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Orion Browser Brings WebKit Speed and Privacy Focus to Mac Users
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Probably just me, but I cannot get passwords or syncing across three devices (Mac mini, MacBook Air, iPhone) to work without problems. I do have the Passwords extension installed, but it's just still glitchy. And sync was working fine, but then I had problems with Tab Groups -- proliferation of tabs on iPhone that were not there on Mac mini. Tried syncing the iPhone from Cloud again, but it just keeps proliferating tabs in Tab Groups.
FWIW, Orion clocked in on BrowserBench faster than Safari and STP. i’ve been using it for the past day, and I think I may have found my new daily driver.
I'm not beyond including Orion on my Mac (and using it over Safari - which relies too heavily on Apple's nanny mode for how it believes we should use a browser), while my default browser - like you - remains Firefox.
That said, Mozilla's recent enthusiasm for AI and logging use has had me keeping up with (and installing) the user.js file from Betterfox.
Awesome! I still use Brave for my daily needs due to the built in ad blocker, but for pages I know and trust and pay for to not get ads (like here) I use Arc. Things like YouTube, Peacock, etc and stuff. How is video playback on Orion?
YouTube works fine for me in Orion. Haven’t tried a streamer like Peacock or Netflix yet.
Safari doesn’t support media file formats until the operating system itself does. That means a lot more has to be updated before the native web browser can support a new format. Engineers have to put the job in the queue and they will only raise the priority of the job once there is enough demand or uptake.
It’s even worse on Windows with the File Explorer having really poor support for previewing many image and audio formats. They still don’t have native .psd support. Mac OS 7.1 had support for .psd in the 90s.
Orion doesn't cost money. The "subscription" is just a vehicle for donating to the project.
Interesting!
I've just installed it, and loaded Bitwarden and Ublock Origin from the Firefox store.
I'm not sure why I'd prefer this browser to Firefox but it looks ok in the 60 seconds I've played with it. Two things I'm missing though are containers and cookie whitelisting.
I use the former so I can log in to the same service with different IDs in different tabs, and to block social media type pages from seeing cookies in any other tab. I use the latter so that I can have all cookies deleted when I close the browser apart from certain websites which I'm happy to keep, so I don't need to log in each time.
At the moment, I'm sticking with Firefox, but it does seem like a good hybrid option for those who like Safari but want some Firefox extensions.
I've just installed it, and loaded Bitwarden and Ublock Origin from the Firefox store.
I'm not sure why I'd prefer this browser to Firefox but it looks ok in the 60 seconds I've played with it. Two things I'm missing though are containers and cookie whitelisting.
I use the former so I can log in to the same service with different IDs in different tabs, and to block social media type pages from seeing cookies in any other tab. I use the latter so that I can have all cookies deleted when I close the browser apart from certain websites which I'm happy to keep, so I don't need to log in each time.
At the moment, I'm sticking with Firefox, but it does seem like a good hybrid option for those who like Safari but want some Firefox extensions.
I tested it out on my MacBook and the content blocking works really well.
As a privacy-focused browser, the only big downside is that Apple won't let 3rd party apps use iCloud Private Relay for IP privacy
As a privacy-focused browser, the only big downside is that Apple won't let 3rd party apps use iCloud Private Relay for IP privacy
Big fan of Orion. It's been fun watching it slowly become usable over the past year or so. As someone who refuses to use Safari over Apple's stupid extension restrictions and updates locked to system updates, Orion provides pretty much everything I want (even proper vertical tabs).
Agree on the vertical tabs. That is the ONLY reason I do not use Safari. I am not sure why vertical tabs are not a standard these days. Peopled have reported having hundreds of tabs open, and I have seen how horrible their tabs look horizontal. Even when I get to 10 tabs Safari looks horrible with horizontal tabs.
I'm thinking about moving away from FF because of the direction they're going with adding AI and stuff in, buying an ad company, etc. Also doesn't help that Ubuntu officially packages it only as a snap now, so if you try to download multiple things at a time eventually the throughput will completely crater.
It's good to know it will take Firefox extensions, most importantly the full uBlock Origin. Disappointing that it doesn't include the multi-container support, since I thought that's treated like an extension that Mozilla itself made. I could probably live without it if I needed to, though. Not excited about having to give up Firefox Passwords, since that's been a great cross-platform way to keep those updated even on my iPad (where Firefox is just otherwise just another webkit skin because it's not allowed to run gecko or its own extensions, except in Europe). But I'd have to do that regardless of whatever I migrated to. I really want my next browser to be something that's also cross-platform, though.
It's not just UI features visible to the user. There are tons of other web technologies and fixes that roll out constantly, but Safari is always a year behind. - The Technology Preview has those features, but it's not meant for the public, just developers. And as I mentioned, it's buggy. I can't recommend using it as a replacement for regular Safari. Too much stuff breaks.
There really isn't an excuse for Apple to lag when everyone else can keep up.
What is that Forrest Gump quote?
Safari is just bad and there are soo many other better options.
I run Firefox nightly, and (as far as I'm aware, as I've never seen anything AI related) have all the AI stuff turned off.
Orion ran my two important extensions fine. I didn't install the containers extension as I assumed (maybe wrongly - I'll give it a go later) it needed the container stuff that's already built-in to extend on to.
I don't use FF passwords, as I use Bitwarden which works well in Orion. I also use Bitwarden on my phone - I don't use Apple's passwords.
Edit: Containers extension loaded but doesn't work. As expected. Also, Orion's profiles are pretty much the same as Safari's - a new window opens, so you can't associate URLs/bookmarks with a profile.