Orion Browser by Kagi

by sebjones • 3 days ago

302 306 3 days ago

sebjones• 3 days ago

Been looking for a browser to replace Chrome which is very difficult I know. But Chrome just gets so bloated that my M1 Macbook Air is not able to run it anymore. How good is this browser in terms of actual daily performance?

Gecko4072• 3 days ago

Great concept but buggy so not a daily option imo

smohare• 3 days ago

I’ve used it daily almost since it was released without any real issues. But I generally do not run too many extensions or probably push the limits of my browsers.

For me, Orion’s vertical tabs are the best out of the box of all the browsers I’ve tried since I prefer their arbitrary nesting.

herrherrmann• 3 days ago

You should try Firefox or Waterfox then!

arvid-lind3• 3 days ago

also worth checking out Librewolf: https://www.librewolf.net/

throw1234567891• 3 days ago

F… irefox?

Cider9986• 3 days ago

Brave is the best balance of privacy, security, and usability. I recommend it.

arvid-lind3• 3 days ago

Been a big fan Brave for a while. I just recently learned about Brave Origin, the core browser with all the crypto/ads/etc removed, free for linux and one-time payment for others: https://brave.com/origin/

johanyc• 2 days ago

Yeah brave is a well rounded browser. It's the only chrome alternative imo

pasc1878• 3 days ago

I have just switched from Orion to Vivaldi partially as it seems to use less memory.

I suspect this is because I use several profiles amd each one in Orion is in effect a copy of the whole Orion browser whilst in Vivaldi less things a re duplicated. Or possibly my style of when to close things works better wehn an app has many profiles like Vivaldo or Safari rather than each profile is an app like Orion or Firefox.

trvz• 3 days ago

That computer, even with only 8GB RAM, should still handle Chrome well. You may have something bad installed or something misconfigured.

BLKNSLVR• 3 days ago

That was my thought. It was only released in 2020, and to great performance fanfare. To be 'not able to run it anymore' seems like it could be infested with a number of undesirables.

coffeefirst• 3 days ago

It’s fast but it has just enough rough edges that I always go back to Firefox.

frizlab3• 3 days ago

Why not Safari? It works great (it is my main browser).

themadturk3• 3 days ago

I use Safari all the time as well, but it doesn't behave very well with Reddit (keeps closing and reopening tabs due to "too much memory" problems. Other than that, it works for 99.9% of everything else.

apparent• 3 days ago

I have hundreds of open tabs in Brave at all times on my M2 MBA and it's fine. It puts tabs to sleep when inactive and is generally quite usable. Also supports all the same extensions as Chrome (plus older ones that Chrome doesn't support).

fooqux• 3 days ago

WebKit.
A web browser designed from the ground-up.

Both of these can't be true. Perhaps they're thinking of Ladybird?

KPGv2• 3 days ago

WebKit is a rendering engine, not a browser. It's a bit like saying "that isn't original art because you used Earth physics that govern how paint flows and dries.

mattmcal• 3 days ago

The particular choice of the marketing phrase "from the ground up" sort of invites this kind of commentary on HN. This is hardly the first WebKit-based browser, so any commenter specifically holding their breath for a new, independent rendering and layout engine or JS engine might feel inclined to roll their eyes and snark.

mdlxxv• 3 days ago

I dunno. It's more like saying "that isn't your original art because you didn't paint it, only provided the frame". A pretty elaborate frame, yes, but only the frame, not the painting.

lugoues• 3 days ago

How dare you paint without making your own pigments!

konart• 3 days ago

Can't you build (and design before that) an OS from ground up around Linux?

randallsquared• 3 days ago

Well, no, to be clear! There are a lot of decisions that are made already for you when you use something else as a foundation.

saagarjha2• 3 days ago

WebKit is a web engine, not a browser.

LoganDark4• 2 days ago

WebKit is also not the ground.

silverlemontea• 2 days ago

Ladybird is dogshit

MYEUHD2• 2 days ago

Ladybird is still in early development. They don't provide binaries.

I don't think it's fair to deem it "dogshit" at this point.

arvid-lind3• 3 days ago

Was the Linux version just released or something? afaik Orion on iOS and Mac is nothing new.

rav3ndust3• 3 days ago

it's been in beta on linux since early this year

frizlab3• 3 days ago

And they have announced having funded a team for Orion on windows at the end of 2025.

https://orionfeedback.org/d/2321-orion-for-windows-android-l...

villish• 3 days ago

The best feature is being able to use Firefox extensions and thus uBlock Origin and sponsorblock on iOS. It's a little buggy but worth it for me.

Cyberdog3• 3 days ago

SponsorBlock has a native Safari/iOS extension that works fine.

frizlab3• 3 days ago

I use 1Blocker which works very well too.

JumpCrisscross6• 3 days ago

best feature is being able to use Firefox extensions

“The only browser supporting Safari, Chrome, and Firefox extensions.”

MrAlex94• 3 days ago

It isn’t really, just marketing fluff. Foxify[1] allowed Firefox to install Chrome extensions almost a decade ago and then I ported that to Waterfox after privileged extension support was removed from Firefox 56.

Currently still in Waterfox stable but figured there’s not actual much advantage to supporting Chrome extensions as Firefox ones are more featureful, so have removed it in the final version based on ESR 153 - albeit would be trivial to add support back in.

[1] https://github.com/bnpoirier/foxify

hirvi74• 3 days ago

Safari has UBlock Origin by the same original Raymond Hill. I've had create success with it.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id674534269...

buzer• 3 days ago

That's uBlock Origin Lite, not uBlock Origin. They are two very different extensions. Lite, for example, does not allow you to add custom filters.

TheDong2• 3 days ago

You can also do that with reynard [0], and eventually firefox itself [1], if you just move to the EU or Japan.

Or switch to android, an operating system that didn't need government intervention to let you install a browser engine.

[0] https://github.com/minh-ton/reynard-browser

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1882872

left-struck• 3 days ago

Do we have a timeline for when proper firefox will be available on iOS?

I’m in Japan and my App Store is set to Japan, but if I try to install ublock origin

“Add-ons are not compatible with Firefox for iOS. Try installing them on Firefox for desktop.“

Gareth3213• 2 days ago

While Apple has technically permitted third party browser engines in the EU, they have made it so onerous and expensive that no company is likely to build one. Apple remains the gatekeeper and will likely deny any builds for many years while they abuse the EU courts in delay tactics.

The EU has been fumbling the application of the Digital Markets Act. They have been sitting on a judgement of non-compliance regarding third party stores for literally years now. By now they could have moved to forced compliance and huge fines. It's not clear if there is some kind of hidden diplomacy happening, a desire to not anger Trump, or sheer incompetence. Either way, I have lost hope that the EU bureaucratic engine will ever do anything to help ordinary people. Their only function now appears to hurt the very weakest in society, because they can't fight back.

-angry Dane

andrewl-hn• 2 days ago

Just so you know, "move to Europe" is pretty complicated inside Apple ecosystem. You can't move your App Store account from one country to another while you have any subscriptions active. You cancel them, wait for them to expire, and only then you can switch. So, for example, if you subscribed to an app yearly in January, and then cancelled your subscription in May, you still have to wait until January of next year. Very annoying in practice.

giamma• 3 days ago

As a Firefox user, I make extensive usage of the location bar and the fact that Firefox allows you to search in history, bookmarks etc. etc.

It's so convenient to me, that I rarely use bookmarks. I keep a large history, and Firefox will efficiently allow me to find web sites I previously visited because it will effectively search in my browsing history when I type one or more words in the location bar, looking not only into the URL but also into the title.

This is something that I always miss when I try a different browsers. Also, while Mozilla Foundation has many issues, Firefox is opensource. I am looking forward into Ladybird but it will take time before it's usable. Until then, Firefox remains my favorite browser.

red_alpacalypse• 3 days ago

Whatever you think uBlock Origin is doing; it‘s most likely just the built-in Orion ad-blocking.

While uBlock Origin can be installed in Orion on iOS just fine, it remains non-functional.

As discussed before, I find this to be false advertising by Kagi: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48476448

Next best thing for me is using Safari with uBlock Origin Lite, which actually works.

graynk• 2 days ago

I grew tired of posting the same thing every time the extension support in Orion comes up, so thank you for doing it for me

salmonik2• 3 days ago

Where's the source code for their browser? Such move of not publishing it is almost bizarre for such a pro-privacy company.

margalabargala4• 3 days ago

Kagi is not a pro privacy company except inasmuch as they currently consider privacy to be profitable.

They are a would-be AI company who discovered paid search was a viable way to self-fund.

If you ask them what guarantees you have that they won't someday decide to sell your search history, their response will be "well, it doesn't make financial sense for us to do so. Now drop it" and ban you.

Here's a blog post someone wrote about this with examples: https://d-shoot.net/kagi.html

greggoB2• 3 days ago

If you ask them what guarantees you have that they won't someday decide to sell your search history, their response will be "well, it doesn't make financial sense for us to do so. Now drop it" and ban you.

Can you provide any evidence of them having done this? As a paying Kagi subscriber, I am surely interested in knowing more.

Cyberdog3• 3 days ago

Is this the same "Kagi" that used to manage shareware license purchases (primarily for Mac) 30 years ago? I assumed it was as this Kagi also seems to be Apple-centric, but that Kagi was run by a man named Key (Key Netherly or something like that), not Vlad.

ethanhawksley• 3 days ago

They can give me as good a guarantee as any search engine can that they pinkie promise they aren't selling your data. What keeps me with kagi is the quality. It is night and day using it and using other search engines. Even if they sold my searches, I'd still use them in a heartbeat.

mid-kid• 3 days ago

Is the source code published anywhere?

salmonik2• 3 days ago

They have a github organization[0] but without explicit source code for the browser.

[0] https://github.com/OrionBrowser

ares6232• 3 days ago

No password manager built-in yet. Although I suppose I really should migrate to Apple's native password manager nowadays.

doublebash• 3 days ago

I had used the built-in password managers in browsers for years when using Android. Since I switched to iPhone, I couldn’t be happier with Apple Passwords.

datakan2• 3 days ago

It’s not bad but the lack of secure notes kills it for me. Unusable without that as far as I’m concerned.

dotancohen• 3 days ago

Don't marry yourself to the Apple (or any other large vendor) ecosystem. I use Keepass variants on my Linux and Android devices, it's absolutely terrific.

ares6232• 3 days ago

Yeah. Right after typing that I was reminded how much of a nightmare trying to recover access to an Apple account is. I recently had to do it for a friend and it was nerve wracking, there was a very real chance of being permanently locked out if you take the wrong step.

regecks• 3 days ago

Any chance Apple Private Relay still works? That’s why I stick to Safari. Am a paying Kagi user.

TingPing• 3 days ago

That’s a feature of Safari itself.

Cyberdog3• 3 days ago

I'm giving it a try after a couple months of daily driving with Zen, which I've become quite fond of. One potential deal-breaker is that it seems to be impossible to log into GitHub. After autofilling my credentials from the keychain, the form submits, and then I get redirected right back to the form with no error message. The same thing happens when I try logging in with my passkey. Has anyone else run into this and found a workaround? I tried turning off auto-submitting password forms in the Settings but that doesn't change anything.

teravor• 3 days ago

one of their "Curated Extensions" is Tampermonkey, a non open source userscript engine. when there are multiple open ones available.

like attracts like?

applfanboysbgon• 3 days ago

Okay...? Do you believe you're entitled to everyone's code for free?

helterskelter• 3 days ago

Do you believe closed-source software is entitled to people's usage and good opinion?

Who wants to use a privacy-focused browser which isn't FOSS in this day and age, especially given the mature alternatives?

kmfrk• 3 days ago

People also generally use Violentmonkey (https://violentmonkey.github.io) instead nowadays.

roundabout-host2• 3 days ago

The browser itself is nonfree. I would not be surprised with it promoting more nonfree software.

TechRemarker• 3 days ago

Tried switching a while back. It's like Safari but with so many little UI improvements that make it so much more enjoyable but while still feeling like something Apple would design. Alas didn't use long as lack to many things such as no native Apple Pay support (have to use iOS or scan a code etc), or 2fa email/sms auto fill, private relay support, doesn't fully support 1Password, and so on. Most all of which because of Apple limitations but still little things that I value more than the better UI. However, far more important than all of that is so many sites didn't work. With Chrome you know a site will work, with Safari you know a lot may not, but with Orion it was an enormous number of sites that continually ran into issues and unlike Safari too many to keep reporting or find work arounds. All the benefits of Safari make it worth the downside of some sites not working properly, but the benefits of Orion over Safari for the massive number that didn't work right was certainly not worth it for me. Which was all unfortunate since the Orion team is doing everything they can essentially on their end. Hopefully they have a large enough niche to stick around and offer even modest competition for the big players.

JumpCrisscross6• 3 days ago

such as no native Apple Pay

Apple Pay is now supported [1].

[1] https://x.com/vladquant/status/1866659950921191550

loehnsberg3• 3 days ago

I am using Orion on Mac and iOS for a few years now and I cannot disagree more.

If a site works on Safari but not on Orion it is mostly due to ad blockers etc. Just flick the compatibility mode and it works. I have not encountered a single case where this did not fix it.

Also for a while now Apple Pay works, Apple password manager works, autofill works.

lanamo• 3 days ago

+1 - using Orion on iOS & MacOs for a few years and i like it!

cyanydeez• 3 days ago

The Linux ARM64 appears to only be for AArch. Ubuntu has a snapdragon X Elite version.

TiredOfLife4• 3 days ago

Skip the middleman and just use Yandex browser. It has great free video dubbing feature

MrDrMcCoy2• 3 days ago

In the same way that I'm uncomfortable with Opera since it went Chinese and Chrome from all its corporate spyware, I'll be skipping over the Russian stuff.

TiredOfLife4• 2 days ago

Kagi is unapologetically russian, as in russian government throug yandex, connected

spaghettifythis• 3 days ago

My main gripe with this is the pretty shocking performance on old "supported" iOS devices (e.g. an iPhone SE 2). When you have too many tabs, or watch more than a couple videos it just starts freezing and will sometimes crash the phone - you get an unresponsive sideshow screen for a bit before it goes to the lock screen with fingerprint login disabled (like after a restart). I can only assume they've accidentally found a way to make webkit leak memory?

droserasprout• 3 days ago

I find it shocking that it works fine on a totally unsupported iPhone 7 (2016). With extensions! Not the latest build (unfortunately, they bumped the minimum iOS version to 17.0 recently), and I haven't stress-tested it with many tabs, but still.

8jy89hui2• 3 days ago

I tried using Orion mobile for months but I just kept running into so many UI bugs that I had to switch away from it :(. I love Kagi, but Orion just feels unpolished right now

hodapp• 3 days ago

Same for me. It was just so full of glitches - UI not responding, refusing to scroll, menu being inaccessible, pages somehow producing looping pop-up dialogs about not being able to render right and blocking the rest of the app...

SOLAR_FIELDS• 3 days ago

Interesting, I get occasional glitches, mainly around placement of the text bar, but they are visual and don’t affect behavior. I’ve been living on the browser on iOS for about a year now and I enjoy it.

I did eventually have to abandon the desktop one about a year ago though due to bugs. It seems like it’s better now though.

laweijfmvo• 3 days ago

ditto, it’s just not stable or usable at all for me.

calmingsolitude• 3 days ago

I still use it because I like how easy it is to use extensions on iOS but definitely agree that there are a lot of UI bugs. Listing the most prominent ones just in case the dev is around:

- At times, the search bar text disappears and the "refresh page" icon is left aligned (instead of right aligned).

- When a link has an associated app that can open it, Orion opens a modal that asks whether you'd like to open it in-app or continue on the browser. However, sometimes it immediately opens the app and shows the modal once you navigate back.

- When using a custom search engine, you can no longer use the search bar to edit your query and it just shows the url.

whereistejas• 3 days ago

that was my experience as well. in my case, i kept running into issues with using chrome plugins.

brynx972• 3 days ago

I have been running Orion mobile on my iPhone for 3 or 4 years. Occasionally scrolling up or down would get stuck, but I haven't experienced that in a long time. I tend to do simple things though. Read HN, NYT, reddit, webtoons, and that is about it. The native ad-free experience is top.

darkamaul• 3 days ago

I have quite the opposite view here. I have switched from Firefox to Orion on my iPhone a year ago (potentially more?) and had a great experience.

Sure they are sometimes some buggy UI controls (like the focus not working), but for the most part, the experience has been smooth.

Did you try to report the bugs when you had some? Maybe this could help everyone else using the browser.

8jy89hui2• 9 hours ago

Did you try to report the bugs when you had some? Maybe this could help everyone else using the browser.

I rarely bother submitting bugs on closed source software. Submitting bug reports takes a lot of time (to do well) and I feel that it often leads to nothing.

In my case, all the bugs I ran into were things that developers should also run into through normal use of the app (freezes, weird search bar bugs, scrolling stuck, etc)

sodapopcan3• 3 days ago

I paid the one-time fee that gives you lifetime access to it over a year ago and it's been at least a year that I haven't used it (It was like $270USD or something... I can't remember).

I wanted to, and still want to, like it so badly but there were just too many bugs and I have been using Firefox since. Every once in a while I come back to Orion to see what's up...

Now... this is likely going to sound extremely stupid to many HNers, but the thing that makes me immediately quit is that I can't make the vertical tab bar as small as the width of the icons themselves (Orion forces extra left/right padding to accommodate the small row of buttons at the top). This is 100% a UI thing (and explicitly not a UX thing, per se) but there is just something about the ultra-thin, vertical tab strip that Firefox allows (and some other browers I might add) that... I just love it. It's so stupid, I know, but it just gets right out of my way. And as someone who always has tons of tabs open: this is exactly what my tab looked liked in my horizontal tab bar days.

Anyway, that's all. Still love Kagi as a company. Zero regrets I gave them a bunch of money for a browser I don't use. I'm still hoping to make the switch one day!

Oh... also that whole webkit thing that puts the URL in the centre and then it moves to the left... that shit sucks. This was one of my big problems when I tried out Zen. Just make it so I can edit the URL immediately with one click and no animation (and I'm not even anti-animation generally). Like... just do it. **in' **.

freediver7• 2 days ago

I appreciate that you are very particular about UI. Have you considered opening a thread on orionfeedback.org and sharing some of the thoughts/ideas?

And thanks for the support, being completely user-funded is what makes developing Orion fun!

sodapopcan3• 2 days ago

I have considered it, yes, lol. I'll do so. I've reported things in the past but I'm one of those people who feels like they're being a giant pain reporting too many things, especially something like this that I view as very low priority for most people. But hey, who knows!

Premature EDIT: oh, you're Vlad, lol. Thanks for the nudge! :D

sodapopcan3• 2 days ago

Have you guys done any account pruning? I haven't logged in in a year and my creds no longer work.

technovangelist• 3 days ago

I only started using it about 6 months ago so I don't know what it was like before, but today it's a solid choice. far less problematic than Chrome or Firefox or Arc or Dia or Brave or any of the other browsers I had on my system. Orion was the first browser that let me delete all the rest and haven't run into any issues in months. Some of the other comments show they hadn't used it in a long time. 1Password works perfectly as does Apple Pay.

nklmilojevic• 2 days ago

which 1password extension works perfectly?

I have the latest Orion browser and it is buggy like before - sometimes doesn't show up, it has like 5fps and works half of the time.

cute_boi• 3 days ago

I will suggest people to use helium browser over this closed source browser. I know kagi is good company, but i don't understand why they aren't open sourcing browser.

xando• 3 days ago

Happy Kagi user.

I switched to Orion at some point, but due to bugs and battery drain, I had to switch back (to Safari!) As soon as those are fixed, I’m back again.

I’d also pay for it, if that changes anything. Actually, I would pay for the browser, period, if it was good, respected privacy, was efficient and fast on mobile, and synced things between devices.

mediumsmart2• 3 days ago

Using it for years on iOS and Mac. Works great and the only zero telemetry browser. Apple Pay works and the compatibility button fixes any problem site worth loading. No complaints.

kqp• 3 days ago

Not only. Others include LibreWolf, Waterfox, Zen, Tor, I’m sure others.

mediumsmart2• 2 days ago

fair enough - librewolf - same as Orion: 18.29 fingerprint uniqueness - I dont know the other browsers except Tor. I use librewolf too with privacy badger and librejs - good browser

yellowapple2• 3 days ago

The Linux beta feels nice. Built-in ad-blocking and nested vertical tabs satisfies the two main things keeping me on Firefox (unnerfed uBlock Origin and Tree Style Tabs, respectively).

Some things feel like obvious oversights, like the lack of “Search for...” when right-clicking on selected text. Also some of the settings pages are broken (like the one with per-site settings), though I assume this is just a quirk of it being a test build.

The only showstopper is the lack of publicly-available source code. Transparency is a dependency of trust. As much as I want to trust Kagi's browser (I certainly have trusted them enough to be paying them every month for their search engine + AI), web browsers are the biggest attack surface on a modern desktop, and I'd be a lot more comfortable with my daily browsing being done with a user agent that has nothing to hide. I don't even necessarily need it to be FOSS (though that'd be preferable); source-available would be enough.

matheusmoreira7• 3 days ago

Built-in ad-blocking

Definitely enjoying this trend. I think Brave was the first to do it, and now Kagi is doing it too in their own browser.

The web without adblocking is so unusable it might as well be considered broken. Ad blockers are the new popup blockers: they should be built into the browsers themselves as first class features. Only conflicts of interest prevented that. Couldn't trust a company funded by Google to maintain an ad blocker. I'm so glad alternatives are showing up.

c162• 3 days ago

As an ad-blocker user for years, I agree. On the flip side, how do blogs, news, and every day ad-serving websites survive without them? If it dies, it dies? Maybe this is not a discussion for here right now. But it's definitely something I've thought of. Not everyone want to pay for news.

tjpnz• 3 days ago

Not only unusable, it's an outright security risk. Even the purportedly less scammy ad networks like Google sell ads to scammers and malware developers.

shevy-java2• 3 days ago

Couldn't trust a company funded by Google to maintain an ad blocker.

Agreed. Google can not be trusted. They once tried to run the "acceptable ads" campaign. That one died down quickly after people pointed out the hypocrisy by Google. Nowadays it seems nobody likes Google anymore, so it is much easier to reject its various rubbish claims. See also how Google is waging war against ublock origin.

Xerox9213• 2 days ago

I also think it’s interesting that Ladybird is decidedly not including ad blocking, but leaving it to third party extensions. In some ways it makes a lot of sense to keep doing it that way.

midnightbobarun• 2 days ago

I also like the more browsers have built-in adblock, but so far I've never seen any of them copy uBlock Origin's "element picker" (the little eyedropper tool) feature... it's good for getting rid of annoying stuff on certain websites and only uBlock Origin seems to do it. :(

saghm• 3 days ago

I don't understand what the point of keeping a browser closed-source is. Are they trying to monetize it or something?

yellowapple2• 3 days ago

It seems like they're indeed trying to sell “Orion+”, but it doesn't look like it buys you much besides bragging rights, in which case an Ardour-like business model of “source code is free but we charge for pre-built binaries” seems like it'd accomplish the same thing.

jorvi4• 3 days ago

Are browser UIs themselves vectors for serious exploits?

Orion uses WebKit and I assume they try to track as close to the release branch as possible. So if you trust WebKit, you can trust Orion.

Personally I'm more of a Brave guy though, despite having been a Kagi user since 2024 :).

What I'd really wish for is an EU browser that 'just works'. Vivaldi is nice but it often has papercuts because it has a small team behind it that have to try to support a mountain of features.

pegasus• 3 days ago

What I'd really wish for is an EU browser that 'just works'.

Have you tried Zen Browser? It's entirely open source but the core team and sponsor are European, and it's actively positioning itself as the European alternative. I've been giving it a go lately. So far, so good, and I like most of their UI/UX choices.

laserbeam• 3 days ago

Orion uses WebKit and _I assume_ they try to track as close to the release branch as possible. So if you trust WebKit, you can trust Orion.

The problem is you're stuck at assuming, but can't verify.

roblabla• 3 days ago

There’s a lot of ways you can hold an engine wrong. Some 3rd party browser (often by security vendors…) have been vulnerable to exploits due to not compiling it with all the hardening options, or injecting vulnerable extensions that expose an attack surface to the webpage, for instance.

asadotzler2• 3 days ago

When a vendor bundles their own code with Webkit, it's quite easy for that vendor's code to have it's own security vulnerabilities, yes commonly in the UI, but also to open security vulnerabilities in Webkit. There's also no telling how much they've modified Webkit itself to make the rest of their code work. You simply cannot trust it and there are many security failure modes here. If you cannot inspect it all, you are trusting the vendor and I would be very careful trusting un-tested vendors of the most complex programs ever written which hold your credit cards and all of your logins probably your bank as well. I damn well would not trust the first few versions before the white hats have had a few years poking at it.

colordrops• 3 days ago

I think FOSS is far better. Restrictive licenses lead to much less people inspecting and working with the code.

nicce• 2 days ago

less people

Less agents these days

brynx972• 3 days ago

My main issue with Linux beta is the inability to sync with my Macbook and iPhone sessions. I move tabs between devices quite often in Firefox. Although, I will confess not spending much time looking at this problem or any solutions.

Agree with the lack of publicly-available source code.

arnoooooo• 2 days ago

Transparency is a dependency of trust.

I'd recommend reading Byung-Chul Han. In his book The Transparency Society, he argues - quite convincingly IMHO - that transparency is asked when trust is missing.

sedatk• 3 days ago

Still waiting for the Windows version.

steadyfall04• 3 days ago

i’ve been daily-driving this on my iphone for almost 9 months now & its amazing. the built-in adblocker works wonders and fwiw, i haven’t faced that many bugs compared to what i see from other users.

this is despite having had 1k-1.3k tabs open for prolonged periods (1+ months) and being able to search/browse through them easily.

onion2k• 3 days ago

A good webkit-based browser on Windows might mean people actually start bothering to test things in that browser family.

It can be done today but it's a little bit of a pain and it lags behind Safari by some margin. Run `npx playwright wk <url>` if you have Playwright set up.

cantalopes• 3 days ago

I am not supporting kagi since i found out they fund putin's war via yandex that is fully owned ditrctly by state

dewey3• 3 days ago

That's fair to make as a personal choice, but full context is also important: https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...

lostlogin3• 3 days ago

I really wish there was a way to support their amazing product without a cent going the way of the Russian government. I get that there is a stance being taken, and it's an attempt to be apolitical, but that's in itself a political choice.

brikym• 3 days ago

That's a valid reason to use them and very pragmatic of Kagi. Sometimes jurisdiction A wants to hide something but it's on jurisdiction B's search results. If I were a Kagi subscriber I wouldn't want my search degraded because of a vocal minority.

geraltofrivia• 3 days ago

Regardless of whether I agree or not, that's rather level headed. I appreciate the transparent response.

ninkendo5• 2 days ago

Framing Russia’s unprovoked invasion of their neighbor as “politics” actually makes me less trusting of Kagi than before I read your link. It’s really not a good look.

Maybe english is not his first language, but at least in America we use the word “politics” to describe things like party association, arguing over wedge issues, treating elections as a “team sport”, rhetoric, etc. We don’t use it to describe an attempt by one nation to wipe out another one.

I’ve been a Kagi user for several years now but, ugh, now I have to think about it a lot more and I’m probably not going to be as enthusiastic about recommending it.

ochronus• 3 days ago

Huh? How so? Please add some sources

lostlogin3• 3 days ago

The link provided by dewey - a direct source.

https://kagifeedback.org/d/5445-reconsider-yandex-integratio...

jorvi4• 3 days ago

Yandex divested their Russian side of the business and are Dutch.

JumpCrisscross6• 3 days ago

Yandex divested their Russian side of the business and are Dutch

Source for Kagi switching to Nebius Group [1] from Yandex?

(I care deeply about the war in Ukraine. But I'm still a happy Kagi user. I would like the option to exclude Yandex from my results. It reduces the effectiveness of the search engine. But that's a choice I'd prefer to be able to make myself. I'm not sure if that's realistic to offer to every user at scale, however.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebius_Group

TiredOfLife4• 2 days ago

"In July 2024, in a transaction brought about by international sanctions during the Russian invasion of Ukraine and restrictions on foreign ownership, Nebius Group, the Dutch holding company that owned Yandex, sold its Russian assets to a group of Russian investors for a discounted price of US$5.3 billion"

maccard• 3 days ago

What browser or search engine do you use? I’m pretty sure I can find a reason to morally oppose it for you.

loehnsberg3• 3 days ago

Getting from using Yandex to funding Putin‘s war requires quite a few turns. Since most of Russia’s war chest is filled by money from oil exports and China indirectly also supports Russia materially, I would first cut myself off of all oil-based products, and then from the Chinese supply chain of goods, and only then cut products indluding Yandex search results. In that order, because that matters for the war chest.

And after you then stopped typing the response, otherwise having to use a device that was made in China built from oil-based components using oil—based transport throughout its supply chain, send a postcard with your apology to the Kagi team and anyone else who does not fund wars and still uses traded goods, because this is how the world is.

If you want to throw a however tiny wrench into Putin‘s war efforts, complain load to your government to join sanctions and to have them support Ukraine and make your choice at the ballot box accordingly.

matkoniecz4• 2 days ago

send a postcard with your apology to the Kagi team

why? Kagi is not entitled to be paid by them, and on free market they are free to not buy a commercial product and use alternatives

and avoiding Kagi is trivial to achieve while avoiding products that were produced with oil in some way is impossible

Matl• 2 days ago

Fair choice but do you also boycott US companies assisting in the Gaza genocide and the unprovoked attack on Iran?

ilvez• 2 days ago

This. Just cleaned up my t-shirt shelf and need to archive the nice yellow T-shirt they sent to early adopters. Not wearing it.. (Obviously it goes for the services as well). Not happy at all.

roundabout-host2• 3 days ago

I find it interesting that it uses GTK, something quite unusual for a proprietary app. In any case, I am not using it, because I don't want to use a nonfree WWW browser.

antnisp• 3 days ago

Surprisingly, this is what the Webkit project uses for Linux, so that's why they chose it too.

asadotzler2• 3 days ago

Webkit started as a fork of KDE's KHTML and KJS. It makes good sense.

mghackerlady5• 2 days ago

That and Webkit on unix is almost entirely worked on by GNOME people

Razengan6• 3 days ago

Looks like we're back in the 1990s with everyone and their grandma making a browser

To farm that sweet data to sell to AI trainers is it?

luciana1u• 3 days ago

paid $270 for a lifetime browser license and then didn't use it for a year, which honestly makes it the most authentic lifetime subscription I've ever heard of

shepherdjerred• 3 days ago

I want to love Orion but it’s just too buggy. I went back to Safari

mholm• 2 days ago

Yeah. I also noticed a fairly significant speed increase when I started using Safari again. Unfortunate. There are just too many features that Safari supports perfectly, that Orion either doesn't support at all, or has flakey support for. Especially the Apple ecosystem ones, which I'd think Apple doesn't expose, but Chrome seems to support some of them just fine, like 2fa codes.

freediver7• 2 days ago

We'd like to hear more about that - I've been using Orion for the last 6 years and checking Safari every month, cant say Safari ever felt faster than Orion. Must be a specific use case. So if you can be conrete in providing feedback, that would indeed be valuable.

est• 3 days ago

I hope it brings back ManifestV2 (or something even better). Let users switch to a cleaner Web.

freediver7• 2 days ago

Orion already supports it.

swiftcoder• 3 days ago

Curious whether they will upstream windows support. WebKit really needs a decent rendering backend on Windows, would unlock a whole world

freediver7• 2 days ago

https://form.kagi.com/orion-windows-newsletter

EchooAI• 3 days ago

I tried the browser, and honestly, it works very fast and is very convenient. I will give it a one week trial, and give Arc a one week break. Let's see how this develops.

rpastuszak• 3 days ago

Has it gotten any better in the past 6 months on Mac (UI glitches, password management)?

I really want to use it but basic things like password management kept breaking (I even tried switching between different options, like BitWarden - no luck).

radicalriddler• 3 days ago

Yeah, bitwarden just not filling fields at all is still broken

cpt_sobel• 3 days ago

Can anyone explain how they support all 3 browsers' extensions?

freediver7• 2 days ago

7 years of stubborn development.

angry_octet• 3 days ago

"Zero Compromise Privacy" vs "Seamless integration with all Kagi services directly in your browser."

Search and translate (and browse?) traces from authentic humans sounds valuable.

aquir• 3 days ago

Very fast and good UI but the iCloud passwords integration is very poor :(

vanyaland• 3 days ago

Safari has used the same WebExtensions API as Chrome and Firefox since Safari 14. So is the hard part API coverage rather than three engines?

xacky• 3 days ago

It's just a webkit wrapper, not a new engine like Servo and Ladybird.

gen2brain• 2 days ago

Yes, and you need an army of people to "wrap" WebKit just like that. E.g., the WebKit port on Haiku, of course, is not in good shape because it has more code than the whole of their OS. EFL once had a WebBrowser control/component, maintained by Tizen devs, but of course, it has now been removed. There is no manpower to maintain such control.

mrweasel• 2 days ago

At least it's WebKit and not just a reskin of Chrome, but I don't exactly get why Kagi feel that they need to develop their own browser. Personally I prefer my search and browser to be developed be separate entities that can focus on doing one thing really well.

blacklime• 3 days ago

These people seriously need to stop.

Kagi, Rust, Claude. Just stop.

You are not innovators.

__alexs• 2 days ago

So glad I stopped wasting my subscription fee on these stupid vanity projects.

jesse_dot_id• 2 days ago

Love Kagi the search engine, Helium is the better browser.

assimpleaspossi• 2 days ago

Not available for BSD though one might be able to run it through the Linuxalator on FreeBSD at least.

Boxxed2• 2 days ago

Why does everyone use webkit instead of gecko? Is gecko hard to work with or something?

LoganDark4• 2 days ago

Is there a reason to make a gecko browser that's not a fork of Firefox?

Boxxed2• 2 days ago

Probably the same reason that people use webkit rather than fork chromium?

arthurtully• 2 days ago

iCloud Bookmarks would be an easy reason to switch. SlimBrave rn works great, but I have to do workarounds via Edge to sync bookmarks to iOS Safari.

mghackerlady5• 2 days ago

I really, really hope they release the source for this, if not just the code for extensions so Epiphany can finally be usable for more than basic websearch

theoneone• 2 days ago

I switched from brave(ios) to Orion about a month ago and almost I didn't look back. Some ui bug and certain website bit playing along(reddit) but it's OK.

deaton3• 2 days ago

Unfortunately, as long as Chromium has as much market share as it does, nobody will bother to make their websites compatible with anything else.

deaton3• 2 days ago

A browser option that isn't a Chromium reskin and isn't Firefox... it does seem like a while since we've seen one of those. I've used Kagi a bit and I've been pretty impressed with how well they desloppify their results. I might have to give this a try.

hmokiguess2• 2 days ago

I have permanently switched to https://github.com/imputnet/helium for a while now and have been quite happy with it.

That said, I still think the browser market is garbage for consumers.

plutokras• 2 days ago

What's the unique value proposition here? I checked it out and seems like yet another Chromium fork with some privacy added on top.

hmokiguess2• 2 days ago

It's kinda like ungoogled chromium with some defaults and opinions baked-in, the website explains better https://helium.computer/

Totally agree with you that is yet another fork with some privacy added on top, which is why I'm still not satisfied as a consumer with the market.

espetro• 2 days ago

The only browser supporting Safari, Chrome, and Firefox extensions

Honestly it's nuts you've cracked a way to support all three of Safari, Chrome and Firefox extensions. In my experience while developing browser extensions, providing support for all three is somewhat of a headache.

Care to share more insights on how you did it, or even launching/supporting a browser extension framework to ship browser extensions?

freediver7• 2 days ago

It was a design goal since we started working on it in 2019. (because why not?) It is basically a matter of time and devotion - we invested 7 years of development into it and while still not perfect (this is an incredibly messy problem!) a lot of people enjoy running their favorite extensions, even on iOS, which is truly unique to Orion.

nunez2• 2 days ago

Tried Orion again two weeks ago. It's almost there for me, but the lack of history sync between devices and its battery consumption are dealbreakers for me. I love it otherwise!!!

freediver7• 2 days ago

Orion syncs history, natively though iCloud sync. Battery consumption should be on par or better than Safari (because Orion has native ad-clocking). If this isn't the case, it is unusual and worth digging deeper into.

nunez2• 1 day ago

Hey, Vlad! History did not sync between Orion on my MacBook and Orion on my iPhone. Bookmarks synced, however. I was running the latest version on all devices. Perhaps it's PEBKAC; I'll give it another go, as using Orion was an excellent experience otherwise.

singpolyma3• 2 days ago

Another webkit skin pretending to be a browser.

tunapizza• 2 days ago

I'm a heavy user of Google Drive, Docs, Sheets etc. for work. Does the suite work better with Orion now? It's the one thing that forced me off of Orion and back to Firefox. Or perhaps I need to really invest in finding a functional alternative to the Google suite. And I'm reading that Orion supports containers now, which is a feature I also love.

pickleglitch• 2 days ago

"Orion Everywhere You Are!"

Unless you are on on Android, I guess.

nipperkinfeet• 2 days ago

Not available on Windows. DOA.

Orion Browser by Kagi

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