The native tree-style tabs in Orion (yes, actual tree-style, not just vertical) are awesome. And on my M1 MBP Orion handily beats Firefox in power efficiency.
Being able to install Chrome extensions, despite being a Webkit based browser, makes it better than Safari (where people have to pay the Apple Tax to make extensions for it).
Really there's only 2 issues I have with Orion:
1. It's not available outside of the Apple ecosystem. I want to be able to use the same browser across all my devices so everything syncs nicely.
2. 1Password refuses to whitelist Orion for their browser extension. Yes 1Password's Universal Autofill works pretty well, but that doesn't help when I'm making a new account or updating a password
I know Kagi can't do anything about #2, but I'm hoping they are actively working on #1. It would be the thing that finally makes me leave Firefox behind.
The mobile version is also super buggy. Frequently when I’m using it it just turns half-black and I can’t see the page. Really love the desktop version though
Agreed on all points. It also has too many bugs for non technical/canary users. However Vlad is very open on this, both on Discord and the issue tracker (https://orionfeedback.org/).
It's an amazing browser, and I'd love to use it across all my devices.
Much of the risk associated with password managers is only applicable when using the browser extensions. I know it’s a minor inconvenience, but I would advise sticking with the lack of extension.
Indeed - in the past, some browser extensions would auto fill into iframes and similar, using the origin identity of the page container, even when the field was invisible. That's obviously an issue, but sticking to manual actions (partly) helps there.
The downside of not using a password manager is that users enter (or paste) their passwords without any robust domain validation. In phishing scenarios, a missing auto fill prompt is likely to be enough to encourage a pause and think.
Tavis Ormandy is one of the leading security experts in the world. Here’s a blog post that highlights a number of the risks related to password manager extensions: https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/passmgrs.html
They are a bit vague, but it usually comes down to "we don't want to manually handle it every time a new tiny browser comes by". Plenty of staff responses in here:
For something as important as a web browser or operating system, I'd want it to be open source. In the FAQ it does say that they're opensourcing components and plan to opensource the browser eventually. This is all good.
Long term though, I'd want it also to run on opensource operating systems. It doesn't exactly make sense to have an opensource browser on a closed source operating system. I use Firefox on macOS (+ Linux) and wouldn't be so inclined if it only ran on Mac and/or Windows.
A piece of software will always be more trustworthy when it is free and open source than when it is closed source. A web browser interacts with so many servers that it would be very difficult to screen for all of the possible ways it could leak information to third parties if it were malicious. A FOSS browser has no such concerns since the code can be checked for malicious behavior. Any telemetry in FOSS can be either disabled in the software settings or stripped through forks (LibreWolf, Mull, Ungoogled Chromium).
With multiple cross-platform FOSS browsers already on the market, being FOSS is a baseline expectation for any new web browser that I hope Orion will eventually meet.
> A piece of software will always be more trustworthy when it is free and open source than when it is closed source
Agreed.
I argued something different though, and that is that a zero-telemetry browser is more trustworthy (from a privacy perspective) than an open-source browser that has telemetry by default.
The simple reason for this is that literally anyone can test and verify zero-telemetry claim by installing a free web proxy and monitoring connections.
Proving trustworthiness for a browser with telemetry, even if client is OSS, is much harder.
> A web browser interacts with so many servers
A zero-telemetry browser, especially one blocking ads and trackers by default like Orion, does not.
Just one such rogue connection found by anyone on the web would be enough to destroy zero-telemetry browser's entire reputation and credibility.
> A FOSS browser has no such concerns since the code can be checked for malicious behavior.
That is somewhat an illusion. For example server side code that is receiving and processing browser telemetry (including personal information such as IP addresses), is not open source and can not be checked for any major OSS browser, as far as I know. Even if it was FOSS, the user would have no way of knowing that is the code that is actually running on the servers.
With a zero-telemetry browser there is no such concern. This is why zero-telemetry is a much more powerful claim if trust and privacy are of concern.
Ultimately, what defines trustworthines overall is the business model of the browser, because that is what defines incentives of the browser vendor. As an average user, would you rather trust a browser with a business model where users pay for the product, or a browser depending on the world's largest ad and tracking network for revenue?
Most browsers depend directly or indirectly on ads/tracking business models for revenue. Orion is again a rare breed in this regard, as it only generates revenue off of the users directly paying for it.
> A zero-telemetry browser, especially one blocking ads and trackers by default like Orion, does not.
With or without telemetry, any web browser interacts with the numerous servers that host the content on the pages users load. A malicious closed source browser could alter its behavior in any number of ways while resisting detection.
It can change the timing or content of requests to and responses from specific domains. It can manipulate content displayed to the user. It can alter the behavior of scripts. Importantly, it can do any of these things in extremely targeted situations, such as when the user's environment meets certain conditions.
FOSS browsers don't have this concern because the source code can be verified to ensure that the browser doesn't manipulate its behavior in any situation.
> As an average user, would you rather trust a browser with a business model where users pay for the product, or a browser depending on the world's largest ad and tracking network for revenue?
The maintainers of the telemetry-free LibreWolf, Mull, and Ungoogled Chromium browsers don't depend on search engine revenue. An average user wouldn't see any problem with these forks, and an informed user would recognize their FOSS nature as an additional benefit that Orion could also gain should it become FOSS in the future.
Correct, and this is why trustworthiness is a matter of the business model, which is what defines incentives.
For many browsers today, users are not the same as customers, and this is problematic from a standpoint of trust and alignment of incentives, regardless of whether they are FOSS or not.
> A piece of software will always be more trustworthy when it is free and open source than when it is closed source.
Totally disagree. Unless you are reviewing the software yourself (like not), you’re just hoping that somebody else reviewed it and they are competent, and that any vulns are reported and fixed.
That’s a lot of trust ok a system that may or may not work as intended.
> Unless you are reviewing the software yourself (like not)
If you're assuming this about me, then you're wrong. I frequently review source code for FOSS I use, especially the parts that I submit issues and pull requests for.
I also know that others are reviewing the source code, since they are submitting issues (that reference portions of the code) and pull requests, too.
> Might as well be closed source at that point.
No, if a piece of software ever behaved suspiciously, the software being FOSS would enable someone to inspect the code and determine the root cause of that behavior. This examination would be made much more difficult if the software were closed source.
First of all, "free and open source" as in libre, does not necessarily mean "free as in beer". You are perfectly free to pay for FOSS and FOSS makers are free to charge for it. Is that clear?
Second, "FOSS = safe" from a privacy perspective is not nearly the reason you want FOSS. You want a FOSS browser for many, many reasons that are above and beyond privacy assurances.
Kagi seems really expensive? They say 240 searches a month costs them $3. But I don’t see how that works. You can run a c5.18xlarge instance for a full hour for that price, and it seems unlikely every search takes 15 seconds of CPU time on all 72 cpus.
Of course they may need multiple instances to search in parallel, but the math per user/search would remain the same.
It’s still nice that someone is making paid search though, and that alone would be enough reason to pay :)
They pay for search APIs. I would say it's very cheap – $10/month for something I use hours a day comes out to a few cents an hour. Even if I was making minimum wage and it only increased my productivity 1% it would be worth it.
Neeva costs $5/month and has an AI implementation. They're also using APIs from other scrapers and engines. How can they do it at half the cost to customers (with free accounts as well)?
I pay for it to get the benefit of Google's better search results without ads. It's better than DDG, Bing, Google and Brave Search based on my experience... I've had Kagi subscription since October 2022.
The timing of this piece on Hacker News is just one day before a new beta release is planned with a new vertical tab sidebar implementation which is easier than the current one. But it's already better than Safari Tab Groups and more mac-assed than Arc.
Most people should wait for the new beta release, or at least make sure they get the new update that has been in the oven for some weeks now. The Orion Team cranks new features and new UIs like crazy!
I have been orion as my daily driver for months now and I have been impressed with where this project is going. Kagi the company offers two products, (1) Kagi Search, which I also use as my daily search driver, and (2) Orion Browser the topic of this post and browser I believe is heading places. I support both and will continuing to due to the features and responsiveness from the dev team. A couple of things to mention:
(1) While not all extensions don't work out of the bat, reverse engineering how each works usally results in how to integrate with it. A good example is bitwarden and touch id integration. Search the Orion feedback page and you will see what I mean.
(2) Absolutley love vertical tabs. When I go down rabbit holes of investagations it makes all the tabs easy to organize and remove tabs that don't serve any purpose anymore.
(3) The privacy settings that it offers make your digital footprint just a little smaller compared to other offers. Biggest plus is browser profile isolation.
(4) Combaitibility mode is fantasticly convient to find and use and makes broken experiences easier to fix.
(5) Big bummer is streaming services don't always work, but the developers promise to work towards a solution.
macOS-native vertical tabs were a big win for me too, and like yourself, its WebExtensions API is a win over Safari OOTB but there are Chrome extensions I really rely on that don't work, some as a result of the differences between Webkit and Blink themselves, so I find myself drawn to Arc browser where I get, IMO, a much more robust UI where vertical tabs are the default and the command palette in place of an address/search bar is on the money.
Orion is about to release in-place window switching that sorta matches up with Arc's behavior, but I still prefer Arc as the command palette UX, as well as being able to use back/forward mouse buttons to switch 'in-place' windows, is just the superior affordance.
To be fair, Safari also has MacOS-native vertical tabs, in tab groups, that sync group state across the full ecosystem, and do the "in window switching" when you change groups.
// I pay for Kagi, and use Orion for certain extensions.
Yes, it is fairly straightforward and easy enough to use with the Tab Group switcher in the menu, but sadly it does not allow you to nest tabs in a tree manner (probably it was decided it was a power user feature).
Firefox also needs a toggle to hide that unnecessarily large sidebar header. It’s possible to do that with custom userChrome, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be a checkbox somewhere.
Good timing for this post since I just tried Orion pretty heavily last week. My quick takeaway is that while it's promising, it definitely is not ready for daily driving if you're heavily invested in certain types of add-ons and extensions.
Specifically user scripts extensions (Tampermonkey, ViolentMonkey, a few others) and some ad blocking extensions (AdGuard) will not work. uBlock Origin did work, but the browser stability suffered in my testing when put under heavy load while using quite a few filters. Support for other power user focused extensions was hit and miss, even if you try the Firefox or Chrome version of popular extensions.
I'll stick with Waterfox for now, but will keep an eye on Orion since I really want a webkit-based browser like Safari that offers all the Apple niceties like deeper integration with native macOS functionality while also allowing usage of Firefox/Chrome extensions.
> Several months after first publishing the website, I became an employee of Brave
Fair disclosure from the "About" page, for anyone reading it and noticing Brave's subtly-aligned checkmarks. I'm willing to assume goodwill in a lot of places, but if this was a Firefox or Chrome employee I'd be saying the same thing.
I think that site does not give adequate context to understand the results. Making privacy a check/no-check mark on things that 99.9% of people do not understand does not improve privacy and there are lots of nuances that are not communicated. Even people who do understand the context and platform do not understand what some parts of it means.
The browser is fine in general, esp. the vertical tabs and being very Safari-like as far as the footprint goes, and I've been using Kagi for the last few weeks, which is also working great.
The problem though, is that the browser is my window into so much high-trust data and credentials, there's no way I will entrust it to a browser that's either a) not open source, or b) not built by a well-established company with a track record.
I still wish the authors the best of luck in becoming the (b) from above.
I tried using Orion but 1Password integration is still buggy and doesn’t properly work. Apparently 1Password has to do some whitelisting on their side that the browser is okay to be used, but they don’t do that so it has been stalling for a very long time (https://1password.community/discussion/124112/support-for-or...).
It’s sad because 1Password is such an important thing that I need to properly work that it’s making me use Orion less than I want
Besides that I think Orion (and Kagi, like people mentioned here) is great. That and Arc is a lot of fresh air in the browser space
1. The download button doesn't work on Pale Moon / WhiteStar browser (v32.0.0) - clicking it does nothing. Perhaps it is a bug or some settings I enabled. But it should be a no-brainer that a Browser company design a site that works fine in all browsers so that others can download and switch to it easily!
2. Orion is still very buggy and keeps freezing occasionally. Cannot use it as a daily driver.
3. The uBlock Origin extension still doesn't work perfectly (if at all). That should be a priority, and not just a marketing talking point.
4. Please display / add version number on the website and the download file.
I still recommend it to others but you guys need to produce a stable version soon.
> I still recommend it to others but you guys need to produce a stable version soon.
This must drive developers nuts. It is in Beta. That means it has bugs and is not yet in wide release. A user should have no expectation of it being their daily driver for anything critical. Providing constructive feedback is great, but the closing complaint is just not appropriate at this stage of the product.
- Orion is very impressive already, but not quite ready for daily using if your browsing needs are above average;
- vertical tabs are the biggest selling point for many people.
I also wanted to mention how responsive the team are. I submit my thoughts and bug reports from time to time on the official forum [0], and the team cares a lot, which is fascinating.
It's not always entirely reliable, but Orion browser is one of the few ways that you can use standardized chromium extensions on a browser in iOS systems such as iPhone or iPad.
Installed it an I love the focus mode - I just wish I didn't have to leave it when checking how many tabs were secretly opened or when manually navigating to another site with "command-l".
Been using Brave for many 5 years now but this could easily become my new default browser.
I’ve been slowly transitioning to Orion from Brave, and my only complaint is that Orion doesn’t handle mailto links correctly. Otherwise it’s great, and I like the mobile-desktop linkage.
But I’ve slowed my transition lately, since Brave now offers vertical tabs if you set the flag. Would love to see true tree-style tabs, but even just vertical tabs makes me much less likely to switch away.
My situation is a bit different. I am on some kind of minimalism streak and started to rarely use tabs. It helps with focus and concentration. Would use a browser that enforces a no-tab policy. That's why I enjoy the focus mode so much.
You should check out min browser. it has a mode that prevents you from opening tabs. the design is also very very stripped back. no web extension support but has an adblock and bitwarden integration. it is unfortunately electron based though.
Just browsing orionfeedback.org shows how difficult it is to create a fully fledged modern browser _even_ if you already tap onto an existing rendering engine.
Lots of promise in this one, its in especially good shape for not even being v1.0 yet. It's certainly in better shape than Arc, which I wanted to like but it is extremely slow. I'll be daily driving this one for a while until I feel some reason not to. Once extensions are ironed out I think it will be very powerful seeing as you can add both Chrome and Firefox extensions. The bookmarks need some help, and I would appreciate some features like Firefox auto-sort by name, things like that. Great start
FAQ is missing the only thing I care about: will it support any open platforms.
That probably means they won't, which is disappointing.
Although a browser that's not open source is also a non-starter. The main differentiating features are tree-style tabs which is available as an extension to other browsers anyway. And zero-telemetry, except it doesn't run on a zero-telemetry OS, so again if I want zero-telemetry this is essentially useless to me.
Small thing, but the footnote references render incorrectly for me: they're rendered as normal-sized text, rather than small superscript.
Separately: what does an "X" on "zero telemetry by default" mean for Firefox? My understanding/distant memory is that Firefox asks users to enable developer metrics, but that it's (1) opt in, and (2) distinct in kind from the telemetry the other browsers might collect by default.
Orion does look like a viable alternative to Safari. I like those simple things like typing passwords with a fingerprint and swiping left is animated, much like in Safari. Tab groups would be nice.
The ability to use both Chrome and Firefox extensions is mindblowing. An inbuilt adblocker is good. The profiles look amazing to tab groups. I am very positive this will make my default browser.
It’s still quite buggy, things like occasionally not drawing the page when you switch to a new site; and sometimes being stuck rendering on half the screen only (seems related to the tabs pop out).
I’m still sticking with it for now, because I use Kagi search and I like their ethos. But I am getting slightly frustrated with it. So I may switch soon (I’ll continue using Kagi though, that I really rate)
How long have you been using it? I just started about 4 days ago. I received a MacBook Pro for work and decided to use Orion because I use Kagi, and I haven’t noticed any defects. I’ve primarily been using YouTube, gmail and stack overflow though.
I used Onion for a while, but moved back to Safari. Too many weird issues with playing video, and autofill with tons of contacts (4-5k?). Miss the build in ad blocking, and that it's chrome is thinner, and picture-in-picture without some random extension.
For Safari, consider 1Blocker with all the additional extensions enabled (a top option since ~2015) or AdGuard. To make life easier on the blocker (less energy consumption), consider NextDNS.io or AdGuard for DNS.
If would be nice to see a third browser alternative on Windows, even if just for the better competition. Because Chrome with 90+% of market share and the rest is Firefox on life support and not very competent management is not good.
For me, "At least it's not Webkit" sounds more like something one would say.
There are horrible bugs in Webkit that have not been solved for more than 8 years. Developers that had to build something complex on the web, with lots of custom interaction, animations, etc. learned to hate Webkit with passion (and Safari, and the worst of the worst - Safari on iOS).
The Webkit team focuses on implementing new standards instead of trying get the engine to at least be decent when compared with the alternatives.
It does work ok for most things, and it uses less energy, but it's objectively the worst mainstream browser engine nowadays.
Who needs telemetry on the client when you're signed in with a paid account with your cc info lol.
Look, the product quality both for kagi and orion is average. If they want to compete as a privacy first product they must at least offer bitcoin payment and a legally binding clause about not logging IP addresses.
I'm not really sure what you mean here. Arc uses the Blink engine, which is written in C++ (just like WebCore, the core of WebKit, is), and the rest of the browser is written in Swift.
"Native app" on Mac usually refers to an app following the Apple's HIG (Human Interface Guidelines), using OS native components and having integrations with native services (such as Keychain or iCloud).
The reference browser (produced by the OS manufacturer) on macOS is Safari. It sets a standard for what a 'native' browser following HIG should look and feel like.
You could also say that the reference web rendering engine on macOS is WebKit, which is not only made by Apple but is also the fastest, most resource efficient (probably what OP refers to) and comes with many native system integrations built-in.
In all these regards, Orion is indeed a native app on Mac and many other browsers are not.
Chromium is C++, i.e. native. The amount of memory used is a separate issue for the most part, and any language or execution environment can use a lot.
Ah okay thank you for the correction. I had heard all this talk about how Electron is based on Chromium which is why developing with it tends to create memory intensive apps or something. Happy to be wrong on that.
Yes, Chromium is native, but apps built with Electron are written in (or compiled to) JavaScript or WebAssembly, so not native, which uses more memory. Since Chromium is a full web browser it has a kind of minimum memory use which is higher than simple Electron apps would take if they were rewritten to be native. But if you're making a browser, you're going to need all that anyway.
This has been my daily driver for a few months. Love the vertical nested tabs and being able to add things like paywall bypass/google translate into a browser as battery efficient as Safari.
I downloaded this yesterday after seeing this post and, wow!
It will take me awhile to go through all the tools and features for developers but I'm pretty sure I'll be using this as my goto browser for testing my work.
It was better before they buried settings. I switch Javascript on and off a lot. Before the change, it was two taps to get to those settings. Now it's three. While there's a button to switch all Brave settings on and off, I just want to toggle Javascript, and I do it enough that it's now one level too deep, i.e. it takes 5 taps total, 3 to get to the Javascript switch, one to toggle the switch and one to close the menus. I'd like to see a browser that allows switching Javascript on and off right on the menu bar, and without force reloading the page.
The native tree-style tabs in Orion (yes, actual tree-style, not just vertical) are awesome. And on my M1 MBP Orion handily beats Firefox in power efficiency.
Being able to install Chrome extensions, despite being a Webkit based browser, makes it better than Safari (where people have to pay the Apple Tax to make extensions for it).
Really there's only 2 issues I have with Orion:
1. It's not available outside of the Apple ecosystem. I want to be able to use the same browser across all my devices so everything syncs nicely.
2. 1Password refuses to whitelist Orion for their browser extension. Yes 1Password's Universal Autofill works pretty well, but that doesn't help when I'm making a new account or updating a password
I know Kagi can't do anything about #2, but I'm hoping they are actively working on #1. It would be the thing that finally makes me leave Firefox behind.
I knew I should've come to the comments first. This is exactly where I ended up in my thought process after about 15 minutes of diving in.
The mobile version is also super buggy. Frequently when I’m using it it just turns half-black and I can’t see the page. Really love the desktop version though
Agreed on all points. It also has too many bugs for non technical/canary users. However Vlad is very open on this, both on Discord and the issue tracker (https://orionfeedback.org/).
It's an amazing browser, and I'd love to use it across all my devices.
Much of the risk associated with password managers is only applicable when using the browser extensions. I know it’s a minor inconvenience, but I would advise sticking with the lack of extension.
This hasn’t been shown to be true in any meaningful way.
I think it is if the the extension does it’s thing without any user interaction?
At least I remember reading that that was why the Bitwarden extension is so safe. It doesn’t do anything until I press a button.
Indeed - in the past, some browser extensions would auto fill into iframes and similar, using the origin identity of the page container, even when the field was invisible. That's obviously an issue, but sticking to manual actions (partly) helps there.
The downside of not using a password manager is that users enter (or paste) their passwords without any robust domain validation. In phishing scenarios, a missing auto fill prompt is likely to be enough to encourage a pause and think.
Tavis Ormandy is one of the leading security experts in the world. Here’s a blog post that highlights a number of the risks related to password manager extensions: https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/passmgrs.html
Why won’t 1Password whitelist it?
They are a bit vague, but it usually comes down to "we don't want to manually handle it every time a new tiny browser comes by". Plenty of staff responses in here:
https://1password.community/discussion/124112/support-for-or...
I pay for Kagi. I'd also pay for Orion if it were on Linux. It doesn't even need to be good, I'd still pay for it.
For something as important as a web browser or operating system, I'd want it to be open source. In the FAQ it does say that they're opensourcing components and plan to opensource the browser eventually. This is all good.
Long term though, I'd want it also to run on opensource operating systems. It doesn't exactly make sense to have an opensource browser on a closed source operating system. I use Firefox on macOS (+ Linux) and wouldn't be so inclined if it only ran on Mac and/or Windows.
there's min browser. https://github.com/minbrowser/min it's cross-platform and open source.
Arguably it does not need to be open source if it is zero-telemetry by default (if privacy is concern).
Reference:
https://browser.kagi.com/faq.html#ossprivacy
That's debatable, and being debated[0] regarding xp.apple.com. Is it telemetry, what is it? Can it be trusted?
And just because something starts out being telemetry free, there's no guarantee it will stay that way and you can't fork the 'last known good'.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34562402#34563003
> That's debatable, and being debated[0] regarding xp.apple.co
Not sure how is this related to Orion as it has no such traffic.
> there's no guarantee it will stay that way
If it doesn't stay that way then it is not zero-telemetry any more.
A piece of software will always be more trustworthy when it is free and open source than when it is closed source. A web browser interacts with so many servers that it would be very difficult to screen for all of the possible ways it could leak information to third parties if it were malicious. A FOSS browser has no such concerns since the code can be checked for malicious behavior. Any telemetry in FOSS can be either disabled in the software settings or stripped through forks (LibreWolf, Mull, Ungoogled Chromium).
With multiple cross-platform FOSS browsers already on the market, being FOSS is a baseline expectation for any new web browser that I hope Orion will eventually meet.
> A piece of software will always be more trustworthy when it is free and open source than when it is closed source
Agreed.
I argued something different though, and that is that a zero-telemetry browser is more trustworthy (from a privacy perspective) than an open-source browser that has telemetry by default.
The simple reason for this is that literally anyone can test and verify zero-telemetry claim by installing a free web proxy and monitoring connections.
Proving trustworthiness for a browser with telemetry, even if client is OSS, is much harder.
> A web browser interacts with so many servers
A zero-telemetry browser, especially one blocking ads and trackers by default like Orion, does not.
Just one such rogue connection found by anyone on the web would be enough to destroy zero-telemetry browser's entire reputation and credibility.
> A FOSS browser has no such concerns since the code can be checked for malicious behavior.
That is somewhat an illusion. For example server side code that is receiving and processing browser telemetry (including personal information such as IP addresses), is not open source and can not be checked for any major OSS browser, as far as I know. Even if it was FOSS, the user would have no way of knowing that is the code that is actually running on the servers.
With a zero-telemetry browser there is no such concern. This is why zero-telemetry is a much more powerful claim if trust and privacy are of concern.
Ultimately, what defines trustworthines overall is the business model of the browser, because that is what defines incentives of the browser vendor. As an average user, would you rather trust a browser with a business model where users pay for the product, or a browser depending on the world's largest ad and tracking network for revenue?
Most browsers depend directly or indirectly on ads/tracking business models for revenue. Orion is again a rare breed in this regard, as it only generates revenue off of the users directly paying for it.
> A zero-telemetry browser, especially one blocking ads and trackers by default like Orion, does not.
With or without telemetry, any web browser interacts with the numerous servers that host the content on the pages users load. A malicious closed source browser could alter its behavior in any number of ways while resisting detection.
It can change the timing or content of requests to and responses from specific domains. It can manipulate content displayed to the user. It can alter the behavior of scripts. Importantly, it can do any of these things in extremely targeted situations, such as when the user's environment meets certain conditions.
FOSS browsers don't have this concern because the source code can be verified to ensure that the browser doesn't manipulate its behavior in any situation.
> As an average user, would you rather trust a browser with a business model where users pay for the product, or a browser depending on the world's largest ad and tracking network for revenue?
The maintainers of the telemetry-free LibreWolf, Mull, and Ungoogled Chromium browsers don't depend on search engine revenue. An average user wouldn't see any problem with these forks, and an informed user would recognize their FOSS nature as an additional benefit that Orion could also gain should it become FOSS in the future.
Correct, and this is why trustworthiness is a matter of the business model, which is what defines incentives.
For many browsers today, users are not the same as customers, and this is problematic from a standpoint of trust and alignment of incentives, regardless of whether they are FOSS or not.
> A piece of software will always be more trustworthy when it is free and open source than when it is closed source.
Totally disagree. Unless you are reviewing the software yourself (like not), you’re just hoping that somebody else reviewed it and they are competent, and that any vulns are reported and fixed.
That’s a lot of trust ok a system that may or may not work as intended.
Might as well be closed source at that point.
> Unless you are reviewing the software yourself (like not)
If you're assuming this about me, then you're wrong. I frequently review source code for FOSS I use, especially the parts that I submit issues and pull requests for.
I also know that others are reviewing the source code, since they are submitting issues (that reference portions of the code) and pull requests, too.
> Might as well be closed source at that point.
No, if a piece of software ever behaved suspiciously, the software being FOSS would enable someone to inspect the code and determine the root cause of that behavior. This examination would be made much more difficult if the software were closed source.
Great points
First of all, "free and open source" as in libre, does not necessarily mean "free as in beer". You are perfectly free to pay for FOSS and FOSS makers are free to charge for it. Is that clear?
Second, "FOSS = safe" from a privacy perspective is not nearly the reason you want FOSS. You want a FOSS browser for many, many reasons that are above and beyond privacy assurances.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Kagi seems really expensive? They say 240 searches a month costs them $3. But I don’t see how that works. You can run a c5.18xlarge instance for a full hour for that price, and it seems unlikely every search takes 15 seconds of CPU time on all 72 cpus.
Of course they may need multiple instances to search in parallel, but the math per user/search would remain the same.
It’s still nice that someone is making paid search though, and that alone would be enough reason to pay :)
They pay for search APIs. I would say it's very cheap – $10/month for something I use hours a day comes out to a few cents an hour. Even if I was making minimum wage and it only increased my productivity 1% it would be worth it.
Haha, yeah, for you it’s cheap. I don’t search nearly as much. I’m wondering how the math works for them.
Neeva costs $5/month and has an AI implementation. They're also using APIs from other scrapers and engines. How can they do it at half the cost to customers (with free accounts as well)?
They also have employees, API cals to get the data and other costs.
I'm not good, would you like to pay me? I won't stop you
If you’re going to sell yourself you should at least get a better advertising campaign (or madam).
Are you a web browser?
Aren't we all just browsing the web?
I consider myself more of a web browser pilot or captain
Do you call yourself a car driver pilot too ?
You're a web browser using a software to browse. The software has no agency: YOU are the browser of last order, IT is only an intermediary.
Like, who's driving the screw driver: you. You're the screw driver...
Humm doesnt work as well as I thought when I started. Fine, you're a screwdriver captain or whatever.
I will hop on that gravy train as well.
What’s the main reason for you to pay for it?
I pay for it to get the benefit of Google's better search results without ads. It's better than DDG, Bing, Google and Brave Search based on my experience... I've had Kagi subscription since October 2022.
Man I really want to but $10 a month seems like such alot for search..
The timing of this piece on Hacker News is just one day before a new beta release is planned with a new vertical tab sidebar implementation which is easier than the current one. But it's already better than Safari Tab Groups and more mac-assed than Arc.
Most people should wait for the new beta release, or at least make sure they get the new update that has been in the oven for some weeks now. The Orion Team cranks new features and new UIs like crazy!
I have been orion as my daily driver for months now and I have been impressed with where this project is going. Kagi the company offers two products, (1) Kagi Search, which I also use as my daily search driver, and (2) Orion Browser the topic of this post and browser I believe is heading places. I support both and will continuing to due to the features and responsiveness from the dev team. A couple of things to mention:
(1) While not all extensions don't work out of the bat, reverse engineering how each works usally results in how to integrate with it. A good example is bitwarden and touch id integration. Search the Orion feedback page and you will see what I mean.
(2) Absolutley love vertical tabs. When I go down rabbit holes of investagations it makes all the tabs easy to organize and remove tabs that don't serve any purpose anymore.
(3) The privacy settings that it offers make your digital footprint just a little smaller compared to other offers. Biggest plus is browser profile isolation.
(4) Combaitibility mode is fantasticly convient to find and use and makes broken experiences easier to fix.
(5) Big bummer is streaming services don't always work, but the developers promise to work towards a solution.
It’s okay. I like the vertical tabs. Sadly, extensions are buggy and I can’t get Vue Dev Tools to run, which is needed for work.
Kagi search is really nice though. Switched to usit exclusively.
macOS-native vertical tabs were a big win for me too, and like yourself, its WebExtensions API is a win over Safari OOTB but there are Chrome extensions I really rely on that don't work, some as a result of the differences between Webkit and Blink themselves, so I find myself drawn to Arc browser where I get, IMO, a much more robust UI where vertical tabs are the default and the command palette in place of an address/search bar is on the money.
Orion is about to release in-place window switching that sorta matches up with Arc's behavior, but I still prefer Arc as the command palette UX, as well as being able to use back/forward mouse buttons to switch 'in-place' windows, is just the superior affordance.
To be fair, Safari also has MacOS-native vertical tabs, in tab groups, that sync group state across the full ecosystem, and do the "in window switching" when you change groups.
// I pay for Kagi, and use Orion for certain extensions.
Yes, it is fairly straightforward and easy enough to use with the Tab Group switcher in the menu, but sadly it does not allow you to nest tabs in a tree manner (probably it was decided it was a power user feature).
What is this "in-place window switching" feature you mentioned?
Its an enhancement on Firefox's original tab groups UI where you don't need to spawn windows to navigate to and act on groups of tabs
Same here. Super happy with Arc. It's very well designed. It solves a lot of annoyances I had with profile management in other browsers
I wanted to try Arc, but somehow can’t get past the login screen. Support from them has not been very responsive yet.
I wish more browsers adopted the approach of Tree Style Tab, the Firefox extension.
(Heck, I wish Firefox natively implemented it.)
Firefox also needs a toggle to hide that unnecessarily large sidebar header. It’s possible to do that with custom userChrome, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be a checkbox somewhere.
Good timing for this post since I just tried Orion pretty heavily last week. My quick takeaway is that while it's promising, it definitely is not ready for daily driving if you're heavily invested in certain types of add-ons and extensions.
Specifically user scripts extensions (Tampermonkey, ViolentMonkey, a few others) and some ad blocking extensions (AdGuard) will not work. uBlock Origin did work, but the browser stability suffered in my testing when put under heavy load while using quite a few filters. Support for other power user focused extensions was hit and miss, even if you try the Firefox or Chrome version of popular extensions.
I'll stick with Waterfox for now, but will keep an eye on Orion since I really want a webkit-based browser like Safari that offers all the Apple niceties like deeper integration with native macOS functionality while also allowing usage of Firefox/Chrome extensions.
For people who want to compare privacy(tracking) features of browsers, you can look it up here: https://privacytests.org/
That is not my website I found about it here on HN. I wonder how Orion compares to other browsers.
> Several months after first publishing the website, I became an employee of Brave
Fair disclosure from the "About" page, for anyone reading it and noticing Brave's subtly-aligned checkmarks. I'm willing to assume goodwill in a lot of places, but if this was a Firefox or Chrome employee I'd be saying the same thing.
I think that site does not give adequate context to understand the results. Making privacy a check/no-check mark on things that 99.9% of people do not understand does not improve privacy and there are lots of nuances that are not communicated. Even people who do understand the context and platform do not understand what some parts of it means.
Unfortunately the site does not test for the the primary source of personal information leakage in browsers - telemetry.
What they don’t mention is: they’re testing only the default browser settings (a clean install.)
Almost nobody uses the default settings… the results are misinterpreted by most people.
The browser is fine in general, esp. the vertical tabs and being very Safari-like as far as the footprint goes, and I've been using Kagi for the last few weeks, which is also working great.
The problem though, is that the browser is my window into so much high-trust data and credentials, there's no way I will entrust it to a browser that's either a) not open source, or b) not built by a well-established company with a track record.
I still wish the authors the best of luck in becoming the (b) from above.
Kagi Search is amazing but I’m almost completely on Linux now so I’ll have to wait on this browser
I tried it for a bit but it didn’t seem materially better than DDG for my purposes. What do you like about it?
It's much better at regional searches and it has verbatim mode. Generally a more polished product.
I like that I am the customer. Now they just need go make a twitter clone for $5/mo
That would be Micro.blog. (More or less.)
I tried using Orion but 1Password integration is still buggy and doesn’t properly work. Apparently 1Password has to do some whitelisting on their side that the browser is okay to be used, but they don’t do that so it has been stalling for a very long time (https://1password.community/discussion/124112/support-for-or...).
It’s sad because 1Password is such an important thing that I need to properly work that it’s making me use Orion less than I want
Besides that I think Orion (and Kagi, like people mentioned here) is great. That and Arc is a lot of fresh air in the browser space
I use 1Password with Orion and it works (on iPhone btw)
On iOS I'd guess it's still Apple's web view which 1Password supports in order to work in non-Safari apps of many kinds.
Some feedback:
1. The download button doesn't work on Pale Moon / WhiteStar browser (v32.0.0) - clicking it does nothing. Perhaps it is a bug or some settings I enabled. But it should be a no-brainer that a Browser company design a site that works fine in all browsers so that others can download and switch to it easily!
2. Orion is still very buggy and keeps freezing occasionally. Cannot use it as a daily driver.
3. The uBlock Origin extension still doesn't work perfectly (if at all). That should be a priority, and not just a marketing talking point.
4. Please display / add version number on the website and the download file.
I still recommend it to others but you guys need to produce a stable version soon.
> I still recommend it to others but you guys need to produce a stable version soon.
This must drive developers nuts. It is in Beta. That means it has bugs and is not yet in wide release. A user should have no expectation of it being their daily driver for anything critical. Providing constructive feedback is great, but the closing complaint is just not appropriate at this stage of the product.
Thanks for the feedback! (dev here)
1. Indeed, should be fixed now
2. Most common cause for this are extensions. The extension support is still experimental and try to reduce use to minimum/essential.
3. Known issues have been reported here https://orionfeedback.org/d/718-ublock-origin-doesnt-work-so... if you have anything else to add let us know
4. Good idea, added
> I still recommend it to others but you guys need to produce a stable version soon.
This is a bit uncharitable - the browser is currently in beta.
As many of other commenters here, I agree that:
- it's awesome to have more browsers;
- Orion is very impressive already, but not quite ready for daily using if your browsing needs are above average;
- vertical tabs are the biggest selling point for many people.
I also wanted to mention how responsive the team are. I submit my thoughts and bug reports from time to time on the official forum [0], and the team cares a lot, which is fascinating.
[0] https://orionfeedback.org/d/2783-random-thoughts-on-arc-orio...
There's a new beta release coming in the next days!
It's not always entirely reliable, but Orion browser is one of the few ways that you can use standardized chromium extensions on a browser in iOS systems such as iPhone or iPad.
Installed it an I love the focus mode - I just wish I didn't have to leave it when checking how many tabs were secretly opened or when manually navigating to another site with "command-l".
Been using Brave for many 5 years now but this could easily become my new default browser.
I’ve been slowly transitioning to Orion from Brave, and my only complaint is that Orion doesn’t handle mailto links correctly. Otherwise it’s great, and I like the mobile-desktop linkage.
But I’ve slowed my transition lately, since Brave now offers vertical tabs if you set the flag. Would love to see true tree-style tabs, but even just vertical tabs makes me much less likely to switch away.
My situation is a bit different. I am on some kind of minimalism streak and started to rarely use tabs. It helps with focus and concentration. Would use a browser that enforces a no-tab policy. That's why I enjoy the focus mode so much.
You should check out min browser. it has a mode that prevents you from opening tabs. the design is also very very stripped back. no web extension support but has an adblock and bitwarden integration. it is unfortunately electron based though.
I just think it's cool that this exists. Would love to see more browsers out there, even if I recognise what a herculean task it is.
Just browsing orionfeedback.org shows how difficult it is to create a fully fledged modern browser _even_ if you already tap onto an existing rendering engine.
Related:
Kagi search and Orion browser enter public beta - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31584791 - June 2022 (201 comments)
My next main browser: a review of Orion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30610651 - March 2022 (149 comments)
Orion is a new WebKit-based browser for Mac - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28799049 - Oct 2021 (184 comments)
It's really amazing to think that "zero telemetry" is how one differentiates from Firefox these days.
Until MacOS lets you disable OCSP, I don't think a Mac-native browser can be zero-telemetry.
I'd call that OS telemetry as opposed to browser/application telemetry.
Agreed, I'd be singing a different tune if Orion was available on other OSes.
I believe this might work in your HOSTS file:
It seems they at least still respect that. Search HN for "ocsp.apple.com" to find a lot more interesting discussion.https://github.com/drduh/macOS-Security-and-Privacy-Guide/is...
This will disable OS updates.
Additionally, macOS talks to the OCSP endpoints of several different CAs, not just Apple.
Lots of promise in this one, its in especially good shape for not even being v1.0 yet. It's certainly in better shape than Arc, which I wanted to like but it is extremely slow. I'll be daily driving this one for a while until I feel some reason not to. Once extensions are ironed out I think it will be very powerful seeing as you can add both Chrome and Firefox extensions. The bookmarks need some help, and I would appreciate some features like Firefox auto-sort by name, things like that. Great start
FAQ is missing the only thing I care about: will it support any open platforms.
That probably means they won't, which is disappointing.
Although a browser that's not open source is also a non-starter. The main differentiating features are tree-style tabs which is available as an extension to other browsers anyway. And zero-telemetry, except it doesn't run on a zero-telemetry OS, so again if I want zero-telemetry this is essentially useless to me.
Small thing, but the footnote references render incorrectly for me: they're rendered as normal-sized text, rather than small superscript.
Separately: what does an "X" on "zero telemetry by default" mean for Firefox? My understanding/distant memory is that Firefox asks users to enable developer metrics, but that it's (1) opt in, and (2) distinct in kind from the telemetry the other browsers might collect by default.
It's not turn off completely: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1197144
The devil is in the details. Firefox still phones home a lot.
Orion does look like a viable alternative to Safari. I like those simple things like typing passwords with a fingerprint and swiping left is animated, much like in Safari. Tab groups would be nice.
The ability to use both Chrome and Firefox extensions is mindblowing. An inbuilt adblocker is good. The profiles look amazing to tab groups. I am very positive this will make my default browser.
It’s still quite buggy, things like occasionally not drawing the page when you switch to a new site; and sometimes being stuck rendering on half the screen only (seems related to the tabs pop out).
I’m still sticking with it for now, because I use Kagi search and I like their ethos. But I am getting slightly frustrated with it. So I may switch soon (I’ll continue using Kagi though, that I really rate)
How long have you been using it? I just started about 4 days ago. I received a MacBook Pro for work and decided to use Orion because I use Kagi, and I haven’t noticed any defects. I’ve primarily been using YouTube, gmail and stack overflow though.
A few months. I still get both of the issues I mention above.
I used Onion for a while, but moved back to Safari. Too many weird issues with playing video, and autofill with tons of contacts (4-5k?). Miss the build in ad blocking, and that it's chrome is thinner, and picture-in-picture without some random extension.
For Safari, consider 1Blocker with all the additional extensions enabled (a top option since ~2015) or AdGuard. To make life easier on the blocker (less energy consumption), consider NextDNS.io or AdGuard for DNS.
I've been using picture-in-picture without extensions on Orion by pressing cmd+ctrl+m
If would be nice to see a third browser alternative on Windows, even if just for the better competition. Because Chrome with 90+% of market share and the rest is Firefox on life support and not very competent management is not good.
“Built on Webkit”
At least it’s not Chromium. We don’t need Big G dictating the web.
For me, "At least it's not Webkit" sounds more like something one would say.
There are horrible bugs in Webkit that have not been solved for more than 8 years. Developers that had to build something complex on the web, with lots of custom interaction, animations, etc. learned to hate Webkit with passion (and Safari, and the worst of the worst - Safari on iOS).
The Webkit team focuses on implementing new standards instead of trying get the engine to at least be decent when compared with the alternatives.
It does work ok for most things, and it uses less energy, but it's objectively the worst mainstream browser engine nowadays.
Its kinda interesting seeing this built on top of Webkit and something like Bun built on top of its JavaScriptCore component
Anyone else read this as “Onion Browser” And think of Tor?
All the time.
Awesome but without cross-platform builds I won't be using it.
I would happily pay for it though. Unless it's not a subscription.
Who needs telemetry on the client when you're signed in with a paid account with your cc info lol.
Look, the product quality both for kagi and orion is average. If they want to compete as a privacy first product they must at least offer bitcoin payment and a legally binding clause about not logging IP addresses.
If only Arc was native... uses so much memory. but the product is too good to switch to Orion.
I'm not really sure what you mean here. Arc uses the Blink engine, which is written in C++ (just like WebCore, the core of WebKit, is), and the rest of the browser is written in Swift.
"Native app" on Mac usually refers to an app following the Apple's HIG (Human Interface Guidelines), using OS native components and having integrations with native services (such as Keychain or iCloud).
The reference browser (produced by the OS manufacturer) on macOS is Safari. It sets a standard for what a 'native' browser following HIG should look and feel like.
You could also say that the reference web rendering engine on macOS is WebKit, which is not only made by Apple but is also the fastest, most resource efficient (probably what OP refers to) and comes with many native system integrations built-in.
In all these regards, Orion is indeed a native app on Mac and many other browsers are not.
But Arc is native. They are building it in Swift. They have even taken on a mammoth task of building their windows version in Swift!
Oh I didn't know! I thought it was Chromium under the hood which is just very memory hungry. Is Chromium actually Swift under the hood?
Chromium is C++, i.e. native. The amount of memory used is a separate issue for the most part, and any language or execution environment can use a lot.
Ah okay thank you for the correction. I had heard all this talk about how Electron is based on Chromium which is why developing with it tends to create memory intensive apps or something. Happy to be wrong on that.
Yes, Chromium is native, but apps built with Electron are written in (or compiled to) JavaScript or WebAssembly, so not native, which uses more memory. Since Chromium is a full web browser it has a kind of minimum memory use which is higher than simple Electron apps would take if they were rewritten to be native. But if you're making a browser, you're going to need all that anyway.
I’ve paid for Kagi for months. Works well and I wanted to support this.
What do they mean by first-party ads vs. third-party ads? They are suggesting that Brave is not blocking first-party ads. I find that hard to believe.
First party ads (and trackers) are those originating from the same domain as they are on. Orion blocks those by default, Brave does not.
https://www.reddit.com/r/brave_browser/comments/as0tf0/why_a...
If facebook.com loads ads from fbcdn.net (also owned by Facebook), is the ad first or third party?
Doesn't matter if you use Orion, it blocks them all.
> By default Brave will not block first Party ads which are actually part of the sites you visit
https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360022806212-How...
I'd guess something like ads running from their own domain, hence first-party ads.
Oh, finally i can listen to youtube using Desktop app.
I just tried Orion for iOS and weirdly almost every single page I visit (but not all) give me a certificate warning.
This has been my daily driver for a few months. Love the vertical nested tabs and being able to add things like paywall bypass/google translate into a browser as battery efficient as Safari.
Make a Linux/Windows/Android version then come back to me. Walled gardens aren't my thing
No real problems with the Mac client but the iOS version was quite buggy.
I downloaded this yesterday after seeing this post and, wow!
It will take me awhile to go through all the tools and features for developers but I'm pretty sure I'll be using this as my goto browser for testing my work.
Shout out to napolux for sharing this here!
Mac-only. Sigh.
This is shaping up quite well.
It's not even open.
on macos many extensions don't work, so I uninstalled.
on ios the UI is so good! but it keeps freaking out and being slow. it's still my main but let's see for how long. I used insight before orion.
I’m quite content with Brave Browser — no complaints here.
It was better before they buried settings. I switch Javascript on and off a lot. Before the change, it was two taps to get to those settings. Now it's three. While there's a button to switch all Brave settings on and off, I just want to toggle Javascript, and I do it enough that it's now one level too deep, i.e. it takes 5 taps total, 3 to get to the Javascript switch, one to toggle the switch and one to close the menus. I'd like to see a browser that allows switching Javascript on and off right on the menu bar, and without force reloading the page.
when to arrive to Android ?
when to arrive to Android