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.
It uses a Free frontend to display Fandom pages, and suggests an alternative non-Fandom wiki when available.
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.
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.
Personally, around 5 times per day, every day. When I don't browse, I close the browser
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.
We just don’t know how bad slow browsers can be because all others have caught up.
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.
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.
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.
(Safari with adblocker, of course.)
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.
So performance is general is more like it... that includes not hurting my battery life.
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.
Now I think I'll just keep switching until there's one decent browser left which hasn't been AIed.
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.
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…
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.
It runs noticeably faster than chrome on my 12 year old laptop. Plus, it isn't riddled with invasive tracking garbage.
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'm on a mac if that matters
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 wish browsers offered some kind of autofill extension API so password managers don't have to inject their own bullshit into every page.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/authenticationserv...
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 did file bugs for issues I came across, and I'll try it again if I hear this is addressed.
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.
Y’all seem like nice people but trust isn’t automatic these days.
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.
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, 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.
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.
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!)
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).
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.
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.
That way the software would be audited and it doesn't have to be open source.
There is Orion+ that can be paid for that keeps development going.
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?
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.
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.
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 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.
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?
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 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.
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
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.
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.
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.
So I’m back on Safari.
"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.
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.
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
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?
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.
Just because something is good does not make it a "basic human right"; why do so many people now suggest it does?
Fantastic news!
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.
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.
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.
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...
Excited to see where this goes!!
It says "Firefox" when I check the extensions page, so maybe that's where it manages to bring the full version from.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
"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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
if it took 6 years of bug fixing to release version 1.0 I'm sure there are still innumerable bugs in orion
Currently looking to switch from Arc to Orion. The one thing I'm gonna miss is Arc's Portrait Mode.
Update Error!
An error occurred while parsing the update feed.
[ Cancel Update ]
Maybe it's related to PiHole? I'm on MacOS 26.1
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
No. Update server return empty response. That why there are error.
> 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/
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...
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.
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.
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.
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On Linux I’ll keep to Firefox.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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 wish they'd spend their eng resources as a small startup on their legitimately great primary product - ad-free search.
- 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...
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?
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.
saying this as a Linux user, I've never owned an apple device in my life (nor do I want to)
So that's why boutique software makers always focus on Mac first.