.com/WebExtensions-API-Support.html
The webRequest API is key, dns is used, maybe a few more.
Looks like the macOS support has improved but iOS may never happen.
uBO is supported on Orion MacOS. On iOS it still depends on Apple.
Apple open sourced their WebExtension implementation, they seem open to contributions. I worry Orion doesn’t want to contribute upstream though.
So, the blog post says:
So basically they have just re-invented Firefox Focus and/or Mullvad Browser ?Disable Daily Ping and Crash Reports in Firefox Focus and you too have a telemetry-free browser on iOS.
Meanwhile on macOS you have Mullvad Browser.
I dropped firefox 9 months so after they updated their privacy policy and removed "we don't sell your data" from their FAQ.
Besides, it doesn't seem like I'm able to install sponsorblock, ublockock origin etc on iOS firefox. I love using sponsorblock and several other add-ons from both Mazzella in chrome in Orion on my phone.
> I dropped firefox 9 months so after they updated their privacy policy and removed "we don't sell your data" from their FAQ.
"Firefox" != "Firefox Focus"
Please do not conflate the two.
> it doesn't seem like I'm able to install sponsorblock, ublockock origin etc on iOS firefox
There are other options though. For example a DoH DNS profile pointing at DNS servers that do that for you (for example Mullvad's `adblock.dns.mullvad.net` DNS servers).
> Please do not conflate the two
I'm not talking about Firefox focus?
I'm talking about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43213612
Mozilla has hired a lot of execs from Meta and bought an ad company, looking through a lot of their privacy policy at the time, a lot of it involves rewriting it to say that they can serve you sponsored suggestions when you're searching for things in their search bar and stuff and sharing out some of that data with third parties etc.
Firefox was bringing in half a billion a year for the last decade, if they would've just invested that money in low risk money market accounts (instead of paying their csuite executives millions of dollars in salary and putting the rest on non-Firefox related related social causes), the company would be able to easily survive off the interest alone.
I've been using Firefox since like 2006 and have defended it for decades even when they've made questionable decisions that have gotten everybody upset with them. But this time it wasn't just making stupid decisions to try and fund the company, this time they actuality sold out their own customers.
In public announcement in the above link explaining why they removed "we don't sell your data" from the FAQ, the rationality was that some jurisdictions define selling data weirdly, they cited California's definition as an example but California's definition is exactly what I would consider the definition of selling my personal data.
They're justifying this by saying that they need it to stay alive since they're not going to be getting money from Google anymore, but I argue that you shouldn't sell out your customer base on the very specific reason anyone would choose you. I would rather pay a monthly fee to use Firefox to support them, but even if you gave them $500 million today they would just squander it away like they've done since forever so I really don't have any solution I can think of which frustrates me.
It's absolutely Firefox that I'm trying to avoid completely at this point.
> There are other options though. For example a DoH DNS profile pointing at DNS servers that do that for you (for example Mullvad's `adblock.dns.mullvad.net` DNS servers
DNS adblock doesn't automatically skip sponsored segments of videos like sponsorblock does.
> they have just re-invented Firefox Focus
exactly what's the problem with re-inventing?
And they didn't reinvent anything, they pick an under-utilised engine. This is not yet another firefox (or chromium) fork.
> exactly what's the problem with re-inventing?
Because their blog makes a big song and dance about the items I quoted above as the answer to their self-imposed question "why the heck do we need a new browser?".
They are saying "we need a new browser" because "Zero telemetry, privacy‑first access has been lost".
However the reality is that zero-telemetry has NOT been lost. It is there in Firefox Focus, Mullvad Browser and doubtless others too.
Therefore, I quite rightly am returning to their question "why the heck do we need a new browser?".
Because "there are no zero telemetry browsers" is factually incorrect as an answer to their headline question.
At the very least they should address their competitor products and why they consider themselves different. Don't just bury your head in the sand and pretend your product has no competitors.
But really they should have picked a better headline topic to base their blog on.
Is there any info with a bit more details on extensions on the desktop version? More specifically, is Orion going to have its own extension ecosystem? Is it compatible with chrome or FF extensions? If it is gonna be its own thing, are there dev docs available anywhere?
Asking because I’ve read the article, and I noticed extensions being mentioned a few times (including in one of the subchapter titles). However, I couldn’t find any actual info about extensions there.
Orion is compatible with a large number of extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Not all of them work, and yes, we plan to offer documentation for creating extensions that are immediately compatible with Orion.
Thank you for the response!
To be clear, I didn't mean for my original comment to be a dig at Orion at all. I am just genuinely excited for it, but an extension ecosystem is something I value a lot in a browser. So I was a little bit miffled, when the original post namedropped extensions, but didn't provide any details beyond that.
However, thanks for clarifying the current state of affairs in terms of extensions, and I am eagerly looking forward to checking out the docs.
Orion has been trying to integrate / extend the WebExtensions API to its fork of webkit, with a goal to make uBlock Origin 100% compatible in Orion. It's still a work in progress ...
> After six years of relentless development
if it took 6 years of bug fixing to release version 1.0 I'm sure there are still innumerable bugs in orion
> Zero telemetry, privacy‑first access to the internet: a basic human right.
Just because something is good does not make it a "basic human right"; why do so many people now suggest it does?
I wish it touched on its approach to very common finger printing data. Does it send browser window size? Your time zone? Your OS? The languages you've previously chosen to translate?
Unless it meaningfully closes the loop on not sending data to fingerprint with, I'm not sure "zero telemetry" is really a selling point at all
I switched my mobile browser to Orion a few weeks ago and it's so great to have built-in support for Kagi. Before, I'd have to manually go to the Kagi page when I wanted to search for something since Safari doesn't support custom search engines.
Currently looking to switch from Arc to Orion. The one thing I'm gonna miss is Arc's Portrait Mode.
There is a Kagi extension that makes Kagi the default search engine.
Downloaded the dmg/installer (not from the App Store), launched it and I get
and clicking the button it exists, and that's it. Disappointing for a 1.0 release.Maybe it's related to PiHole? I'm on MacOS 26.1
Orion Product Manager here – That's what happens when you think of (almost) everything and blow it all at the last minute.
Sorry about that; it's all fixed now, and we really hope everyone will love this browser we've been working on with pure passion for 6 years!
EDIT: not fixed yet EDIT2: fixed! Thanks for your patience
I re-downloaded from the link in the blog for macos and reinstalled and I get the same issue.
Don't worry, I will hold on :) Thanks for the answer!
We are on it, and this will be fixed in a few minutes.
Orion Tech Lead here: Thank you for your patience — the issue has now been fixed. Please try updating now :)
Yep, now it works! Nice intro video, but I would have made the Chrome planet more Death Star!
Confirm, update was finally successful.
> Maybe it's related to PiHole
No. Update server return empty response. That why there are error.
Orion Tech Lead here: Thank you for your patience — the issue has now been fixed. Please try updating now :)
Nah I have the same error.
I love the profiles feature of Safari. I find it a bit odd that profiles are entire browser instances in Orion, unlike Safari which I find a lot easier to use. Maybe I just need to get use to it…
I hope I don't come across too harsh in my criticism here, but this is in my wheelhouse and I like to keep tabs on the privacy browser market in comparison to Waterfox.
> A bold technical choice: WebKit, not another Chromium clone
I don't find this a bold technical choice at all for a macOS only browser? I think this would be more impressive if it was Windows as well, as back (maybe ~5 or so years ago) when I was investigating WebKit on Windows, builds were not on an equal playing field[1]. So the engineering to get that up and running would be impressive.
> Speed by nature
Unfortunately, as of 16:40 UTC, I am unable to run the browser (installer?) to benchmark it due to "An error occurred while parsing the update feed.", but I recall 2 years ago when I tested Orion it was the slowest of all the browsers on macOS and Safari had quite a lead. I'd also be curious, being based on WebKit, how much faster it will actually be on macOS vs Safari?
I dropped speed as a focus point on Waterfox after compilation flags started making less of a difference compared to the actual architectural changes Mozilla were making for Firefox.
> Privacy etc
I think comparing to other major browsers such as Chrome the points are valid, but against Safari I'm not convinced it holds up as much. I know there is some telemetry related to Safari, but privacy is a big selling point for Safari as well and I'd be curious to see actual comparisons to that?
Safari includes iCloud Privacy Relay (MPR based on MASQUE[2]) and Oblivious DNS[3] - arguably two very valuable features that a company at a scale like Apple can subsidise.
The entire AI section also feels like trying to have it both ways as well. They criticise other browsers for rushing AI features, position themselves as the "secure" alternative, then immediately say they'll integrate AI "as it matures." This reads more like "we're behind on AI features" than a principled stance. If security is the concern, explain your threat model and what specific architectural decisions you're making differently? Currently Firefox has kept AI out of the "browser core" as it's been put, and I don't see them ever changing that.
Kudos that they have >2000 people paying for the browser directly, but I will say it doesn't excite me to see another closed source browser entering the market (I don't see any mention here of open-source apart from mention of WebKit being open source).
I do realise this is more a marketing post than an actual technical deep dive, but so much is just a rehash of every feature almost every modern web browser has?
I'll keep updating this comment as and when I can explore the browser itself a bit more.
[1] https://fujii.github.io/2019/07/05/webkit-on-windows/
[2] https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/masque/about/
[3] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3340301.3341128
WebKit on Windows has progressed since ~5 years ago. The gap between the Windows port and the Linux WPE/GTK ports is shrinking over time.
Every JIT tier has been enabled for JSC on Windows[1], and libpas (the custom memory allocator) has been enabled.
The Windows port has moved from Cairo to Skia, though it's currently using the CPU renderer AFAIK. There's some work to enable the COORDINATED_GRAPHICS flag which would enable Windows to benefit from Igalia's ongoing work on improving the render pipeline for the Linux ports. I go into more detail on my latest update [2], though the intended audience is really other WebKit contributors.
Webkit's CI (EWS) is running the layout tests on Windows, and running more tests on Windows is mostly a matter of test pruning, bug fixes and funding additional hardware.
There's a few things still disabled on the Windows port, some rough edges, and not a lot of production use (Bun and Playwright are the main users I'm aware of). The Windows port really needs more people (and companies) pushing it forward. Hopefully Kagi will be contributing improvements to the Windows port upstream as they work on Orion for Windows.
[1] https://iangrunert.com/2024/10/07/every-jit-tier-enabled-jsc... [2] https://iangrunert.com/2025/11/06/webkit-windows-port-update...
I tried Orion before and It was good to me. The closed-source part It is also something I don't like. I wish they do the browser open-source. I want to see if they use rust underneath :p.
Although, let's be honest few people look at the entire codebase. However i believe It would be beneficial to make It open-source for them so they could have contributors. Also new features would be easier to add. For example, i know some protocols like Multicast QUIC which was almost impossible to be added in Safari and Chrome.
By the way, I am trying right now Orion on MacOS and it goes quite fast as now. Actually, it is faster than Firefox at least when trying against speed.cloudflare.com under a VPN. Nonetheless the speed difference is not significant.
Also, there are two features which I would like to know/see in Orion:
- I use quite a lot the Containers and Group tabs in Firefox. The containers allow me to have different active accounts in the same browser. I use it a lot when managing AWS accounts.
- Change the behaviour of Cmd+Shift+F to be the same as Firefox, doing the full screen instead of the hide the tabs.
Orion Tech Lead here: Thank you for your patience — the issue has now been fixed. Please try updating now :)
Hi! Congratulations on the launch. Is your intention to ship using WebKit on Window and Linux too?
Extensions still default to the English language, this is a bug I reported two years ago and it's still there... kinda disappointed. Not everyone uses or wants to use English.
The iOS/iPad builds have been getting a bit… rough on their adblocking lately.
For some reason, Orion is now getting slammed by Ad-Shield on my iPad on so many blogs and sites it’s not even funny. Endless “an error occured loading this page” blaming my ad blocker.
Anyone else?
I'd love to use Orion but it's just too buggy for me. I downloaded the iOS app to try it out and immediately noticed that when typing in the URL bar, three quarters of it is covered by the toolbar above the keyboard.
I've seen similar issues with Japanese keyboards. If you can please share some details on your setup here or on orionfeedback.org so we can investigate further. Thank you.
I'm using the standard US English keyboard on iOS 26.1. Not sure what other details would be relevant.
I used it on and off many times. I think the main reason has always been able to run extensions in “safari”. Can’t remember what made me switch back, probably integration, or not having Linux versions? I’ll give it another try!
It's worth installing on MacOS just to enjoy the video that plays the first time you start it. It's kinda retro awesome.
As of Tuesday 6:33 PM UTC, it shows the error: Update Error! An error occurred in retrieving update information. Please try again later.
Rooting for them. I, myself, continue to use Safari.
I will give this another chance but the last time I used this on my 14 Pro Max it would get hot to the edge of discomfort
I appreciate that it supports Mojave.
>While doing so, it expands Kagi ecosystem of privacy-respecting, user-centric products (that we have begun fondly naming “Kagiverse”) to now include: Search, Assistant, Browser, Translate, News with more to come.
Are people really interested in those other than Search?
>A bold technical choice: WebKit, not another Chromium clone
Only real choice for iOS so not sure what the bold choice is for an Apple-centric browser.
I don't speak for everyone obviously but if they only provided search and it led to a lower price I'd be happy. I say this as a user of Orion (iOS); I really only use it because it's half-decent and supports uBO (though it feels pretty buggy and I'm not totally sure it's working most of the time...I really do wish more people were squashing bugs, it seems like a very small team).
Webkit works on any OS.
I’m using it now, feels so much snappier on my 10 year old iPhone than the previous version on Orion.
Looking forward linux android and windows versions!
Mm maybe hugged to death getting an error on startup
Update Error! An error occurred while parsing the update feed.
I get the same (see other post) but well, that's not an excuse. If you fail to update for $REASON you just continue without updating, and that's it.
$REASON = "website redirection";
Orion Tech Lead here - Thank you for your patience — the issue has now been fixed. Please try updating now :)
Begun again the browser wars have.
I’m going to use it on iOS and macOS. Feels like the previous Safari.
On Linux I’ll keep to Firefox.
For macOS.
I know speed to market is important, but it's always a huge turn off to see new desktop apps be non multi-platform. It makes me question if other OS platforms are really a priority, even if they get added later.
They use webkit, so macos/ios was the natural place to start, but they have started working on a linux version. If they had gone to make another chromium fork they could have probably have it multiplatform by now, but I am glad they did not.
The article says they are currently working on Linux and Windows builds
Why do you want to use the same browser on all platforms. Diversity is a strength.
Orion for Linux and windows is actually a huge thing. I'm sick of having to choose between chromium clone and gecko clone, I find WebKit to be very efficient and Orion on my Mac was very good.
The only reason I didn't use it is because safari, I already paid for all the extension i need and I found safari to be better on iphone. But compared to Firefox or chrome, this is so much better.
Love most of the work you folks are doing, and I am a paying Kagi customer for over a year now.
That said, it leaves a salty taste in the mouth to see
> Orion is part of the broader Kagi ecosystem
and
> Supporters (via subscription or lifetime purchase) unlock a set of Orion+ perks
I would imagine that paying for Kagi is also a vector for having the paywalled features of your browser.
I think the only perk I ever got from paying for Orion+ in the past was a special badge on my profile on their support forum...
I was curious but unfortunately can't get it to launch
Its not a new browser, its a new webengine wrapper?
Wake me when it's available for Linux.
my initial, 15min impression is.. wow so much to like here! It feels very snappy, really nice UI, supports "real" version of uBlock Origin, has built-in Vertical Tabs with nesting and Tab Groups, and also the iOS-like grid of tabs if you prefer.
What I don't like: Seems like no way to disable two-finger back/forward gesture? I hate that one and managed to disable a similar feature in Chrome. Also either it doesn't have any kind of Developer Tools, or I couldn't find it yet in my 15min speedrun. (edit: found it)
I'm hopeful.
I really love to hate Safari (extensions, ad blocking, dev tools amongst many other reasons) but love using a non chromium browser.
I discovered Orion a few years back and it has been my go-to standalone browser but never strong enough to be my primary browser.
So many daily drivers of mine refuse(d) to work from time to time (1P, Netflix, Youtube, Slack, Gmaps, Hey & the list goes on). I eventually started relying on Orion RC instead of Orion to band-aid fix these problems.
I truly hope they succeed but a few hours of driving the 1.0, it doesn't feel like a 1.0 yet.
I'm a keen Orion user, and general Kagi user - early adopter since June 2022 (So kool-aid? ;-) ) That said, I have Chrome installed for mandated office work (profile managed by IT ;-( ), Brave for LinkedIn & YouTube... but for everything else I use Orion. Recent versions have been rock solid, and it does exactly what it says on the tin.
My only gripe is that the favourites bar isn't right-click editable like Chrome or Brave - assume this is down to Webkit. Apart from that, joy to use and develop against.
This is the way...
I’m now using it on iOS, switching from Arc. It’s working surprisingly well, good feel and customization. Might keep it.
Is this Webkit 2?
Yes, WebKit 1 is extremely dead, many web features don’t function in it.
[dead]
Just skip the middleman and use Yandex browser.
I love Kagi, but is this necessary? Another browser, really?
I wish they'd spend their eng resources as a small startup on their legitimately great primary product - ad-free search.
Well they've been working on Orion for six years now, so I feel like their effort split between the browser and their other services has been fine.
I think there's just an instinctual draw to building a new browser, partly because so much of our modern software is dependent on web apps. Not sure if SerenityOS has been progressing as much as it originally did now that Andreas is all enamored with Ladybird.
We started working on Orion browser before Kagi search. Source: Kagi founder.
Oh well TIL they did the browser first!
Reportedly, current desktop OS marketshare[1] is:
- 66% Windows
- 18% MacOS
- 3% Linux
Right now, I can't try out Orion as one of the 66%.
[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...
A large % of desktop Windows installations are on employer-owned/managed hardware. And the % of users who are interested in trying newer alternate browsers and/or care about privacy also skews heavily away from Windows. So it might be more rational than it first seems.
> A large % of desktop Windows installations are on employer-owned/managed hardware
What's a "large %"?
> And the % of users who are interested in trying newer alternate browsers and/or care about privacy also skews heavily away from Windows
I mean, enterprise users wouldn't try anything new of course, but I don't see the relevance to Windows. Would enterprise Mac users be any more inclined to try new things?
> "What's a large %?"
Perplexity says the share of US desktops managed by employers is estimated in the range of approximately 50-60%...
... and Enterprise Macs in the US represent close to 10% of commercial desktops and laptops.
My point stands.
I mean they say in the article that the have started on the windows version and are aiming for late 2026
I know, the prioritization just looks counter-intuitive to me, especially if you make money primarily from subscribers.
Mac users pay for quality software. Linux users would never pay for anything. Windows users only pay for video games and corporate software if they're a corporation.
So that's why boutique software makers always focus on Mac first.
Well, paying money for consumer apps/services (besides games) has always seemed a bit more normalized in the iOS ecosystem, and I imagine it must be a _somewhat_ simpler interface than the lovecruftian monolith of windows-N
saying this as a Linux user, I've never owned an apple device in my life (nor do I want to)
AFAIK, you can't pay for Kagi in Apple ecosystem. Users of both platforms have to visit their web page.
So? Companies are free to choose their markets. For a long time there were a lot of shops that only focused on the Mac.
Sure, but Kagi isn't a Mac shop; their only source of revenue is subscriptions. Majority of their desktop customers must be Windows users too. So, their prioritization just looks strange to me.