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Orion Browser by Kagi

orionbrowser.com

81–90 of 322 posts

Re: Orion Browser by Kagi

#81
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.

Re: Orion Browser by Kagi

#82
post #2

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?

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).

Re: Orion Browser by Kagi

#83
post #11

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.

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

Re: Orion Browser by Kagi

#84
post #21
post #2

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?

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

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.

Re: Orion Browser by Kagi

#85
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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...

i remember seeing this thread. will be cool for windows users to have a webkit option again (are there any webkit-based browsers there since safari quit being made for it?). i will certainly be interested in trying out the android version when it comes around and have been testing out the linux version since it dropped.

Re: Orion Browser by Kagi

#87
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.

Re: Orion Browser by Kagi

#88
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

i remember seeing this thread. will be cool for windows users to have a webkit option again (are there any webkit-based browsers there since safari quit being made for it?). i will certainly be interested in trying out the android version when it comes around and have been testing out the linux version since it dropped.

GNOME Web, technically, through WSL.

Re: Orion Browser by Kagi

#89
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 ` if you have Playwright set up.

Re: Orion Browser by Kagi

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i remember seeing this thread. will be cool for windows users to have a webkit option again (are there any webkit-based browsers there since safari quit being made for it?). i will certainly be interested in trying out the android version when it comes around and have been testing out the linux version since it dropped.

GNOME Web, technically, through WSL.

haha, that is certainly one way to achieve the goal. :)
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