> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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??
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 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'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 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.
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!)
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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 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?
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.
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.
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...
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 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 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 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 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.
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, 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.
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.
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
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 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 ...
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.
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 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.
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'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!
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!)
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.
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.
So I’m back on Safari.
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.
if it took 6 years of bug fixing to release version 1.0 I'm sure there are still innumerable bugs in orion
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.
Excited to see where this goes!!
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
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.
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...
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.
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.
Currently looking to switch from Arc to Orion. The one thing I'm gonna miss is Arc's Portrait Mode.
Fantastic news!
I wish they'd spend their eng resources as a small startup on their legitimately great primary product - ad-free search.
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.
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/
[2] https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/masque/about/
[3] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3340301.3341128
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.
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...
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.
On Linux I’ll keep to Firefox.
Update Error! An error occurred while parsing the update feed.
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.
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.
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?